Progressive justice, environmental, housing policies are priorities for grassroots Liberals

CBC News

Liberal Party members have short-listed their policy priorities, with universal pharmacare, decriminalizing drugs and the sex trade, and an underwater tunnel link to Newfoundland making the cut.

Today is the final day of a three-day convention in Halifax, an unofficial kickoff to the 2019 election campaign focusing on policy making and energizing the troops.

About 6,000 grassroots members took part in the online policy process in the run-up to the convention, narrowing down the priority list of issues to 30 that were up for debate at the convention.

That number was narrowed to 20 through an online voting process that ended at midnight, and will be whittled down to a final 15 later today.

Other resolutions on the short list include:

• Creating a seniors’ ministry with a mandate to partner with provinces, territories and municipalities to protect the needs and interests of seniors in areas such as housing, home care, elder abuse and income security.
• Creating an affordable housing plan that includes a funding program to modify existing non-market complexes to meet health, safety and accessibility codes.
• Implementing a Canadian environmental bill of rights to ensure all Canadians have access to information and justice in the environmental context.
• Creating a strategy for Canadian oil and gas independence.
• Establishing an employee pension protection strategy.
• Ending a tax on tampons and other menstrual products.
• Endorsing the United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
• Implementing a guaranteed minimum income model.
• Implementing universal pharmacare plan.
• Including mental health services in medicare and the Canada Health Act.
• Creating a national three-oceans policy for security, environmental protection and development that includes improved telecommunications capacity to assert Arctic sovereignty.
• Protecting freshwater resources in export and marketing, by recognizing freshwater as a Canadian heritage asset and taking steps to determine federal governance with the provinces to justify non-market management of the resource and conservation of fresh water supplies.
• Reclaiming and sustaining Canada’s health-care system.
• Developing remote telecommunication infrastructure for northern, remote, rural Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, including high-speed internet by 2025 and plans for long-distance education.
• Develop a comprehensive policy on restorative justice.
• Create a plan for tax recovery from offshore havens, including new legislation for tougher enforcement measures.
• Establishing a strategy to create stable, quality jobs to build a stronger middle class, including support for companies that compete globally.

Later today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will address the convention, which has drawn about 3,000 delegates.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-convention-policy-resolutions-halifax-1.4629938