Address climate and economic crises at once with bold national solutions creating over a million good-paying jobs
In the 1930s, Canada and the world were in the midst of a catastrophic depression. Mass unemployment, poverty, and a rising far-right marked those hungry years.
Many governments naively believed that the market would sort itself out, and did far too little to help their people. The USA under President Franklin D. Roosevelt took a different approach: a New Deal involving massive public investment that put millions of people back to work building everything from state parks to the highway system, giving them jobs and hope in hard times. It got the economy moving again and it won him landslide after landslide at the polls.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Today we face a cost of living crisis, a climate crisis that settles in our lungs every summer, and a far-right eager to feed off people's despair. We can learn the lessons of the past to build a better future.
That's why an Avi Lewis-led NDP will champion a Canadian Green New Deal to address both our climate and economic crises at once, with bold national solutions that will create over a million good-paying jobs across this country and make life more affordable for everyone.
In doing so, we will not leave a single energy worker behind. Workers can't transition to a promise or an idea – the jobs need to be waiting. With a Green New Deal, they will be. Which is why we need to embark on building the next economy on an emergency basis, at scale and speed.
A Green New Deal will allow Canada to reclaim the mantle of climate leadership, while supercharging our economy by building the renewable-powered economy of tomorrow, today.
An Avi-led NDP will fight for:
A sustainable jobs plan to create 1 million good green jobs
We'll create over a million good paying union jobs by investing 2% of Canada's GDP in tackling the climate emergency. Of this, 1% will be dedicated to a Green Jobs Transfer linked to funding climate infrastructure projects like clean energy, building retrofits and public transit. The funding would be front-loaded to protect workers in fossil-fuel reliant provinces first: no one who works in the industry will be left behind.
We will also significantly expand the Youth Climate Corps, to train and employ tens of thousands of young people in meaningful jobs in their communities.
Free and reliable transit
Free and fast public transit, public high-speed rail, and a public inter-community electric bus service, along with a renewed and strengthened commitment to the zero-emission vehicle mandate and public charging stations.
Heat pumps for all
Heat pumps for all, solar panels for every roof and balcony, and a back-up storage battery for every home. We will establish a new generation of public enterprises to build and deploy this technology.
Powerlines not pipelines
No federal approvals for new pipelines, offshore oil projects or liquified natural gas terminals. Instead, a large-scale federal investment to build a coast-to-coast-to-coast clean energy grid, promoting renewable energy exports between provinces and reducing our economic dependence on the US, and to propel the rapid decarbonization of our economy.
Make the oil and gas companies pay
Some of these initiatives will pay for themselves (like new public corporations), while others will cost. So to pay for this bold agenda, we'll go after the fossil fuel companies that have made extraordinary profits at our collective expense. An Avi-led NDP will push back against Trump's tariffs with a tax on oil and gas exports to the US, and institute a windfall profits tax to help finance the energy transition and sustainable jobs.
Read Avi's full plan for a Green New Deal here .