JOBS, SMALL BUSINESS, AND MANUFACTURING

Canadians should have the opportunity to work, and to be included and productive members of our society. It is our belief that every Canadian has value to offer and it is the responsibility of the True Democrats to offer a social structure in which each person’s value can emerge.

• Increasing investment programs in entrepreneurship and innovation
• Improve branding campaign for Canadians business internationally
• Re-evaluate EI policy for long term users
• Like other parties, the True Democrats want to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
• True Democrats will follow through and get pipelines built, including the Trans Mountain. We must maintain a smooth transition to a new economic foundation.
• Government “Time Audits” will help minimize constituents’ daily distractions. This includes improving “credential recognition” to make it easier for immigrants to get jobs, if they have equivalent skills and rejig the temporary foreign workers program.
• Place better leadership supports and experienced board members that can be available to SME’s and individuals. Conscription for those who can help (like jury duty) other companies and people.

We want to bring in a law that would force government to consider the impact on small businesses of all future legislation. The party proposes a capable Support Group to aid all business start-ups and wants to eliminate the need for a small business to file taxes multiple times.

DEFICITS

We will support Canadians to be more economically successful through entrepreneurship and innovation to reduce deficit. The government will support this by enhance Canadian branding and culture to attract more international growth. We will also create more efficiency in conventional government bureaucracy to allow infrastructure to support society more effectively (reducing waste time and money).

GUNS

The True Democrats are in favour of both a handgun and an assault rifle ban. To make it happen, we would run a confidential buy-back program. The party wants to make sure they are “kept out of our cities.” We would permit handguns if “restricted to secure shooting ranges.”

HOUSING

Besides health, good food and housing are an essential structural element of a Canadian society.

• The party supports increased taxation for offshore buyers to protect local buyers
• The party supports amending building codes to reflect healthy indoor environment
• The party supports higher efficiency homes

The party wants to legislate housing as a “legally protected fundamental human right for all Canadians” and appoint a minister of housing to oversee the National Housing Strategy. The party also wants more resources available for housing co-ops.

PIPELINES

For the short term, the pipelines are supported, including the Line 3, Keystone XL, the massive LNG project running to B.C.’s coast and the Trans Mountain pipeline extension. While today’s economy is moving, our focus is to shift tomorrow’s economy towards new innovations.

TECHNOLOGY

Technology is developing at a rate too fast for regulators to develop proper safety policies. How do we ensure that disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and synthetic biology will not produce unintended consequences? Moreover, how do we bind the development of these technologies to those safety analyses and ensure that they are neither weaponized nor misused? The party would create a task force to investigate this issue.

• Cut cellphone bills by 25%.
• Create a “digital charter” dictating rights and data privacy online.
• The party would introduce and lobby for new bills to hold social media platforms responsible for propagating misinformation and fine them for keeping hate speech online.
• The party promises high-speed internet everywhere in Canada by 2030.
• The party will pass legislation to change how companies collect data, requiring agreements to be written in “plain language.”
• The party will advocate for infrastructure to increase high-speed internet access across Canada. It would force companies to delete individual’s data (“right to be forgotten”) and pass legislation requiring social media platforms to only allow “verifiable identities” to create accounts.
• The party will increase education for technology
• The party will improve technology programs

TRANSPORTATION

Transportation is closely connected to communication, and communication is closely connected to economic growth. The party proposes increasing efficiency of human transactions to minimize time spent in transit, lowering carbon emissions and wasted travel time. The party supports more remote communications if it is efficient

EDUCATION

We will support Canadians to understand technology, along with its rapid pace of evolution. Assuring the successful transfer of necessary skills, ideas, and values to the next generation has never been more complex. Finding these solutions requires an awareness of broader social trends. If we are to meet this educational crisis, in the face of exponential information growth, we must mobilize the resources in our society. Here is a place to begin collaboration across differences in the design of future open societies.

HEALTH CARE

For people to be content and able to help, they must be healthy. Some might say that good health is fundamental in life. Conventionally, Canada’s health care system has been more reactive than proactive. The True Democrats consider the access to a high-quality health care system a social responsibility. A health care committee will be formed to discuss a improvements to our current health care system that integrates proactive thinking.

