06 December 2021

The Fundraising Issue

Welcome to another issue of the official newsletter of the Dufferin Caledon Green Party. During this season of giving and receiving we are reminded of how grateful we should be to live in a country where we are free to live out our lives in a state of freedom that must never be taken for granted. This is the season where we celebrate the victory of light over darkness and hope over despair and the Golden Rule that instructs us to, “Do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” A time of reflection and meditation about the things that are truly important to us and all living things with whom we share this planet.

In this issue. you will hear from our provincial candidate Laura Campbell as she delivers her unique Green perspective on the issues that are critical to preserving and improving our way of life in this province. David Rintoul has crafted another Good News story about positive news from the British Columbia housing market. Our guest columnist Cody Wright shares his perspective on stock market manipulation which exposes how crafty stock market traders can be when it comes to leveraging and squeezing stocks to produce results that are just slightly within the law.

Also within this issue. I am encouraging you to donate to our fund-raising campaign in support of Laura’s election as our next MPP. We have an opportunity to create a Green breakthrough in Dufferin Caledon but as in all things a healthy budget balance allows us to create and execute a winning election strategy and I respectfully ask you to donate generously as you invest in our candidate and a clean Green future.

I hope you are inspired by the messages contained in these pages to exercise your democratic duty and help us get the Green message of hope and positivity to as many Dufferin Caledon voters as possible. Enjoy the read and Season’s Greetings to you, your families and friends and to all peace and planet loving citizens of our great and soon to be Greener province.

Frank Buck
Editor
Dufferin-Caledon Greens

Elect Me, Laura Campbell,
as Your MPP

As a local small business owner, I’m one of the fortunate few in Dufferin-Caledon who’s able to live, work and play in the same community. Too many people in our riding spend hundreds of hours commuting to work and back, instead of devoting time to our families.

I'm running to be your Green Party MPP because I support our strategy to fix Doug Ford’s housing crisis. We plan to make Ontario’s housing connected, affordable and sustainable for everyone.

Under the Ford Government, it now takes fifteen years for the average Ontarian to save up a down payment for a house. You can choose to rent, but at today’s minimum wage, it takes 63 hours of work per week to pay for a one-bedroom apartment.

Seventy percent of low-income families in Peel live in homes they can’t afford. No wonder 16,000 people in Ontario no longer have a permanent home. Meanwhile, we’re losing 175 acres of farmland every day in our province.

Doug Ford’s approach to housing doesn’t work for everyday Ontarians. I believe in building 15-minute neighbourhoods where you can get where you need to be without long commutes. I also support our plans to build 100,000 new affordable housing units, support renters, and create better pathways to home ownership.

Of course, we wouldn’t be the Green Party if we weren’t pushing for housing that works for people and the planet. I’m backing our plan to invest $5 billion over ten years in the Green-building program. We’ll create hundreds of thousands of jobs, save energy and money, and address the climate crisis by cutting our carbon emissions.

To support me and the Green Party in building a better future for Dufferin-Caledon, please donate to my campaign.

You can also learn more about our Green Party Housing Strategy here.

Help us put an end to Doug Ford’s housing crisis and build vibrant, green neighbourhoods that are affordable, safe, and secure while protecting the places we love.

Laura Campbell
Provincial Green Party Candidate
Dufferin-Caledon Greens
laura-campbell.ca

#STOPthe413 Protest in Bolton

100+ people showed up to the four corners of King & Queen St
in Bolton on Nov. 13th

The proposed 413 will destroy 2000 acres of farmland, including classes 1-2 which is some of the most crucial in the province (also considering two thirds of Ontario is covered in the Canadian Shield); 400 acres of protected Greenbelt - established in 2005 it is considered a prevention of urban development and sprawl on environmentally sensitive land in the province; and 85 waterways. "Every time a road intersects with a water source it degrades it, adding dirt and vehicle pollution to the water and exposing it to huge amounts of road salt each winter." (environmentaldefence.ca)

Not to mention all of the developers and Conservative Party donors that own the land along the proposed route that will profit an enormous amount if the project goes through:

Source: nationalobserver.com

“It’s going to supercharge sprawl and supercharge climate pollution,” Schreiner said, arguing that the roadway wouldn’t alleviate traffic congestion because it would lead to even greater pressure to develop on the roadway, further threatening Greenbelt protected land.

“If there’s enough money to build the 413, there’s enough money to buy back the 407,” said Ian Sinclair, a Caledon councillor who sits on Region of Peel council. (thestar.com)

This proposal is the last issue we need to be thinking about while we are in a climate crisis. We need to protect our farms, green spaces, and waterways from the future destructive, natural events that come with (as predicted) our rate of warming that is currently sitting at 1.1C. We are desperately trying to prevent warming of 1.5C, and building this highway will only get us there faster.

