{"id":24986,"date":"2019-10-18T18:58:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T22:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24986"},"modified":"2019-10-18T18:58:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T22:58:40","slug":"leadership-is-the-watchword-for-green-partys-tim-flemming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/leadership-is-the-watchword-for-green-partys-tim-flemming\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership is the watchword for Green Party\u2019s Tim Flemming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By<\/strong> Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Green Party candidate Tim Flemming goes door-to-door\nin Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, the number one issue he\u2019s hearing at the\ndoor is not climate change, but rather a question of leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents in the riding are looking to their leaders,\nwhether here at the local level or at the national level, to \u201cguide them in the\nright direction,\u201d and, for Mr. Flemming, a first-time candidate, the leader\ntoday to address the needs of tomorrow is Green leader Elizabeth May. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEconomic output, reaction to green challenges, responses\nto Indigenous challenges, they become actions, and they are all driven by the\nquality of the leader,\u201d he says, of what he\u2019s hearing from voters. \u201cThere is\nsometimes apathy towards current leaders, so I try to focus on what can be done\nand less so about everything else. As a leader, [May] has a sound plan, very\nwell-thought-out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA leader needs to translate their initiatives, their own\nthoughts, into rallying the folks who are going to be behind her and she can do\nthat. She, to me, has the integrity and honesty which, to me, is the base\nfoundation of a leader. Sometimes to the chagrin of some, she is very much\ngrounded in science and she bases those thoughts to build out a plan. As a\nleader, she is longer-viewed than some.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was, in part, one of the factors in making Mr.\nFlemming \u201cthink Green.\u201d Although he says he has voted for \u201cevery colour\u201d over\nthe years, he has most recently planted roots in the Federal NDP, having worked\nfor Newmarket-Aurora NDP candidate Yvonne Kelly in the last Federal election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time around, however, the landscape has changed, and\nthe issue of climate change spurred him to shop around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI read the Green platform at length and they had a very\nfulsome, well-informed program,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought to myself, this is the way\nto move forward. It had a bit of everything in my mind and it was the only\nparty as well, very distinctly, that actually had a financially-balanced plan\nto approach it. There is no question that there is a material spend up front,\nin any environment, but at least there is a defined acknowledgement and a plan\nto fund it \u2013 the right \u2018grown up\u2019 approach, as Elizabeth May would say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This detailed financial planning within the Green\nplatform was particularly attractive to Mr. Flemming, a CPA and financial\nadvisor by trade. Sweetening the pot, he said, was the Green Party\u2019s approach\nto tackle the Federal deficit, a concern, he says, that is shared by the\nresidents at the door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople know that their grandchildren and children are\ngoing to be paying that for years to come,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key to the future is investment, he says, such\ninvestments can be found in the Green Party\u2019s plan for climate change.\nInvestments will be made to \u201cdivest ourselves of fossil fuels in a relatively\nshort period of time, re-engineering the environment to an electrical workplace\nthat is going to replace the jobs that are lost, yet are going to satisfy the\nenergy needs that we, as Canadians, are going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need an absolute well-thought-out transition plan\nthat is going to require, from a climate perspective, a significant investment,\npeople understand that,\u201d he says. \u201cCertainly, we build a financial plan out to\ndeliver that. No question, a lot of the climate dialogue is around the carbon\ntax. There is always a distinct affirmative that we will continue with the\ncarbon tax. It is an initiative that my experience at the door is most\nCanadians, most Aurorans, have embraced, understand it, it is a small price to\npay. None of them misunderstand the economic value of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this election, it is also important to consider\n\u201csocial supports\u201d such as health care and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Green Party addresses a social contract, but what\nthey are embracing is everything that we, as a community, need to have from a\ngovernment, with some level of continuous insurance, people at the door are\nconcerned it is going to be erosions to that and want that to continue. On a\nvery surgical level, certainly there\u2019s some discussion with education but\nlesser about the financial funding of it. They just want to make sure at the\nend of the day there is an opportunity for kids to get the right skills in\neducation to have a proper job in the world of tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the perennial \u2013 and\nunavoidable \u2013 question remains at the door: Is a vote for a smaller party like\nthe Greens worth it in this era of strategic voting? That answer, from Mr.\nFlemming\u2019s perspective, is an unequivocal yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany politicians say we have a choice, but we, as\nindividual community leaders, adults, the grandparents of our grandchildren and\nthe parents of our children, we need to absolutely make the right, bold\ndecisions that are going to enable them to have the same enjoyment, health and\nlife that we have had,\u201d he says. \u201cI am a Baby Boomer and we grew up through the\nmost affluent economically-rapid growth period of the 20th<\/sup> century,\nabsolutely so. We have created a culture of almost indebtedness\u2026 from a broader\nsense, their governmental debt, and we have this extremely challenging climate\nthat we must act on \u2013 not hope to, want to, pray to, but we must act on. It is\nnot a dream, it is what embraced me to come over because I think it is what is\nnecessary and I would ask everyone to not just consider, I would suggest they\nneed to send the right message to Ottawa and to the world that Canada is\nserious and we\u2019re going to act.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill Votes 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/FE-A-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6v0","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 19:26:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}