Green Party of Nova Scotia

Building a Sustainable Future Together

Vacancy – Policy Convenor

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Are you interested in helping to shape policy for the Green Party of Nova Scotia?

If so, the GPNS Policy Convenor is a volunteer position that would interest anyone with a passion for green issues and is excited about the opportunity to develop policy for the GPNS.

In addition to working closely with the Party’s other Policy Convenor (there are two, who share responsibilities equally) and the leadership of the Party, the Policy Convenor will be part of a dedicated and vibrant team working hard to build a compelling and forward looking framework of policies that will take the party to the next election and beyond. As well as passion, a background in policy analysis and development would be very useful along with an ability to convert your ideas to writing in a persuasive and insightful style. Policy development requires teamwork, so a desire to work with, and bring out the best in, other contributors would also be valuable.

The party’s by-laws provide that the Policy Convener and their co-Convenor will facilitate the development of policy through various means but specifically the running of the party’s policy committee. For further information you may refer to by-Laws H, O and P at the following link: Constitution & By-laws

The position is vacant at the moment, so if you or someone you know might be good for the position, and is interested in helping to develop the platform for the Green Party of Nova Scotia in the next election, then please send an email to officer.elections@greenpartyns.ca on or before Tuesday, September, 8. At that point we will discuss the formal election process which will, at a minimum, include an approval vote by the Executive of the party. If there is more than one candidate, all members of the party will vote.

The successful candidate will fill this role until the 2022 Annual General Meeting, which is most likely to be in April 2022. (The position is nominally a two-year term, but this election is to fill a partial term.)

NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN!!!

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Hello everyone!

The Green Party of Nova Scotia will be nominating  candidates for the 55 ridings to be contested in the next Nova Scotia provincial general election, starting… today!

There are lots of amazing people who are Green Party members already, and lots of amazing people that Green Party members know, who haven’t yet joined the party. All of those people are encouraged to join the process of finding our candidates. We believe that this will be the election where we elect the first Green MLA in Nova Scotia, and we’re working hard to find a great set of people to make that a reality!

We note that people often have to be asked more than once in order to seriously consider the idea of running, and people who have not traditionally seen themselves, or people like them, in positions of political power often have to be asked more than that. The Nova Scotia Greens are committed to doing our best to get out and ask those people, and that means our Members need to be doing this, too.

As for you, please consider this your first invitation!

The party will be working hard to support all of our nominated candidates. This means you will not be on your own for resources including graphic design, a template webpage, and a set of professional photos, as well as training and organizational help (database access, etc.).

The first step is to submit the application form (linked at the bottom of this post.)

The information gathered is used to do candidate approval (“vetting”), so we ask a lot of questions about your background. We will honour your privacy, and will not release any information to people beyond the people directly involved in its review. In fact, we will not tell even tell anyone that you have applied until and unless you are ready to make your candidacy public.

The GPNS does not use the candidate approval process to “pick” its candidates. We believe in local participatory democracy as one of our critical foundations, so the local members in the area to be represented will do the choosing. However, a candidate may not be approved during this first stage if they directly oppose fundamental Green values, if they have a history of hateful behaviour, or if they publicly support widely discredited scientific or historical theories. We expect no significant number of exclusions.

We are also deeply committed to transparency, so you always have a right to see any information gathered (including from reviews of your social media, or other sources), and to know why a decision to approve or deny your application has been made. There are appeal procedures if you feel a decision was unreasonable.

So – what are you waiting for? Let’s find our great Green candidates – like you!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask (your inquiry will be kept confidential): nominations@greenpartyns.ca

Link to apply: APPLICATION FORM

Green Party Leader Thomas Trappenberg calls for a ban on open pen aquaculture.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, April 2
The Green Party of Nova Scotia calls for a ban on open pen aquaculture.  South Shore communities are clear, demanding protection for their coastal waters.  Thomas Trappenberg, the leader of the provincial Green Party say constituents must be respected.

 

“There is direct evidence that open pen aquaculture poisons ocean waters.  Fish waste, disease, and contamination from medicines destroys traditional fisheries, on which South Shore families depend.” said Trappenberg.  “The community has spoken: no open pen fish farms here.”

 

Thomas has an inside operational perspective on the industry.  An internationally trained scientist and professor at Dalhousie University, he helped startup Reel Data AI develop artificial intelligence (AI) systems for the much safer land based aquaculture industry.  “Doing the right thing for the environment does not mean saying no to strong economic development.” says Thomas.  “A safe, regulated, land based aquaculture industry creates quality food and jobs.  Nova Scotia has what it takes to be the world leader in this.”

