James Mihaychuk, Green party candidate for Ottawa South, said although the Green party’s biggest concern is the environment, they’re also interested in many other areas, including tuition fees.
If elected, Mihaychuk said the Greens would freeze tuition fees at their current rates due to precarious economic times.
Some of the other parties, when the election comes around, kind of play Santa Claus a bit and they make promises about lowering fees and so on, but you have to realize that ultimately they’re buying votes with public money, Mihaychuk said.
When big-spending promises are made, Mihaychuk said personal student debt may be lower, but provincial debt and the interest on that debt would be growing and you would be paying anyway.
The Green party also wants to make universities and colleges more energy efficient and invest in post-secondary certification programs in areas such as energy efficient building technologies, renewable energy, and sustainable transportation, he said.
The elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about is the government’s plan to expand nuclear energy by 45 per cent over the next two decades,Mihaychuk said.
The Green party wants to stop this because of the harm it causes to the environment as well as people’s health, Mihaychuk said.
We can’t eliminate 50 per cent of our power. We’d be turning out the lights in Ontario, but we’re going to take the next 35 years to wean ourselves off nuclear energy, Mihaychuk said. This is important because nuclear energy is very inflexible and once you depend on it, you depend on it for life, he added. Another important focus of the Greens is small businesses, Mihaychuk said.
The local businesses, the family-run businesses, family farms, and so on, they face a lot of barriers and we’re going to reduce the health tax that they pay so that they’re not treated on the same footing as a very large corporation. Otherwise, it’s going to be very hard for them to get off the ground.
Whatever decisions are made right now will affect students in the future, Mihaychuk concluded.
We’re not trying to win one election and we’re not trying to score points or play wedge politics. We’re trying to move the province forward.
