Jobs That Are
Here To Stay
Far too many working Canadians have been robbed of the security and stability they deserve by an unpredictable, unstable, chaotic, boom-and-bust energy economy that answers to oil and gas corporation shareholders, not to the workers who keep it running. The destiny of working Canadians should not be in the hands of corporations that move on the moment the profit margin drops.
New Democrats are fighting for a made-in-Canada jobs program, investing in infrastructure projects that would employ hundreds of thousands of workers across the country. From building retrofits and clean renewable infrastructure to public transit and flood resilience projects, this would mean family-supporting trades jobs in communities like ours that don't disappear when oil prices drop, or a corporation decides to move on.
New Democrats are also pushing for a massively expanded Youth Climate Corps to train and employ tens of thousands of young people in meaningful, well-paying work in their communities, because young folks in university and trade school, and young workers, all deserve the security of knowing the jobs they’re training for are here to stay.
An East-West Energy Grid
Working families in Mission—Matsqui know what it’s like to watch energy bills rise and fall with global oil prices they can't control. The chaotic boom-and-bust cycle of fossil fuel dependence doesn't serve working people. It serves the elites that profit from price volatility while families struggle to heat their homes and fill their gas tanks. New Democrats are calling for the creation of a true east-west clean energy grid, investing in interprovincial transmission corridors using Canadian steel and raw materials that will allow provinces to share and export clean energy to each other before sending it south of the border. This grid will revitalize Northern and rural economies dependent on expensive diesel, make energy bills more stable and affordable across the country, create tens of thousands of good, family-supporting, union jobs in construction and operation, and reduce our dependence on American energy markets. Affordable, predictable energy is the foundation of the stability and security working families deserve.
Keep Canada’s Resources In Canadian Hands
For far too long, elites have been permitted to extract our natural resources, export them raw, process them abroad, and sell finished products back to us, while the jobs, wealth, and economic activity that should belong to Canadian workers and communities go elsewhere. New Democrats believe in keeping Canadian resources in Canada, processed by Canadian workers, for Canadian benefit. New Democrats are fighting against bulk exports of our unprocessed natural resources and for the value-added processing capacity that creates skilled, well-paying jobs here at home. New Democrats are calling for the oil and gas companies that have profited from Canadian resources to pay their fair share, through a windfall profits tax on excess profits and the polluter pays principle that requires them to fund the cleanup of aging and inactive wells, restoring watersheds and putting thousands of Canadians to work in the process. Canada's wealth belongs to Canadians. It's time to start treating it that way.
A National Renewable Energy Corporation
Canada's transition to renewable energy is going to happen one way or another. The only question is who ends up owning it. Left to the market alone, it'll be corporations and private investors who own the wind farms, the solar arrays, and the transmission lines, collecting profits generated in no small part by taxpayers’ dollars. That's why Mission—Matsqui's New Democrats are demanding the creation of a National Renewable Energy Corporation, to finance and take public ownership stakes in renewable energy generation projects across the country. If public dollars are building the next energy economy, the public should own a piece of it, not just pay for it and watch the profits walk out the door.