 

Trappenberg has worked with South Shore community-led initiatives for years, supporting local groups like the Protect Liverpool Bay Association as the first federal political candidate calling for a national ban on open-pen aquaculture.  Together they pushed hard to stop massive salmon feedlots that were being forced on Nova Scotians by Cooke Aquaculture and the Federal Liberal government.

 

Another important issue with the industry is that it takes in more in that it provides.  “The evidence is clear: open pen fish farms struggle to produce as much food energy as they absorb in operation.” says Thomas, “Often they resort to just scraping our ocean bottoms of sea life to get enough fish food.  That is a price Nova Scotia and our environment cannot afford.”

 

Green Party of Nova Scotia principles include:

 

++  Sustainability
Move all open-net pen finfish aquaculture facilities into closed containment systems on land. As with land farmers transitioning from conventional production, provide financial and extension support will be ensure to fish farm workers to make this transition.

 

++  Ecological Wisdom
Stop to the proliferation of these damaging business practices like open net pen operations, and protect the most valuable resource in Nova Scotia : our seas and the people who depend on them.

 

FOR MORE DETAILS ON THE GREEN PARTY of NOVA SCOTIA or THOMAS : 
telephone  902 414 3960

Logging Old-Growth Forests a Menace to Wildlife – GPNS President in the Chronicle-Herald

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As Leader Thomas Trappenberg, Deputy Leader Jessica Alexander, and other Greens joined in a protest of logging in the Corbett-Dalhousie Lake Forest, Co-President June Trenholm of Dartmouth was busy putting fingers to keyboard to get our message out to an even broader swath of Nova Scotians.

Have a look at her recent Opinion article in the Chronicle-Herald, available at the link below:

www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/opinion-logging-old-growth-acadian-forest-a-menace-to-wildlife-321631/

How to Pick Where to Put a School

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This past weekend, at the GPNS retreat, some of the other Executive members who were present said “Ashley, you’re interested in transportation issues, why don’t you write a bit more for the website about, you know, trains and buses and planes and stuff!”

Little did they know that the very first thing they’d get would be about where to put schools!

…But that’s the thing – we can never achieve decent, efficient, low-carbon transportation (no, not even with electric cars!) if we don’t put our starts and our finishes in reasonable places – preferrably not very far apart, but at least in places where people can easily travel together to reach them.

So when Education Minister Zach Churchill*’s announcement about streamlining the process for new-school site selection came across my Twitter feed, it seemed like a great chance to emphasize this. Here’s what I pulled together, as a proposed set of principles for the GPNS on this issue:

School Location and Climate Health

The Green Party of Nova Scotia would emphasize the relationship between climate and community planning – particularly transportation questions – when selecting school sites. Carbon-emissions impacts must be considered.

Background:

School-aged students make up over a quarter of Nova Scotia’s daily “commuters” (121,000 public school students vs. 381,000 full-time workers), so the locations of their destinations has a huge impact on our daily carbon emissions from transportation.
Locating schools in locations where students can safely walk and/or cycle to school improves health outcomes, and those students’ social connection to their communities.

Therefore, the Green Party proposes the following additional/complementary criteria for locations of schools:

  • In areas where public transportation is readily available, schools will be built adjacent to existing public transportation routes.
  • In areas where public transportation is minimal or non-existent, schools will be built so as to minimize the amount of travel required by students. This will normally be in the largest community of the catchment area, within walking/cycling distance of as many students’ homes as possible.
  • Wherever possible, schools shall be located adjacent to town centres or other public facilities (libraries, recreation centres, parks) that are common destinations for school-aged Nova Scotians.
  • “Brownfield” (previously-developed) land shall always be preferred to “greenfield” (never-before-developed) land.
  • The process of site selection shall include, from the outset, parents’ organizations, community groups and – in the case of junior and senior high schools – students’ groups.
  • Costs of infrastructure necessary to provide safe walking and cycling access to the school shall be included in the project scope for the construction of the school.
  • Costs of government-provided transportation (generally, bussing) shall be included in budgetary analyses of where schools shall be located to assist in generating a “lifecycle cost” viewpoint on sites’ benefits and disadvantages.
  • The impact of closing a school in favour of bussing to another community must also include similar factors, including carbon emissions, long term transportation costs, and impacts on student health and quality of life.
  • A comparison of carbon emissions impacts shall be published to aid in explaining the government’s choice of sites (and/or school closures).

Let me know what you think!

*Full disclosure: I’m currently in the middle of my Bachelor of Education, and hope to be employed in the Nova Scotia public education system by this time next year. I don’t think that has anything to do with any of these principles, though!