(Position Filled) Hiring Short-term Researcher for PK GPO

This position has now been filled. We thank all applicants. (March 7th, 2022)

Barriers to Affordability: The Housing Crisis in Peterborough

This is a short research project contract offering $650, plus expenses, on completion of the report.

Goal

To produce a case study report on the housing crisis in Peterborough that links to the Green Party of Ontario’s (GPO) election platform.

Purpose

The Peterborough-Kawaratha chapter of the GPO wants to highlight the party’s solutions to the local housing unaffordability crisis. This will be done by identifying and describing examples in Peterborough of barriers to housing affordability and matching them up with GPO Policy. We want to be able to rely on the report to compose scripts for videos, public field trips and for our chosen candidate to use during the campaign, highlighting the benefits of the GPO Housing Policy.

Defining Affordability

The GPO defines housing affordability as costing no more than 30% of household income.

Background: The Housing Affordability Crisis

In Peterborough house prices rose 33% in 2021, during a time when many people are suffering wage uncertainty. Rental costs have also risen above the rate of wage growth year on year, forcing many people to tighten belts.

The GPO Housing Policy (available at gpo.ca/housing) describes the housing affordability crisis this way:

“Housing affordability is a real challenge to many people across the province. Housing costs are rising faster than people’s incomes. More and more households are spending more than 30% of their income to meet their basic housing needs.”

“We urgently need to build more well-designed, affordable, purpose built rental housing that suits the needs of the tenants. For example, housing that is accessible, with access to outdoor space and enough room for families with kids. We also need to protect what affordable rental supply we have and make sure tenants who are currently paying afford- able rent aren’t unfairly evicted.” (pg. 21)

How the research project will be managed

Those wishing to apply will be provided with a full brief for the project, including the key GPO housing policies that we wish to link to case studies. The full brief will provide structure to the format of the report.

The GPO Housing Policy identifies barriers to housing affordability. The researcher will identify examples in Peterborough where these barriers can be seen, and provide short case studies of them. Also, local or regional examples of solutions.

The researcher will meet regularly with a member of the Peterborough-Kawartha GPO Constituency Association to discuss progress on the report, seek clarifications and for support.

Skills and Experiences

The researcher is expected to be able to be proactive in gathering and analyzing information. The candidate should have some knowledge and understanding of housing policy, urban planning and/or sustainability.

Required:

-Ability to identify the regulatory context of housing examples, such as the zoning requirements of their location, whether the developer had to apply for zoning variance, whether other regulations came into play.

-Ability to discover factors related to the price of units

-Ability to concisely describe such factors in writing.

-Strong writing skills

– Strong communication skills (for sharing information with Duff in a manner that can be easily understood)

– Strong time management skills (this is important due to the deadlines involved)

Desirable:

– report writing experience

– experience in social justice policy

Given this context, this project is suitable for third year or graduate students, or graduates, of Urban Geography and other disciplines related to sustainable development.

To Apply

Please contact info@ptbogreens.org to request the full brief. Subsequently, please send a cover letter and resumé of relevant education and experience to the same address before noon on February 6.  The first 5 qualified applicants will be invited for interviews on February 7 or 8.

A Big Welcome

A Big Welcome

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First, a BIG THANK YOU to all of our supporters during the 2018 campaign. We made a good showing, and it gives us a good foundation for promoting Green policies through the coming mandate.

With that goal in mind: Membership Matters.

The Green Party is run democratically by its members, including setting policy.

Locally, only members can:

  • elect the local candidate and the local executive
  • join a campaign management team
  • help select the field trips, social and learning events organized by the local executive

The main thing is: when you become a member, your local leadership can easily get in touch with you, and then everything we do becomes so much easier!

Becoming a member is inexpensive and easy. Just follow these links:

Green Party of Canada: https://www.greenparty.ca/en/riding/2013-35084

Green Party of Ontario: https://secure.gpo.ca/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=23

You can also donate to the local Constituency Association or Electoral District Association through the main party sites.

For the Green Party of Canada: https://www.greenparty.ca/en/riding/2013-35084

(If we have 70 people donating $10 per month, we will be ready for a solid Get Out the Vote campaign in Fall 2019.)

For Green Party of Ontario: https://secure.gpo.ca/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=148&source=MC.W.HR&riding=86

(If we have 70 people donating $5 per month, we will be ready for a solid Get Out the Vote campaign in Spring 2022.)

Balance the Budget WITHOUT CUTS!

Balance the Budget WITHOUT CUTS!

No cuts to social programing or eduction or health care or environmental protection including flood control are needed in order to balance the budget. The Green approach to budgeting raises the revenue needed to efficiently provide for human and environmental needs at reasonable cost.

The Green approach to budgeting uses the fiscal planning process to help the human community live healthily and happily within the limits of its ecological carrying capacity.

