Tuesday, October 08, 2019

Election debate

So I watched most of the Federal Election's leader's debate last night.

From left to right on the stage:
Elizabeth May - leader of the Green Party of Canada
Justin Trudeau - leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (incumbent)
Andrew Scheer - leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (virtually tied in popularity with Trudeau)
Maxime Bernier - leader of the People's Party of Canada
Yves-François Blanchet - leader of the Bloc Québécois
Jagmeet Singh - leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

There are a bunch of reviews about what happened throughout the debate from the various media pundits.

I didn't find that anything that was said swayed me at all.

The major issues of this election appear to be (in no meaningful order): Environment and Energy, Affordability, Indigenous Relations and the introduction of Pharmacare and possibly national dental care.

My particular number one priority is to see our national, provincial and municipal governments enact as may policies as possible, and aggressive ones, to combat the climate crisis.

Max Bernier insists that as a nation, we represent less than 2% of the emissions being made worldwide, so any reduction we make (at the cost of business competition losses) would be virtually meaningless.

Andrew Scheer wants to undo the Carbon Tax that the Trudeau government put in place; as far as I am concerned, the Carbon Tax needs to stay, and it needs to be far more aggressive in the price per tonne of GHG increases over the next few years.

The charge per GHG tonne as per the GHGPPA is as follows:
2019: 20$/tonne
2020: 30$
2021: 40$
2022: 50$

I'd like to see it go like this:
2019: 20$
2020: 40$
2021: 80$
2022: 160$

The GHG emission reduction targets of the LPC and the NDP are about the same, the Green's have doubled that target which means a far more aggressive societal change to get the reductions; and I'm all for that.

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