Introducing…the Ubiquitous Party of Canada
Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog. For our next step in our project, we have been put in the position of politicians and been sorted into political parties. Jordyn, Alex O, Liam, Meg and I teamed up to create the Ubiquitous Party of Canada. And since we’ve been put into our parties, we have come up with our Statement of Intent and now, our Press Release.
Ubiquitous means to be everywhere, which is used to describe the ideas and values of our party. We believe that our party brings the best assets and ideas from both sides of the political spectrum into one.
Giving indigenous communities more of a voice and focusing on truth and reconciliation is a core value of the Ubiquitous Party. And to provide them with a voice, we would be offering them seats in parliament. The way we decided this was by having representation by population: 5% of Canadians are indigenous, which would equivalent to giving them about 15 seats in parliament. Completing the 94 calls to action is also a large principle of ours, and something we want to create a set year to have them complete by.
Another piece of our plan is about clean energy. The most rapid renewable energy job growth has come from solar and wind sectors. So if we were to invest in that kind of energy, we could not only make a step towards solving climate change, but also create more jobs. Especially for those in Alberta, where most of their jobs are in the oil industry. Although we are pro-business, we do not support companies who don’t align with our values (eg. Environmentally friendly). So, we want to encourage organizations much like the oil and gas industry to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.
Additionally, to help reduce poverty in Canada and to allow lower/middle class to have a basic standard of living, we decided on having Universal Basic Income (UBI). Which means that everyone (rich or poor), gets a monthly cheque of about $1000. At the end of the year, the government uses the tax system to balance out the scales and recoup the extra cash from the higher income earners who didn’t end up needing it. UBI also has the potential to create jobs, recreate a middle wage instead there being extremely high and extremely low ones and boost Canada’s economy. A way to fund this system would be from taxing companies for environmental degradation. Which has been proven to work by an organization that has done tons of research on UBI and how it would work in Canada, I recommend checking it out.
Next, public healthcare in Canada is something that is very expensive and something we may not be able to do for that much longer. So our group agreed on implementing a 2-tier healthcare system. Where we could still have a public system, while lessening the burden of healthcare costs for the government and tax system. While also being able to use that extra money on plans we have that involve spending and possibly also reduce the deficit that is currently extremely high. Someone going to a private clinic for a surgery for example, would also shorten the wait time for anyone in the public system waiting to get that exact same surgery.
Finally, a lot of big companies already pay taxes and all sorts of other things, so making them pay more may just drive them away. However, social media companies such as Instagram and Facebook don’t pay anything at all to be able to advertise and operate in our country. So, we want to make them pay annual tariffs to be able to operate in Canada.
All in all, our party is very bold and willing to approach important issues in Canada in a unique way. Like I said at the beginning of this post, we are bringing together the best of both worlds into one party. This is also a connection to my last blog post, where I talk about how our country is very divided, which is proven by yet another minority government. So, if we were to attract people from both sides, it could potentially have us avoid another minority government. To add, we also want to focus on negotiating and working with other parties in government. We believe it’s important to include everyone’s values and that working together is the only way we will get anything done at all. This is what Canada needs, and what Canadians want.