This approach asks what nature and human health need us to be doing.  It asks who should be paying for this work. It sets things up so that (1) we don’t do damage that will cost us later and (2) it is profitable for the private sector to do the work.

The current provincial government is slashing social programs, privatising health care and not collecting available revenue.  The previous provincial government also ignored collectable revenue and did not address root causes, and so costs escalated. Neither of these approaches to fiscal management makes sense. 

The health care system is a major provincial expense. Yet privatised health care increases illness by making health care inaccessible. The Green approach focuses on the root causes of ill-health which are poverty, inadequate housing, and the high cost of illness-preventing health services such as mental health services, dental care and medications.

To reduce the demand on hospitals and policing, we propose using the most efficient income support and illness prevention strategies, such as Housing First, the Basic Income Guarantee, covering mental health and dental services through OHIP+, and using the power of collective purchasing to make necessary drugs available, that is, Pharmacare.

As was shown in the budget we published in early May 2018, this would require an initial investment of 16.73 billion over 4 years to make the adjustment from the current expensive way of doing things. Eventually health care and policing costs would go down and we would be able to reallocate the resources, and even reduce taxes.  The projected savings from preventing illness are 4 to 8 billion per year, returning this initial investment within about 8 years (since we don’t know exactly how long it takes for the prevention effect to kick in).  The burden of the initial investment would be borne by raising revenue from seven sources:

  • Reinstating half of the previous governments’ 3% Tax reduction on large corporations: 6.77 billion
  • Gradual increase on natural resource royalties: 3.09 billion
  • Housing speculation tax: 2.18 billion
  • Collect evaded taxes by following Drummond Report recommendations: 2.0 billion
  • Income tax increase on top 1% of earners: 1.55 billion
  • Tobacco tax: 0.96 billion
  • Portion of the savings from not implementing the Unfair Hydro Act: 0.18 billion

In several cases, these sources also help reduce the problem that we are addressing.  For instance, by taxing housing speculation, we make it more profitable to get housing back on the market sooner, reducing the housing crunch. We also make it profitable for housing speculators to pay for whatever repairs and energy retrofits are needed to get the houses onto the market, providing local jobs. Taxing tobacco reduces the amount of ill-health from tobacco smoking. Raising the royalty price of natural resources encourages producers to reduce waste and stimulates innovation which often employs more skilled people.  Ontario has the lowest royalty levels in Canada. Instead of giving away the store, we can gradually raise the level to the same level Saskatchewan has.

Of course, the Green budget also provides for a major investment in electrified public transportation which would have knock-on effects of making private electric cars more affordable as manufacturing capacity improved due to this market stimulation.  In addition to slowing climate change, this also takes illness-causing pollution out of the air, further reducing the overall cost of health care in the provincial budget.   This major investment is also covered by new revenue measures which make using fossil fuels and using private transportation more expensive. This makes the electric and public transportation alternatives more attractive and profitable. And this approach to transportation employs 5 times more people for the investment than the fossil fuel approach does.  Balance the budget, provide improved public health and transport, increase employment, and save the planet.  Jobs, People, Planet.


Now, imagine if we applied this thinking to building homes and hockey arenas!

We could focuss provincial economic development support on conserving energy and clean energy generation.  We could require housing and building programs to meet the net zero standard.  That is, buildings generate as much energy as they use. Hydro bills are very low for such buildings!  With this kind of market stimulation, net zero retrofits will become much more affordable, and more and more people will be able to get that low hydro bill.

Ontario companies could be the first to figure out how to build an arena that generates its own energy to freeze the ice and warm the people.  Then all those cities and towns across the USA whose arenas are getting worn down or expensive to operate would compete to hire Ontario expertise!

By sticking with fossil fuel investment, we are missing out on a 7 trillion dollar a year market for energy conservation and clean energy investment.

Protect Our Water: First Green Bill in Ontario

Where “development” and “environment” meet: enacting conservation plans. Modeled on the Oakridges Moraine Conservation Act, which protects the water in the Peterborough-Kawartha region, including neighboring ridings, and was passed by a previous Conservative government in 2001, the Green Party’s Bill 71 protects the Paris Galt Moraine. We have video of Mike Schreiner’s introduction of the bill, links and excerpts to the actual text, and links and excerpts of the Oakridges Moraine Conservation 2017 Plan to give you a concrete idea of what this all means.

It’s great to see Mike launching this bill in one of the public conference rooms at the legislature. Here are some of the main points he makes:

— The environmental commissioner of Ontario reported the staggering loss of Ontario’s wetland: 72% in Southern Ontario alone. Also, that raw sewage was dumped into waterways 1327 times.

— The City of Guelph’s water conservation strategies have succeeded in uncoupling population growth from water use. That is, the city’s population can grow without further straining the local fresh water supply. (Wow! It is possible to grow while conserving!) Nevertheless, the city often has to restrict outdoor watering.

