Q&A: Green Party leader Mike Schreiner also has a plan to ease the financial strain facing Ontarians 

For more than a decade the Ontario Green Party has trusted Mike Schreiner, a small business owner born and raised on a farm in Kansas, to lead a progressive movement across the province.

Since giving the Party a foothold in the legislature after securing a seat in the 2018 election he has introduced bills to cap Ontario’s carbon emissions and make reporting on annual pollution figures mandatory. 

His leadership and the Green Party platform has broadened considerably, with some of the most innovative solutions to a range of needs facing Ontario.

The Pointer spoke with Schreiner to discuss his plans to restore provincial cooperation with municipalities while making life more affordable for people amid a prolonged housing crisis.

Why would you be a better leader for Ontario’s municipalities? 

We're calling for a new deal for municipalities to end the provincial downloading onto the backs of municipalities, which is leading to the significant property tax increases — I call the Doug Ford property tax increase — that's making life less affordable for homeowners and renters. Our proposal is to upload shelter and housing costs and have the provincial government be back at the table and building deeply affordable nonprofit co-op or permanent supporting housing with wraparound mental health, addictions, employment and other services. We'd also cover 50 percent of transit operating costs so municipalities can maintain reliable, affordable transit systems. We would work with municipalities to look at different revenue tools that municipalities could employ. 

We're also proposing an affordable communities fund that would be providing stable, predictable, dedicated funding for municipal infrastructure, particularly to unlock housing infrastructure, instead of the sort of one off project base, which makes it very challenging for municipalities. And also introduce a $2 billion a year climate adaptation fund to help municipalities make sure their infrastructure is able to withstand the increasing severity in frequency of climate fuel and safe weather events.

So between the affordable communities fund and the climate adaptation fund, you're looking at about $28 billion over the next four years, which makes a huge difference in just making our communities more affordable and ensuring that municipalities have the infrastructure they need to unlock housing and do it in a way that protects residents.

Would you repeal strong mayor powers?

I’m absolutely opposed to strong mayor powers. We’d get rid of them. I believe in democracy, and I think democratically elected councils should be making decisions with mayors that put their residents first.

How would you improve healthcare for Ontarians?

[Doug] Ford promised to end hallway healthcare, and it's gotten twice as bad under his watch than it was in 2018 when he was elected. Also the fact that you have 2.5 million Ontarians without access to a family doctor just shows you how the Ford government’s under investment in our healthcare system is really hurting people. 

Ontario's dead last when it comes to per capita funding for health care services, and so we would make significant investments to start bringing us up to the Canadian average, starting with a commitment of $3 billion to recruit 3,500 doctors connected to primary health care teams, where you have all practitioners, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare professionals operating at their full scope of practice. We would make investments to bring wage parity for workers across all healthcare sectors so we can start addressing the health and human resource crisis you're seeing across all sectors, but it's especially challenging in long term care, home care [and] primary care, where people are paid lower wages.

Our philosophy is: invest in the people who care for our loved ones because if we don't care for them, they're not going to be able to care for the people who we love, and so that's going to be critically important.

Finally, [we would] end the privatization healthcare system the Ford government's been implementing because we're paying more for less service, and that directly affects patient care. That's why you see other provinces who have gone further down the privatization path that Ontario is starting, backtrack, because they're paying more for less care. I would also just say that mental health is health, and so we've made a commitment to substantially increase investment in community based mental health care as a first step towards making mental health care part of OHIP to pay for it with your OHIP card, not your credit card.

Green Party leader Mike Schreiner says he is opposed to strong mayor powers and would look at uploading more responsibility back to the province.

(Green Party of Ontario) 

Ford has introduced the HART Hubs to address the opioid crisis. What would you do?

We need both HART Hubs and consumption and treatment sites. So I think given the crisis we're seeing with overdose deaths [and] increasing substance use challenges people are facing, we need an “and, and and” solution.

I would say we need the HART hub model. I would argue the Ford government should allow harm reduction services to be available within the HART Hub model. We need consumption and treatment sites in those places where there are not HART Hubs available. Otherwise you're going to see increasing overdose deaths, you're going to see more public substance use and also, CTS sites provide a lot of primary health care and a gateway to treatment for those who want to access those services.

