Summary - The Green Party Platform
Thanks to a link sent by the card carrying Green, the Green Party of Canada has been the first of four parties which I have researched. And to be honest, I should have saved this one for last. It is by far the most radical collection of political party policies that anyone could write and still pretend to have a claim to general respectability. I rather suspected that the Greens would have some unique ideas, but I wasn’t prepared for what I read.
Their policy document must have been written by a collection of well respected liberal arts professors, small scale hobby farmers, left wing political activists, luddites, , and down right damned dirty, smelly, hippies who got together at camp. Sang Kum-by-ay. And dropped acid. The policy document was liked eked out, five lines at a time, during the breaks between rolling joints and all out back massage orgies. Let’s face it, if Naomi Klein were to form a political party, patterned in her image, this would be the one. To say that these ideas are progressive is a massive understatement. This is more or less the X commandments written by Moses junior after he stared into the mighty cloud billowing from his bong and said “Dude! I see the path to enlightenment!”
Really, I will start showing them some respect later on in the post, but if you want to understand how unconventional these policies are, then take EVERYTHING I said above at face value.
Some of the highlights that I remember from last night. The Green Party of Canada Resolves to:
- Withdraw Canada from NATO and NORAD
- Phase nuclear energy and fossil fuels out of use
- Remove Nudity from the Criminal Code
- Discontinue factory farms, instead going with organically grown
small scale and family farms.
- Encourage hemp production
- Encourage “natural farming, in nature’s own image”
- Renegotiate or withdraw from GATT and NAFTA (pertaining to food
production)
- Reduce military spending by 50% and distribute money to provinces
- They wish to outlaw surrogate mothers
- Phase out tobacco
- Change the education system from its “current mechanism paradigm to
one based on humanitarian sustainable values”
- Stop assistance to foreign governments in areas of nuclear power,
fossil fuels or mega energy projects
- Withdraw from the WTO (effectively)
- Institute a 4 day work week (32 hours) so “that existing jobs can be
shared with the unemployed”
- Establish the right for all species to exist, and to be granted 1
geographical area free form human influence
- Establish a civilian based national defense program that would train
citizens in unarmed national defense initiative (I thought it sounded
cool too, until I realized that the minds who wrote this document
probably weren’t talking about learning the cool bullet-time
maneuvers and tactics used in the Matrix)
- Reform or Abolish the Senate
So, when I say that this was a radical document written by hippies, know that I do not exaggerate. What they propose in their platforms is a complete and total reworking of our country in a left wing image. Not only that, but it also means acting contrary or even in open defiance to some of the world norms currently established. If the Green party attained, even a minority government in the current political climate, our upstart nation would be quashed by a combination of panicky, self-interested investors and hostile foreign governments.
The thing is, that I actually find myself agreeing with SOME of their policies. They certainly may be radical policies, but frankly, the modern political system could stand to have SOME of this thinking injected into it. We’re too caught up in Freidmanism and self interested greed at this point, and could use a swing to the left. However, the guileless and tactless “shotgun” approach represented by the Greens may actually prove counterproductive to their goals.
The bottom lines is, if I can’t actually find myself getting into one of the other three on my list, then I will make the informed decision to vote Green. Some of this thinking needs to be supported, and some of these ideas need to be developed more thoroughly. A few members in Parliament wouldn’t hurt. I’d like to have a voice given to some of these ideas.
Their policy document must have been written by a collection of well respected liberal arts professors, small scale hobby farmers, left wing political activists, luddites, , and down right damned dirty, smelly, hippies who got together at camp. Sang Kum-by-ay. And dropped acid. The policy document was liked eked out, five lines at a time, during the breaks between rolling joints and all out back massage orgies. Let’s face it, if Naomi Klein were to form a political party, patterned in her image, this would be the one. To say that these ideas are progressive is a massive understatement. This is more or less the X commandments written by Moses junior after he stared into the mighty cloud billowing from his bong and said “Dude! I see the path to enlightenment!”
Really, I will start showing them some respect later on in the post, but if you want to understand how unconventional these policies are, then take EVERYTHING I said above at face value.
Some of the highlights that I remember from last night. The Green Party of Canada Resolves to:
- Withdraw Canada from NATO and NORAD
- Phase nuclear energy and fossil fuels out of use
- Remove Nudity from the Criminal Code
- Discontinue factory farms, instead going with organically grown
small scale and family farms.
- Encourage hemp production
- Encourage “natural farming, in nature’s own image”
- Renegotiate or withdraw from GATT and NAFTA (pertaining to food
production)
- Reduce military spending by 50% and distribute money to provinces
- They wish to outlaw surrogate mothers
- Phase out tobacco
- Change the education system from its “current mechanism paradigm to
one based on humanitarian sustainable values”
- Stop assistance to foreign governments in areas of nuclear power,
fossil fuels or mega energy projects
- Withdraw from the WTO (effectively)
- Institute a 4 day work week (32 hours) so “that existing jobs can be
shared with the unemployed”
- Establish the right for all species to exist, and to be granted 1
geographical area free form human influence
- Establish a civilian based national defense program that would train
citizens in unarmed national defense initiative (I thought it sounded
cool too, until I realized that the minds who wrote this document
probably weren’t talking about learning the cool bullet-time
maneuvers and tactics used in the Matrix)
- Reform or Abolish the Senate
So, when I say that this was a radical document written by hippies, know that I do not exaggerate. What they propose in their platforms is a complete and total reworking of our country in a left wing image. Not only that, but it also means acting contrary or even in open defiance to some of the world norms currently established. If the Green party attained, even a minority government in the current political climate, our upstart nation would be quashed by a combination of panicky, self-interested investors and hostile foreign governments.
The thing is, that I actually find myself agreeing with SOME of their policies. They certainly may be radical policies, but frankly, the modern political system could stand to have SOME of this thinking injected into it. We’re too caught up in Freidmanism and self interested greed at this point, and could use a swing to the left. However, the guileless and tactless “shotgun” approach represented by the Greens may actually prove counterproductive to their goals.
The bottom lines is, if I can’t actually find myself getting into one of the other three on my list, then I will make the informed decision to vote Green. Some of this thinking needs to be supported, and some of these ideas need to be developed more thoroughly. A few members in Parliament wouldn’t hurt. I’d like to have a voice given to some of these ideas.