— Protecting water is also about protecting agricultural land.

— 200,000 people currently depend on the Paris-Galt Moraine, which doesn’t charge any fee for filtering all the water they drink! If the moraine is contaminated, the cost of human-built water treatment will be prohibitive.

You can read Bill 71 here.

This is the Explanatory Note at the beginning, which tells what the Bill proposes, and will do if passed:

The Bill enacts the Paris Galt Moraine Conservation Act, 2019 and makes related amendments to several other Acts. The major elements of the Bill are described below.

The Bill allows the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to establish a Paris Galt Moraine Conservation Plan. The objectives of the Plan are listed in section 4 and broadly deal with ecological concerns for the Paris Galt Moraine Area. The Act sets out requirements for amending the Plan.

The Plan prevails in the case of conflict between the Plan and an official plan, a zoning by-law or a policy statement issued under the Planning Act. Certain municipalities and municipal planning authorities are required to adopt official plan amendments and prepare and pass zoning by-law amendments to comply with the Plan after it has been filed.

The Lieutenant Governor in Council and the Minister are given regulation-making powers with respect to the Plan. The Act prevails in the event of conflict between its provisions and any other general or special Act.

Transitional provisions related to the Act and the Plan are provided. Related amendments are made to several other Acts.

After reading the bill, I still felt that I couldn’t envision what would happen on the land, so I looked up the Oakridges Moraine 2017 Conservation Plan and found out that it maps out areas where certain kinds of development or uses are allowed or restricted or prohibited. The categories are listed below. I feel that our friends on the Guelph side of Toronto deserve the same water and farmland protection that we enjoy. We need to support them by getting signatures on their petition and by communicating with our MPP. Please contact me if you would like to help out. (info@ptbogreens.org).

Land Use Designations of the Oakridges Moraine Conservation Plan 2017

The Plan divides the Moraine into four land use designations: Natural Core Areas (38% of the Moraine), Natural Linkage Areas (24% of the Moraine), Countryside Areas (30% of the Moraine) and Settlement Areas (8% of the Moraine). 

  • Natural Core Areas protect those lands with the greatest concentrations of key natural heritage features which are critical to maintaining the integrity of the Moraine as a whole. Only existing uses, agricultural uses and very restricted new resource management, low intensity recreational, home businesses, and infrastructure uses are allowed in these areas.

  • Natural Linkage Areas protect critical natural and open space linkages between the Natural Core Areas and along rivers and streams. The only uses that are allowed are those allowed in Natural Core Areas, plus some aggregate resource operations.

  • Countryside Areas provide an agricultural and rural transition and buffer between the Natural Core Areas and Natural Linkage Areas and the urbanized Settlement Areas. Prime agricultural areas as identified in the Agricultural System referred to in the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe and the Greenbelt Plan, as well as natural features are protected. Uses typically allowed in agricultural and other rural areas are allowed here to support agriculture and the rural economy. Existing public service facilities in Countryside Areas should be maintained and adapted to meet the needs of the community, where feasible.

  • Within the Countryside Areas, the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Use Designation Map also identifies and delineates Rural Settlements. These are existing hamlets or similar small, generally long established communities that are identified in official plans.

  • Policies on creating and developing new lots in Natural Core Areas, Natural Linkage Areas and Countryside Areas are very restrictive. Exceptions are permitted in the Moraine’s Rural Settlements, the Palgrave Estates Community, and for limited residential development in Countryside Areas in the City of Kawartha Lakes and Peterborough and Northumberland Counties once the municipality has an approved growth management study and a rural economic development strategy, as well as a water budget and water conservation plan. 

  • Settlement Areas reflect a range of existing communities planned by municipalities to reflect community needs and values. Urban uses and development as set out in municipal official plans are allowed.
We Can Defend Public Health Care!

We Can Defend Public Health Care!

Are you as alarmed about the moves towards privatization as we are? There is so much evidence that public health care is the only efficient way. That’s why the Green Party of Ontario’s platform strengthens it, and puts the emphasis on prevention. And we come close to balancing the provincial budget! Mike Schreiner has launched a campaign to defend public health care. We need to stop starving public health care and embrace Dr. Danielle Martin’s 6 big ideas to improve health care for all Canadians. It is great to see how her ideas match up with Green Party policy.

Big Idea 1: THE RETURN TO RELATIONSHIPS: Ensure relationship-based primary health care for every Canadian

Big Idea 2: A NATION WITH A DRUG PROBLEM: Bring prescription drugs under Medicare

Big Idea 3: DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE: Reduce unnecessary tests and interventions

Big Idea 4: DOING MORE WITH LESS: Reorganize health care delivery to reduce wait times and improve quality

Big Idea 5: BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC HEALTH: Implement a basic income guarantee

Big Idea 6: THE ANATOMY OF CHANGE: Scale up successful solutions across the country.