We also need to take a housing first approach for people experiencing the intersecting crisis, poverty, mental health, addiction and homelessness. It is far cheaper to house people with wraparound mental health and addiction supports than it is to do what the Ford government is proposing, to criminalize people experiencing homelessness and throwing them in jail.

Brampton needs investment to transform Peel Memorial into its second hospital. Would you include it in your first budget if elected?

Absolutely. We know that Brampton has the lowest healthcare services per capita anywhere in the province and that just has to change. We need full capacity hospitals with emergency departments that are properly funded [and] properly staffed. So you'll see that in our platform.

For Mississauga’s new hospital would your government cover the $450 million gap City Hall was asked to pay?

Our platform does have a commitment to lower the local share contributions that municipalities are required to make, and so we're looking at that across the board. The challenges around meeting the local share commitments are even more challenging in rural communities where you have a smaller tax base. So I think we need to be looking at lowering the local share contribution for all hospital projects.

What are your plans for education, particularly special education?

We would immediately reverse the province's $1,500 per student cut to education. That way school boards have the fiscal capacity to hire more educators, and not just teachers, but special education teachers, educational assistants, social workers, to ensure that we just have more caring adults in our schools to help reduce class sizes and really address the concerns that about increasing levels of violence we’re seeing in our schools, because those students with special needs just aren't getting the supports they need and and that's leading to people acting out in frustration. Special education teachers, educational assistants and teachers are really bearing the brunt of that, and we need to change that by making sure we have more caring adults in our schools.

We'd also make a funding commitment to address the repair backlog that exists in public schools, because students should be learning in classrooms without leaky roofs or with the windows open, or where air conditioning is available on these increasing number of extreme heat days that you see in the spring and the fall.

Just on post secondary, we've made a commitment to shift more of [the Ontario Student Assistance Program] funding from loans to grants to help reduce student debt, and also to increase the budget for colleges and universities. You're starting to see colleges, in particular, laying off a significant number of staff, and that's leading to programs being closed. I think you're going to increasingly start seeing it become even more and more difficult for Ontario students to get access to college and university programs because they simply are going to have the spaces available for the network of students who need to access them.

Mike Schreiner would pour more funding into education to hire additional staff and reduce the deficits in the repair backlogs for schools across Ontario.

(Green Party of Ontario) 

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance asked all parties to finally commit to changes the PCs have failed to make. The Green Party was the first to commit to that plan. How would you follow through with this strategy?

Certainly following the AODA Alliance’s action plan. I think it's just tragic that we had 20 years to get the province prepared to be fully accessible, and it's just shameful that the province didn't meet that deadline. In addition to the action plan, we'd like to see the Ontario building code change to have universal accessible design be a part of the building code so housing is more accessible for people with disabilities. We're also the first party who called for a doubling of [Ontario Disability Support Program] rates in legislative poverty for people with disabilities.

How would that be costed and rolled out?

We're the only party at this point that’s put forward a fully costing platform. Part of how we would pay for a lot of the commitments I've talked about, not just with ODSP, but healthcare, education, we have some pretty significant housing commitments, would be one, redirecting money that the Ford government's just wasting on things that people don't want, such as the $2.2 billion to Ontario Place, $10 billion plus for Highway 413, the tens of billions of dollars to build a tunnel under Highway 401.

We're also proposing that those in the highest income brackets, people earning over $220,000 a year, pay three percent more in their income taxes, and also working with the federal government to bring in a wealth tax for people with assets over $10 million. Mostly just saying, at a time when income inequality is about the highest it's been in decades, we have to invest in our systems of care and our public services. Right now, we need to ask the wealthiest in our society to pay a little bit more so we're able to make those investments without making the affordability crisis for middle income, lower income folks, even worse.

How would your government help make municipalities whole to help with billions of dollars in infrastructure needed to meet current provincial housing targets?

Most housing experts say the Ontario Greens have the most ambitious, best housing strategy out there. Partly it's because we're looking at solutions along a full continuum of housing needs, starting with removing the zoning restrictions for multiplexes to make four-plexes, four-storey as of right, across the province, six plexes as of right in cities with over 500,000 residents and six to 11 stories along major transportation or transit corridors for larger mid centers.