Alexis Wright
Publisher
Dufferin-Caledon Greens

The Green Party is committed to establishing a just society in which everyone, including corporations, contributes their fair share economically. For example, we’d ensure that the Canada Revenue Agency collects corporate taxes from financial transactions, commercial bank profits, and transnational e-commerce companies.

Green-minded readers with money to invest might also consider the new breed of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds available today. These funds help ensure that your investments support companies that care about the environment, social justice, and ethical corporate governance.

On that note, we’d like to share this article by Cody Wright with you about some of the issues around securities market speculation and manipulation in today’s business world. We think you’ll find it an eye-opening read.

Filthy Rich

The WolfPack of Wall Street Part 1: GameStopped

As in sports, war, and legal contracts, there are a multitude of insider terms, pro slang, and jargon that seem to be another language to anyone not in the know. Wall St, and the stock market in general, are no different. Naked short selling, busting out, cellar boxing, credit default swaps, short squeezes, reverse repurchase agreements; they sound like buzz words made up by the guy at your office to try and convince the boss that he hasn’t been playing Bejewelled on his phone 4 hours a day instead of finishing his TPS reports. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

Tools used to manipulate and distort prices, weapons used to collapse competitors and reap the rewards. The most popular example at the moment is the video-game (and more) retailer, Gamestop.

Gamestop may be a victim of severe manipulation, but not by the Redditors and retail traders implicated by much of the mainstream media. September 2020, the opening price was around $10. A year later, it’s around $190. One notable day in-between these two dates, it spiked as high as $483: this price is based on average sales, there were some shares sold for higher.

On that day, fuelled by educated retail investors as well as the ever watching FOMO crowd, the buy button was disabled on a very popular trading app (seemingly ironically named Robinhood), and the price took a swan dive. Simple supply and demand. If there’s large demand, and little supply, price will go up. If there’s a large supply, and no demand (as in physically impossible to place a demand order) the price will settle back down. Easy enough.

Problem being, there are a few signs that this stock seems to have some eccentricities. Any and all pieces of good news for the company (for example: centrally, the company is changing from a brick and mortar video game retailer to a technology company, like Netflix going from mailing discs to the media giant today) will tank the price. The buying pressure has been 10:1 buying to selling, which should raise the price; it’s gone up, for sure, but not like it should. Any sort of financial media has been marking it as a must-sell, “forget about it and move to the smart money” is what they are suggesting. 9 months of articles telling you to forget about Gamestop only tells us one thing; they want you to forget and move on. Who are “they”, and why do they want it to sell so badly?

"They” are a very vague and ambiguous term, but there isn’t another way to describe “them.”

"They” are everywhere. Look up the number of financial advice publications, and find out what percentage of them are owned by investment firms, hedge funds, financial institutions and billionaire trust funds: it’s not a small number.

Look up shows like Mad Money on the ever-present CNBC, and find out what names they don’t mention, or claim not to know, even when you have archival footage of them talking about said person. Go look up the numbers of reward cash that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gives out to whistleblowers, then go look up the numbers of the fines given to the perpetrators. Such as a 5 year period where one company marked every single one of their trades incorrectly (which might have made them billions and billions of dollars) and they were served a $1,000,000 fine. Imagine driving 140 in a school zone on your cellphone while chugging beer, and being fined a dollar. Not exactly a preventative measure.

After a certain point, the fines are more like a tax, making sure that the right palms are greased so everyone can get what they want. Everyone excluding those who have to play by the rules for fear of punishment. Regular everyday people are told to invest their money, because it’s the only way to “get ahead;” if they are telling us what to invest in - is it a stretch of the imagination to think they are doing it to help themselves?

The stock market isn’t rigged, but it does seem to act as though there is a thumb on the scale, and a biased one at that. Much like real estate, or services contracts, investing and the stock market as a whole are only complicated because the people who run it want it to seem that way. Retail investing apps like Questrade or WealthSimple, or retail real estate apps like Purplebricks are taking the scenery out of the play, and revealing that we are just watching actors; and bad ones at that.

Cody Wright
Guest Columnist

Investing in the Future

Never have we seen such a sense of urgency from everyday people about the state of the environment!

People are demonstrating across the globe for real action on climate change. Governments are struggling to enact legislation that addresses these concerns as they attempt to throw off the mantle of a century of inaction and slavery to the plastics, chemical and fossil fuel gods. Governments are walking a tight rope and trying to balance their solutions between the economy and the environment in a situation that sacrifices one for the other. This is a losing proposition and calls for the kind of intellectual and moral judgement that only youth and true futurists can muster. The problem of course is that time is running out. There is only 1.5 degrees of separation between now and the worst outcomes, glimpses of which we are already experiencing today. We are told we still have time but how much?

