1) Create Jobs

  • Build 200,000 units of affordable social housing in 4 years; enact rent controls
  • Restore and expand value-added manufacturing and secondary industry
  • Nationalize US Steel – and restart Canada’s domestic steel industry
  • Build a Canadian car that’s affordable, fuel-efficient, and environmentally sustainable
  • Rebuild crumbling provincial / municipal infrastructure
  • Invest in youth and social programs

2) Raise Wages and Incomes

  • Raise the minimum wage to $19
  • Raise pensions and reduce the voluntary pension age to 60
  • Introduce a guaranteed annual income – a living wage
  • Raise social assistance and disability above the poverty line
  • Expand Employment Insurance to cover all unemployed for the duration of unemployment at 90% of previous earnings
  • Introduce public auto insurance

3) Progressive Tax Reform

  • Rescind the HST and remove education from the property tax
  • Double the corporate income tax rate
  • Introduce wealth and inheritance taxes on estates over $750,000
  • Eliminate taxes on personal incomes under $40,000
  • Enact progressive tax reform based on ability to pay

4) Invest in Quality Public Services – Stop Privatization!

Health

  • Expand healthcare with denticare, vision care, pharmacare, and long-term care
  • Reverse delisting of services; eliminate health premiums and co-payments
  • Put doctors on salary; enforce the Canada Health Act
  • Prosecute ORNGE profiteers

Education

  • Enact a single, secular public school system open to all
  • Deliver a new, needs-based funding formula for public education
  • Eliminate tuition fees and increase funding to post-secondary education

Childcare

  • Build a provincial system of quality affordable and regulated public childcare

Sports, Culture and Recreation

  • Invest in amateur sports and recreation, TVO, public broadcasting, and democratic Canadian culture

5) A New Financial Deal for Cities

  • Deliver stable statutory transfers to cover the real costs of city services, or deliver new wealth-taxing powers to cities
  • Upload the Harris downloads
  • Adequately fund public transit, health, housing, childcare and social assistance
  • Return 50% of gas and road user taxes to cities

6) Enhance Food Security

  • Stop bank foreclosures of family farms; guarantee long-term, low-cost loans
  • Protect marketing boards, and roll back prices on food essentials
  • Abolish factory farming and genetically modified food
  • Protect farmland from urban sprawl, landfills
  • Fight for Canada’s food sovereignty

7) Public Ownership and Democratic Control of Energy

  • Develop publicly owned wind, solar, and thermal energy; phase out coal-fired and nuclear plants
  • Rebuild Ontario Hydro: public ownership and affordable public power

8) Just Settlement of Aboriginal Land Claims

  • Press Harper to negotiate settlements now
  • Stop corporate, private or public development on lands with Aboriginal claims
  • Raise living standards: build housing, create jobs, provide quality education and healthcare on reserves and off
  • Recognize Aboriginal self-government and self-determination

9) Equality Rights for All

  • Put police under strict civilian control; reduce and restrict police weaponry
  • End racial profiling and enforce hate crimes laws
  • Stop criminalizing dissent and enforce the Human Rights Code
  • Support gay-straight alliances in Ontario schools
  • Enact transgendered rights; restore legal funding for court challenges
  • Fight to eliminate racist immigration and refugee laws

10) Curb Corporate Power – Strengthen Labour and Democratic Rights

  • Cancel CETA, NAFTA, TPP and other pro-corporate trade agreements. Fair trade – not free trade – with the world.
  • Strengthen foreign investment laws; enact plant closure legislation with teeth
  • Enact anti-scab laws, bankruptcy protection for workers, and card check union certification for all workers
  • Protect free collective bargaining and the right to strike in Ontario
  • Enshrine a Labour Bill of Rights in the Constitution
  • Enact Proportional Representation and democratic electoral reform