We're proposing to remove taxes and fees for starter homes under 2,000 square feet, built within existing urban boundaries, so we can incentivize the building of starter homes that people can afford in the communities they know and love without having to pave over our farmland, our wetlands, our green belt and helping make sure people don't have long, expensive commutes. 

My colleague Aislinn Clancy in Kitchener Centre, put forward a comprehensive bill on how to protect renters and the need to protect renters. There's no city in Ontario where a full time minimum wage worker can pay average monthly rent, so that has to be addressed. We have a very ambitious plan to invest in 310,000 deeply affordable nonprofit co-op homes, which would include 60,000 permanent supportive homes with wraparound mental health, addiction and other support so we can move people out of encampments into housing. All of that is combined with our affordable communities, which would provide stable, predictable funding for municipalities to invest in the infrastructure we need to unlock housing.

How would you work with developers opposed to the type of housing you described?

What I've heard from people who specialize in multiplexes is that in larger cities, and let's say over 500,000 people, it's because of the land costs. It's hard to make four-plexes financially viable, so that's why we're saying six plexes, because most of the companies I've spoken with say, you need to have five or six plexes and larger cities. But four-plexes work well in smaller cities, and once you get outside of the largest cities in Ontario where the land costs aren't as high, and so that's why we're looking at, four-plexes, four-storey as of right across the province, and six-plexes in cities over 500,000.

Mike Schreiner, a long time environmental advocate, maintains he is committed to cancelling Highway 413.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer) 

Would you cancel the 413 Highway project?

Absolutely. I've been the most vocal politician in Queens Park about canceling Highway 413. If the next premier is serious about alleviating gridlock, it would be far cheaper to pay the tolls of truckers on (Highway) 407 so we could move trucks off (Highway) 401 onto the 407 that would cost $4 billion over 30 years, versus $10 to $12 or even more billion to build highway 413. It would be far cheaper to move trucks onto the 407. 

We have to protect our food and farmland from Doug Ford and Donald Trump. At a time when these trade wars are really threatening Canada like this is the time we shouldn't be building a highway that paves over 2,000 acres of farmland and is going to unleash low density sprawl and additional farmland threatening our $50 billion food farming economy, which employs over 875,000 people.

We need to be protecting our food security, our food sovereignty right now, and that means protecting our farmland and bringing forward our Grow Ontario plan to protect the profitability of family farms in Ontario. For Doug Ford to build this highway that would pave over so much farmland is only going to benefit a handful of wealthy land speculators, the same kinds of land speculators, and in some cases, the exact same land speculators who were going to benefit from the $8.3 billion Green Belt scandal.

What is your plan to bolster Ontario's greenhouse gas emission reduction targets which the PCs have failed on? 

We would bring in a carbon budget that would have annualized reporting to reduce our emissions to have them in line with our Paris targets, and to really have us be net zero by 2045, which I know people say 2050, but we need to be a bit more ambitious than that. How we would do it is one, stop the Ford government from ramping up gas plants, which is going to make electricity bills go up and increase climate pollution in the electricity sector by 700 percent over the next couple of decades. The two largest sources of climate pollution in Ontario are building and transportation. So we can address transportation emissions, one by building homes people can afford in the communities they know and love, close to where they work, shop, spend time with their family so they don't have these really long, expensive commutes. We would invest in better transit, so actually deliver on all day, two way GO train service and implement inner city GO bus service, which is the fastest way that we can quickly ramp up transit.

We would reinstate rebates for new and used electric vehicles as well as electric bikes so people who do need to drive can afford an electric vehicle, and we would bring in a free heat pump program for households who are under $100,000 like PEI and New Brunswick. If we can help people afford a heat pump and an electric vehicle, that will save the average household between $500 and $777 a month while reducing climate pollution at the same time. So we can address people's real affordability challenges while at the same time reducing climate pollution. 

How would you reduce gridlock and dependence on vehicles?

We certainly wouldn't be ripping up bike lanes, because that's only going to make gridlock worse. One of the reasons we want to increase the supply of homes that people can afford within existing urban boundaries is so that people aren't forced into long commutes, so they can live in communities where they can walk to work or cycle to work or take transit to work. One of the reasons we're making a significant commitment to covering 50 percent of operating costs for transit systems is so that municipal transit is more affordable and reliable, and obviously we want to expand inner city transit, not only all day, two way GO, but also direct bus lines as well.

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock 

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