Green Party of Canada Defense Platform

Canada’s Green Party calls for the following urgent priorities for a realistic 21st century defence strategy:

• Realign defence spending to increase our capacity and speed in delivering disaster assistance (e.g. through the DARTDisaster Assistance Rapid Response Team) and our contributions to UN peacekeeping forces and missions, and decrease our contributions to NATO war efforts.
• Rebuild the broken linkages among Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT), National Defence and the Canadian Forces (DND/CF), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), to effectively and efficiently plan, organize, and execute our missions abroad.
• Play a lead role in establishing a standing UN Rapid Response Force with a mandate for peacekeeping and environmental restoration in both international crisis situations and domestic catastrophes like floods, earthquakes, storms and fires.
• Develop effective early disaster reconnaissance and assessment capabilities in order to speed up Canadian response times.
• Oppose the use of  military solution to force aid relief on countries that are rejecting it.
• Focus Canada’s development aid  in the specific key areas that:
• reduce the need to import oil and natural gas and further allow the growth of recipient nation independent and/or majority ownership of these sectors and/or businesses as they develop.
• Focus on food sovereignty through both subsistence farming and domestic commercial farming methods that are in keeping with green environmentally sound and gender equality principles.
• facilitate the export of value added products from small island economies.
• Support  the goal of regional independence and sovereignty.
• Advance the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and ensure its principles are at the core of Canadian foreign policy.
• Support the creation of a Department of Peace and Security.
•  ensure alliances are meeting Canada’s priorities of diplomacy, development and defence.
• Press urgently  the conversion of military industries in Canada and worldwide into peaceful and restorative industries.
• Meet the urgent needs for aerial and nautical search and rescue with fixed wing planes and Coast Guard vessels and icebreakers.
• Ensure that Canadian veterans are treated with respect and that those requiring ongoing treatment and/or disability payments are ensured compensation at least as generous as that provided for civilian work place injuries.