ISSUES

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GOVERNMENT

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1. Canada's unjust electoral system (First-Past-the- Post) leads to misrepresentation in Parliament; huge segments of the population go under- or un-represented.
    

2. Bi-partisan politics – Conservative vs. Liberal (Republican vs. Democrat, Left vs. Right) is false dichotomy that limits choice and results in unnatural representation.  
    

3. Omnibus legislation used as a tool to obscure democratic debate.
    

4. Oligarchy (a small group of people having control over the country). Currently “global elite” or 1%. 
    

5. Corporate money fueling political campaigns. 
    

6. Corporate lobbying more influential than citizen’s wishes, environmental impacts, etc.
    

7. Political Action Committees (PACs) raising and spending staggering amounts of money to influence elections, without the funding restrictions political parties face.  
    

8. Canada's appointed senate is counter-intuitive to democracy, represents the interests of the ruling elite.  Lifelong appointments are ridiculously inappropriate.
    

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ECONOMY & INDUSTRY
 

1. Economic Disparity – growing divide between rich and poor.  Deepening Poverty and simultaneous rise of the 1% moneyed elite (internationally as well as domestically).
    

2. Catastrophic debt levels. Personal and governmental.  Economy based on debt financing.  Predatory lending practices (i.e. credit cards).
    

3. Infrastructure projects and agreements that lock us into increased extraction, decades into the future. 
    

4. Trade agreements allowing foreign interests to sue our government if we impede their exploitation of our resources.
    

5. Corporations breaching fundamental human rights, especially when operating abroad.
    

6. Privatization of public resources, including water.
    

7. Manufacturing money through economic manipulation (banks).
    

8. Avoidance of appropriate tax remittance by wealthy citizens and corporations (international holdings, hiding wealth in corporations, creating and exploiting loopholes in tax laws).
    

9. Low and middle-income earners face disproportionately high tax burden.
    

10. Austerity measures – systematically attacking sectors such as education, healthcare and public transportation and hastening privatization of public assets and energy-producing systems.  “Public scarcity in times of unprecedented private wealth is a manufactured crisis” (The Leap Manifesto)
     

11. Corporations not accounting for the true costs of doing business (resource extraction, pollution, carbon emissions, toxicity).
     

12. Canadian-owned mining companies exploiting land, labour, resources around the world.  Enormous social and environmental harm being done to precious ecosystems.  
     

13. Corporations unduly interfering with democracy and peace in foreign nations.
     

14. Fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing) contaminating ground water, causing seismic disruption (earthquakes), using toxic chemicals, using of large volumes of surface water.
     

15. Oil and Gas industry expansion, especially pipelines: high risk and incidence of spills, disregard for first nations' land sovereignty, rapid exploitation and exportation of finite (one time) resources, insufficient compensation to public for extraction, lack of responsibility for legacy (bankruptcy allowing “orphan wells” etc.)
     

16. Shipping O&G overseas; environmental risks / disasters / public on hook for cleanup; increasing carbon release when we should be reducing carbon emissions.
     

17. Pharmaceutical industry – inadequate testing, kickbacks and marketing to medical professionals, high drug costs, opioid crisis, lobbying against natural medicine.

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ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE
 

1. Exacerbation of climate change is a crime against humanity. “Climate scientists have told us that this is the decade to take decisive action to prevent catastrophic global warming. That means small steps will no longer get us where we need to go.” (The Leap Manifesto)
    

2. Polluting industrial activity. 
    

3. Herbicide and pesticide use in agriculture.  Dominance of GMO crops with insufficient research into risk.
    

4. Raw sewage into waterways (a municipal issue that needs to be addressed federally).
    

5. Environment being stripped of its natural resources at unsustainable rates.
    

6. Ocean degradation.
    

7. Extinction of species / destruction of habitats.

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SOCIAL INJUSTICE

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1. Global hunger (including Canadian - especially in remote first nations populations).
    

2. Homelessness (while homes sit empty – unaffordable rents, mortgage foreclosures, BnB rentals removing housing options from markets, causing gentrification etc.).
    

3. Deepening poverty (in relation to the rise of the obscene wealth of the few (i.e. 1%))
    

4. Racism.  Rise of extreme hate groups and ideologies.
    

5. Oppression of women (professionally and domestically), violence against women.
    

6. Division and violence based on ethnic and/or religious differences.
    

7. Cultural genocide of indigenous populations (including in near-past / ongoing).
    

8. Inequality – especially with regard to indigenous and immigrant populations and females.
    

9. Slavery & human trafficking.
    

10. Privatization of prisons, mass incarceration, especially of indigenous people in Canada.
     

11. Lack of national food security.

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WAR and VIOLENCE
 

1. Support for the perpetration of war, participation in global military conflict.
    

2. Antagonism and strategies which encourage hostility / perpetuation of terrorism. 
    

3. Commission of or complicity in war crimes (moreso USA, which is a major ally).
    

4. Media inundation of violence and fear (especially Hollywood and the TV / movie industry).
    

5. Manufacture and sale of weapons which fuel international conflict and human rights abuses.

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