Governments at all levels must work in harmony to take the bold action required to curb the gravest of climate threats. Surely, the old model has failed and new and creative approaches to governance are required to lead us in the right direction. The Ontario Green Party is a party of renewal and commitment to new and better ways of dealing boldly with the most existential threat in history while at the same time balancing economic and social agendas in the same bold way.

The next provincial election takes place in June 2022. The current government has failed to deliver the kind of change that is urgently needed so that Ontario can do its part in the mammoth struggle ahead. Dufferin / Caledon is not exempt from what is happening in the atmosphere, and we must do everything we can to change our representation and government at Queen’s Park.

Our candidate Laura Campbell is a passionate leader in the battle against climate change and the battle for social and economic justice for everyone. The Conservatives and the NDP have already started their campaigns as you have seen from recent TV advertising, and we must meet them head on to ensure that the Green story and Laura’s story is not lost in the competitive quagmire of political messaging. To have a strong voice in the upcoming election we are asking you to invest in the future by giving generously to our Campaign Fund to elect Laura Campbell as our next Green MPP at Queen’s Park!

Donating is easy by clicking on the donate button in this newsletter and don’t forget that there is a generous tax incentive (up to 75%) that comes along with your donation. Any amount that you can donate is critical to our success and represents your sincere interest in investing in your children’s future and the future generations of all living things to come.

It has always been time to do the right thing, but never has it been more important than now! Donate today, all living things will thank you.

Frank Buck
Editor
Dufferin-Caledon Greens

Good Things Happen Too!

Affordable Housing Can Be a Community of Belonging

When people read about Green Party Ontario’s housing strategy, they might ask if it’s realistic. After all, the vision of building livable and affordable communities is commendable, but is it also practical? Is it truly feasible to build new, affordable housing units in the face of all the market pressures driving up accommodation costs?

Housing in British Columbia is even harder to afford than in Ontario. Yet, when federal, provincial, and municipal public services collaborate with non-profit housing providers, the vision of safe, secure, and affordable homes can be realized, even for a community’s most vulnerable residents.

A case in point is a development in Richmond B.C. called Storeys. It’s a unique partnership between our three levels of government and five non-profits - Coast Mental Health, Pathways Clubhouse, S.U.C.C.E.S.S., Tikva Housing Society and Turning Point Housing Society.

The coalition wanted to create something that went further than a typical housing development. They envisioned a neighbourhood that residents would think of as a community of belonging and a place to sincerely call home, and not merely another building.

Storeys is a 14-floor structure providing a total of 129 units of supportive and affordable housing units for vulnerable people. The households within the development include lone-parent families, people recovering from addiction, seniors at risk of homelessness, and people living with mental health issues.

Storeys is also a supportive space for residents needing access to immigrant settlement services, updated employment skills, proper nutrition, social activity, and meaningful connection. Housing experts call it a best practice model for communities developing affordable housing.

The City of Richmond provided the land for the site on a 60-year lease along with a $6 million affordable housing transfer. B.C. Housing footed the construction bill along with providing grant money. The federal government awarded three homelessness partnering grants to the project. Each of the five non-profit partners invested equity in the property.

The development also includes community amenities. Two of its floors accommodate the Pathways Clubhouse, which is a safe space for anyone living with mental illness. Richmond Addiction Services offers onsite services to people recovering from addiction. S.U.C.C.E.S.S. provides WorkBC offices out of the Storeys location.

These accomplishments stand in stark contrast with the approach the Ford Government takes to affordable housing. For example, in 2019, the federal and municipal governments announced a $1.3 billion investment in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. It’s the biggest transfer of housing funds to any municipality in the history of Canada. Rather than becoming part of the solution, Doug Ford was missing in action. The Ford Government’s approach has been to cut access to social programs like affordable housing, income support, and homelessness prevention by $550 billion a year. The Ministry of Municipal Housing and Affairs has suffered a 25% budget cut under Doug Ford. Ford declined to say if TCHC would receive funding from the province.

The Green Party plans to build 100,000 new affordable housing units across Ontario. We’ll provide support for renters and create new pathways to home ownership. Storeys is living proof that, with an attitude of collaboration at all levels, real change becomes possible.

We need your support to make our plans a reality. With your help, we can make sure our housing strategy is more than just a good idea. You can donate to Laura Campbell’s Dufferin-Caledon campaign here:

David Rintoul
Writer, Volunteer
Dufferin-Caledon Greens

Acknowledgement & Reconciliation

There are many Indigenous Peoples, Communities, Treaties, and Territories within what we now recognize as the riding of Dufferin—Caledon: Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and Odawa. We acknowledge that the Communities of Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation; the Three Fires Confederacy; and the Six Nations of Grand River; have had their Treaty lands greatly reduced since establishment, and we, the Dufferin-Caledon Greens, would like to continue to reconcile relationships with the First Peoples who now walk this land and who have walked this land in the past.

Published by Alexis Wright