Green Party - Parenting and Family Issues

This post describes some of the key parenting and family issues outlined in the Green Party's vision and platform.

Family Needs and Finances

• Committed to nurturing families and communities through integrated policies that focus on the welfare of the child, starting with prenatal nutrition all the way to affordable housing and accessible post secondary education.


• Believe we must stop designing our communities around the car and start designing them around families and children.


• Support reforms to our tax and labour policies that will increase the opportunity for Canadians to spend more time with family.


• Promote an integrated programme of supports, tax cuts, and awareness raising that time spent with children, time spent in community, time spent in interdependent healthy relation as community is essential for the continuation of our society.


• Value the decision of parents who choose to stay home with children.


• Extend maternity/paternity leave for new parents outside of EI to two years and one additional year for other parents who pay into EI.


• Support income splitting to ensure greater fairness in situations where one spouse earns more than the other.


• Reduce income taxes (using revenues from a carbon tax) and in particular remove taxes from the lowest categories (those earning $20,000 or less) so that no taxes are paid by those below the poverty line. Return the GST to 6% to invest in infrastructure, but expand the exemptions on food items and extend them to children's clothing and  books.


• Top up income support for single parents on welfare if they are attending school or in job training programs.


• Increase funding for needs-based Canadian National Student Loan and Bursary program and forgive 50% of a student's loan when they complete a degree or certificate program. Expand industry-based job training and apprenticeships.

Children and Child Care

• Restore and revamp the 2005 agreement reached between the federal government, provinces and territories (which was canceled by the Conservative government) to achieve a universal child care programme in Canada and ensure that this programme provides workplace child care spaces wherever possible.


• Ensure advertising directed at children is ineligible for corporate tax write-offs.


• Promote and facilitate access to the Roots of Empathy Programme to every Canadian child

Women's Rights

• Fully support the woman's right to choose and support the right of access to a safe, legal abortion.


• Expand programmes in reproductive rights and education to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and expand supports for low-income mothers.


• Support pay equity legislation that would  immediately implement full pay equity for women employed in the federal sector and develop tax incentives for companies to meet the highest standards of gender and pay equity.


• Establish specific job re-entry programmes for women with children who want to restart their working life either part-time or full-time.


• Reestablish funding for Status of Women Canada and for a Women’s Program that funds not-for-profit women’s groups that advocate women’s rights.


• Ensure that the criteria for a new independent agency appointing members to public boards and agencies includes equal opportunity for women.


• Support greater engagement of women in the political life of Canada by advocating that all political parties nominate, train and support more women candidates.


• Establish legislation that would make it an offense to interfere with, distress or harass a women breastfeeding an infant and have specific punishments associated with it (source: Passed Resolutions at the 2006 National Convention).

Family Health

• Promote continued universal and comprehensive public health care and oppose any level of privatized, for-profit health care.


• Limit the commercialization of genetically modified (GMO) crops and impose labeling of GMO products.


• Act to remove from use those chemicals known to have a significant risk of human cancer, immuno-suppression, endocrine disruption, neuro-toxicity and/or mutagenicity.


• Work to develop national goals for prenatal care.


• Eliminate toxic waste sites over a multi-year plan, with a priority on those communities most at risk.


• Set up a Universal PharmaCare program, a bulk drug purchasing agency, and make new drug patent protection times shorter (ensuring that no Canadian spends more than 3% of their total after tax earnings on necessary prescribed medications and other treatments).


• Provide Canadians with more information on health food choices and lifestyles by restoring funding to the Canadian Health Network, creating a Canadian Healthy Living Guide, protecting children from inappropriate exposure to marketing of junk foods/soft drinks, etc.


• Provide a GST Health Benefit Reduction for products/services that have significant health benefits.


• Implement a National Junk Food Tax.


• Increase physical activity in and around schools, including national standards for physical activity in our education system at all levels, re-introducing national school-based fitness testing program, and promoting a "Walking School Bus".


• Recognize environmental sensitivities as a health care issue and increase legislation, policies and funding to deal with them.


• Work to reduce cigarette smoking through education and taxes and focus on drug addiction as a health problem by legalizing marijuana and foucsing efforts on harm reduction, treatment (e.g. greater funding for detox facilities and treatment beds for rehabilitation, needle exchange programs) and prevention.

The Green Party's detailed policies are outlined in its Vision Green document (family issues primarily in Part 4: People) and its platform is summarized in Looking Forward.  Except where otherwise indicated, all information in this post came from those two documents.

Comments

[Lu]

I wish I lived in Canada. We don't even have healthcare, it would cost 3/4 of our monthly budget just to insure 2 of our 3 family members. Luckily my son has state paid health care but it is pretty controversial (see my latest blog post).

The Green Party's platform is making me green with envy ;)

[Chris Brown]

Your statement that sensitivities should be recognized moves the issue backwards by implying that they are not. In doing so, you contribute to the injury and killing of persons with sensitivities by third parties who take your flaky ideas as factual.

[phdinparenting]

@ Chris. Thank you for your comments. Just to clarify though, this post is a summary of the Green Party's platform. It is not necessarily a summary of my own position on those issues.

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