{"id":24992,"date":"2019-10-18T19:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24992"},"modified":"2019-10-18T19:00:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:00:22","slug":"climate-change-spurred-ndps-aaron-brown-to-take-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/climate-change-spurred-ndps-aaron-brown-to-take-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change spurred NDP\u2019s Aaron Brown to take action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

As a young man of 20, Aaron Brown is concerned about his\nfuture \u2013 and what he describes as a \u201clack of political action\u201d to do something\nabout it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and his peers, he says, see the problems, see what can\nbe done, but when it comes to climate change, \u201cnothing was being done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, Mr. Brown, an International Development student\nat the University of Toronto, decided he wanted to do something about it \u2013 and\nhe did so by throwing his hat into the political arena, carrying the New\nDemocrat (NDP) banner in the riding of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was something not adding up, and that is the\npolitical will and the narrative surrounding climate change and the\nencompassing economic talk around it,\u201d says Mr. Brown. \u201cI felt like nothing was\nbeing done; you see the Prime Minister building a pipeline and saying one thing\nand acting another way. I thought this was unacceptable and I decided to just\nrun and get that message out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with a few paths forward, Mr. Brown decided that\nthe NDP was a good fit for him because the party\u2019s platform not only addresses\nclimate change and environmental issues, but places these issues in a wider\ncontext, \u201cacknowledging the issues and addressing them with a\nmulti-disciplinary lens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wide-ranging view was something that appealed to Mr.\nBrown, who recently completed a summer placement at the United Nations in New\nYork, working for the Government of Costa Rica, which is well-regarded when it\ncomes to the measures they have put in place to combat climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere, I saw the importance of the environment and the\nfuture it can hold for everybody,\u201d he says. \u201cThere, I really saw the importance\nof it and I [wanted to] bring that back to Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, as he goes door to door in Aurora\u2019s south riding,\nclimate change is not the number one issue he is hearing from voters \u2013 at least\nnot directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising to the top, he says, is \u201ca lack of faith in the\ngovernment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people are just so tired of the same old\nflipflopping between the Conservatives and the Liberals,\u201d he says. \u201cLife gets\nharder in every election and people are just tired of every promise. With the\nenvironment in particular, it is a bit of a special case with Leona [Alleslev]\ncrossing the floor and it definitely has come up many times going door to door\nand people just feel betrayed. They feel let down by this overall. I have been\ntrying to tell everyone that I am not a politician. I am just a concerned young\nperson. I see all the problems we\u2019re facing and I want to actually fight for\nthe solution, not just looking out for the top earners, this top 1 per cent,\nbut actually fighting for people on the ground who are ultimately\u202699 per cent\nof this country. People are just tired.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other issues rising to the top, he adds, are health care,\npharmacare, and other areas that are making life less affordable for the\naverage Canadian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I will ever be able to afford a house in\nthis riding by myself and that\u2019s the reality I face and all the peers around my\nage are facing and that shouldn\u2019t be the case,\u201d says Mr. Brown. \u201cYou should be\nable to afford to stay in the place you\u2019ve grown up in. You should be able to\nafford to live close to where you work. You should be able to afford to just\nstay in a place you have lived your whole life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome policy solutions that the NDP propose are\nimmediately creating 500,000 units of quality affordable housing. That can be\nthrough co-ops or other innovative systems, like social or non-profit housing.\nLooking at housing with a new perspective and a new ideology because young\npeople just can\u2019t afford to live anywhere right now. It is not really being\npicky, it is about getting places people can afford to live in. They don\u2019t have\nto spend all their hard-earned income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was an article released recently that said 30 per\ncent of people in this riding spend over 50 per cent of their income on housing\nand utilities, so just things like that, people are being literally drained of\nall their hard earned income just for a roof over their head and it is really\naffecting our community. That shouldn\u2019t be spent on that, it should be spent on\nputting it back into the community, buying things and promoting the local\neconomy instead of just straight housing. The creation of 500,000 units will\nmake that faster. We want to have a fast-started funding application so people\ncan apply to create these housing units and it will be streamlined quite quick\nto get them up fast. We also want to waive the Federal portion of the GST and\nHST on the construction of new, affordable rental units: a little bit of an\nincentive to create affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, however, Mr. Brown says he sees opportunity\non the horizon, particularly when it comes to climate change, putting a price\non pollution, and leading the charge on fostering green technology and\ninnovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a real opportunity for us to become the\nforefront leaders on this crisis,\u201d he says. \u201cI can stand at the door and say\nall these facts that will scare the crap out of everybody, but that\u2019s not what\nthey want to hear. It has been nice to say we can actually use this as an\nopportunity instead of impending doom [and explain how we can] create good jobs\nand work as a community and bring it together on this issue and really take it\nback as ours.\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":24988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24992","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-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6v6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 21:17:16","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\/24992","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=24992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}