{"id":25010,"date":"2019-10-18T19:20:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25010"},"modified":"2019-10-18T19:20:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:20:52","slug":"students-press-newmarket-aurora-candidates-on-climate-change-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/students-press-newmarket-aurora-candidates-on-climate-change-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Students press Newmarket-Aurora candidates on climate change, taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

They came with questions that mattered to them, and Newmarket-Aurora\u2019s Federal candidates came to face students this month at a youth-led all-candidates debate hosted by Pickering College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attending the meeting prepared to answer\nthe questions were, in alphabetical order, Walter Bauer of the Green Party,\nLois Brown of the Conservative Party, Yvonne Kelly of the NDP, and Tony Van\nBynen of the Liberal Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing critically informed about elections\nand political decision-making is an important part of being a global citizen,\u201d\nsaid Grade 10 student Michaela Morra, welcoming the candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the topics raised during the 40\nminute session looked at Federal issues from a global lens, with students and\ncandidates alike linking many of the issues back to the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first question out of the gate was\nwhat each candidate thought the \u201ctax rate\u201d should be for people of lower and\nhigher incomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Brown was first to respond, stating\nthe Conservatives have lowered taxes for \u201cpeople who are in the most-needy\nbrackets\u201d including a reduction in the GST. Her party, she said, proposes\neliminating the \u201ccarbon tax, because that is costing people, particularly in\nthe lowest income brackets, the most amount of money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing to answer this question by\nlooping back to climate change and carbon pricing, Ms. Kelly said her party\nwould not eliminate the \u201ccarbon tax\u201d because \u201cWe do feel it is something that\nhelps us offset the carbon.\u201d Additional measures, she said, include raising the\nlevel of taxes on corporations, as well as closing tax loopholes that can lead\nto tax avoidance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Van Bynen, after harkening back to the\nLiberal record, responded to Ms. Brown\u2019s claims during his time at the podium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be fooled by the idea of saying\nthere is a carbon tax; it\u2019s not,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a price on pollution. A lot\nof people seem to forget to tell you that money is refunded back to you and\nthat refund offsets what most of the vulnerable families are spending.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Bauer, in his response, said that the\nGreen Party agrees with the NDP\u2019s position on taxes, paying particular\nattention to closing tax loopholes. They would also, he added, tax companies\nlike Facebook, Netflix, and Uber who currently don\u2019t pay taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next question got to the heart of the\nmatter: \u201cWhat do you think climate change in the world will look like in 10\nyears? What is your party doing to address this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answering this question first was Ms.\nKelly, who said scientists have said there are \u201celeven years to get this\nright.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe NDP government is committed to doing\neverything we can to be able to reduce our carbon footprint,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\nactually emit higher than average across Canada per capita, so we actually even\nthough we\u2019re a smaller country in terms of population, we actually have a huge\ncarbon footprint on this world that we need to take responsibility for and we\nreally believe in that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An NDP government, she added, would\nimmediately \u201cstart to build a green economy\u201d which, she said, \u201cwill be an answer\nto a lot of the issues we have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Liberal Party, claimed Mr. Van Bynen,\nthe next speaker, has the only \u201ccredible climate plan to go forward that has\nthe support of scientists across the world and economists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTransition to a green economy is not an\novernight thing, so we have to make sure we go about this carefully,\u201d he said.\n\u201cThere are many people who are reliant on the fossil fuel industry and we have\nto make sure we don\u2019t become causalities. What we will be doing is reinvesting\nany surplus money that comes from the price on pollution to green technology\nand green jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In prediction of what climate change might\nlook like in 10 years, Mr. Bauer cast a wider net to 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy 2030, there\u2019s going to be a total loss\nof coral reefs, there\u2019s going to be more flooding, more drought, and an\nincrease in migration because of climate change,\u201d he said. \u201cWe see this today\nin our north; it\u2019s already at 4 degrees Celsius, far above what anyone\nexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last to answer the question was Ms. Brown who referred the student to\nthe Conservative party website for environmental answers because, \u201ca tax plan\nis a tax plan,\u201d before closing by telling students about her Ghana-born\nson-in-law, who earned two masters and a PhD in Canada, taking \u201cthe very best\nof Canadian know-how, experience and technology back to Ghana\u201d to build solar\nprojects.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They came with questions that mattered to them, and Newmarket-Aurora\u2019s Federal candidates came to face students this month at a youth-led all-candidates debate hosted by Pickering College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25011,"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-25010","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-N-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6vo","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 21:58:47","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\/25010","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=25010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}