Green New Deal, meet the Alternative Federal Budget
The idea of a Green New Deal—a radical and comprehensive transformation of the economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions while tackling inequality—has been gaining steam as an organizing principle for the environmental and social justice movements. Yet there are many questions that GND advocates have yet to think through or agree on. Like how can we produce enough electricity to rapidly replace all fossil fuels? Will new, green jobs be good, unionized jobs that are accessible in the places where jobs are needed most? Crucially, how will we pay for it all?
In our March/April 2020 cover feature, Stuart Trew and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood find a lot in common between the Green New Deal and the annual Alternative Federal Budget. Both have called for cracking down on tax havens, tax loopholes and fossil fuel subsidies to help fund a transformative social and environmental agenda, for example. Public banks, increased carbon taxation, green bonds and steeper deficit financing are other AFB mainstays that double as GND options for accelerating the just transition. Was the AFB a proto–Green New Deal in the making? Or, more proactively, can we make use of alternative budgeting to develop the detailed fiscal plan that will make the GND a reality in Canada?
Also in this issue:
- U.S.-style “ag-gag” laws come to Canada — Camile Labchuk warns of the threats to civil and animal rights in provincial anti-farm-trespass laws.
- Colour-coded Justice — In his latest column, Anthony Morgan describes his exhilarating and disappointing “Big Obama Moment.”
- Canada endorses fundamentalist coup in Bolivia — Asad Ismi‘s feature on the geopolitics of the West-backed coup.
- The missing link to disability equality — John Rae lists five ways to get persons with disabilities off the sidelines of society.
- Canada’s proud history of public enterprise — Scott Sinclair reviews Linda McQuaig’s timely new book, The Sport and Prey of Capitalists.
- Ending period poverty in Canada, one province at a time — Arushana Suderaeson surveys provincial action to make menstrual products free and accessible.
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Cover design by Tim Scarth.
