People's Energy Plan for Canada
Stop Climate Change, Nationalize Energy!
(Issued Sept. 12th 2008)
Our world – and our country – are entering a period of grave dangers, an era of potentially devastating climate changes, widespread hunger and chaos, all linked to the unchecked growth of fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and wars to control oil reserves.
In response, the Communist Party of Canada proposes far-sighted and radical policy changes, requiring a courageous struggle to take urgent and decisive action… in short, to adopt and implement a People’s Energy Plan for Canada.
The centrepiece of the Communist Party's People’s Energy Plan is public ownership through nationalization, and the democratic, popular control of energy resource extraction, production and distribution.
Carbon Credits, Cap and Trade
Canada today requires a comprehensive, integrated energy policy - one which ensures the security of energy supply to meet the needs of our people and promotes the overall economic and social development of our country, while protecting and enhancing our environment.
The public ownership of energy, "from its primary production/extraction and refinement through to its distribution and sale must be the cornerstone of such a policy. Any meaningful transformation of the energy `system' is impossible without wresting control from the private energy monopolies..."
Other policy options fall short, the document states, such as the carbon tax backed by Dion's Liberals and the "cap and trade" favoured by Layton's NDP.
The cap and trade concept allows "dirty" or heavily gas-emitting companies to "pollute and pay," and global monitoring of the "trades" is utterly inadequate. Meanwhile, carbon tax proposals place a disproportionately higher burden on low-wage and poor people than on the wealthy.
At best, these concepts are of questionable promise; at worst, they divert attention from far more urgent measures. Both turn the environment into just another commodity, relying on market mechanisms to induce lower emissions, while leaving control in the hands of the same corporations which have degraded the environment in the first place.
Nationalization
It is around this pivotal question that the most intense battles will be fought. But its achievement will be decisive in breathing real content into the entire plan:
(1) because nationalization and the resulting access to the enormous wealth it generates are necessary to publicly finance the other investments and transformations elaborated in the plan; and
(2) only through the sweeping nationalization of Canada’s energy resources will it be possible to break the economic and political power of the giant monopolies – the fiercest enemies of energy democratization.
This would include:
- Full public ownership and democratic control of energy and natural resource extraction, production and distribution
- Legislate stringent vehicle emission controls
- Build an East-West power grid
- Put a moratorium on tar sands development
- Adopt emergency legislation to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, and invest in renewable energy and conservation programs.
- Expand urban mass transit – eliminate fares
- Phase out coal-fired plants, nuclear power, and Arctic and off-shore drilling
The People's Energy Programme outlines our Party’s policy position on a number of crucial interrelated matters on energy and the environment. It incorporates and builds upon longstanding Party policy on these issues, and addresses new questions which have emerged in recent years.
We welcome comments, suggestions and broad discussion of these proposals.