IMMIGRATION

TBD

SENIORS

Seniors, as do we all, have value. Our Canadian elders should be given more opportunity to help our youth and our people. Multigenerational influence and support make us better. Conscription to help kids and teens and family.

Research investment into developing a national senior’s strategy, which includes a national dementia strategy. More long-term care beds in neighbourhood facilities which include multigeneration interaction but encourages creative home-sharing plans to allow seniors to stay home “as long as possible.”

DRUGS

The True Democrats advocate for legalizing all drug possession and consider it as a health issue managed by the health system.

The party recognizes the significance of medical research on psychoactive compounds because they have always played an historic role in shaping human culture. Because they allow us to experience the world in an entirely different way, they result in experiences that can have profound impact on knowledge creation and our understanding of the universe.

In the past, shamans have used peyote, ayahuasca, ibogaine, mushrooms, and more to open their consciousness to a greater reality. Taking the lessons learned over millennia, modern neurohackers employ both ancient and traditional psychoactive compounds towards the same spiritual ends.

The primary aim of our policy, however, is to improve health and democratic rights.

GOVERNANCE

• Review of Electoral Reform and Digital Voting.
• Review of police procedures regarding the leverage of social biases (setting examples)
• Review of crown corporations auditing procedures.

Canadian Crown corporations first emerged in the 1870s and are flourishing today, with hundreds such bodies delivering services and they account for billions of dollars of revenue. Most often, the creation of semi-autonomous governmental bodies is a response to pressures that require action on the part of governments. In many of those instances governments have initiated the formalization of public-private partnerships, Crown corporations, are defined as “institution[s] with corporate form brought into existence by action of the Government[s] of Canada to serve a public function.”

ENVIRONMENT

The True Democrats aim to protect natural land, freshwater, and oceans. We want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides. The party promises to develop a forest strategy and a water strategy, with the goal of providing everyone with safe drinking water. It also wants to curb solid waste exports. All of which we will rely on experts in their field to show the way forward.

CLIMATE AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGES

We require extreme innovation along with an enhanced philosophical understanding. We support a Canadian research team to supplement the research of the IPCC.

The True Democrats will transition to more environmentally friendly technology by stimulating grass roots innovation. This will help us transition away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. This will happen in due course and according to reasonable benchmarks. This may or may not align with the Paris agreement. This strategy will also require that heavy emitters invest in clean technology or research.

USMCA AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

TBD

TAXES

Taxes are an important part of a society. Part of our government’s role is to make all Canadian life better and safer. The party supports increased taxation of luxury vehicles and tech giants generating new revenue for the Government of Canada.

The international purchases of goods and services will be taxed and monitored. For example Amazon, Linkedin, Facebook and more will have to pay Canadians for access to Canada.

• The party supports making EI benefits for new parents’ tax free.
• The party supports removing the GST from home heating costs,
• The party supports public transit and children’s fitness and arts tax credits.

COMMUNICATION

The digital information age has brought many benefits, but the unintended consequences that have resulted from it threaten to bury our gains. One of those problems is today, our lives are governed by information more than ever before, and the decisions we make using that information can affect us deeply. The quality of that information is essential in making clear decisions. One illustration of that principle is in a simpler time, the speed of information travel was slow, and our entire lives were matched to that speed accordingly. Only 50 years earlier, it was common to wait weeks to receive a letter overseas from a loved one, and parsing that information wasn’t very challenging. We now generate more recorded data in two years than in all of the rest of history. That is so much data that we struggle understanding what to do with it all.

Poor communications can also impact the economy. Inefficient communication in government services such as applying for a licence plate, UI, waiting to see a doctor, a line up for a new passport, permits for building a house acts as a drag on the economy. Improving communication can increase economic productivity.

• Improve free assistance for ongoing citizen learning and education opportunities.
• Improve 311 for constituents regarding the quickly changing world and misinformation.
• Improve online information navigation on government websites.
• Time Audits in all government departments to reduce confusion and time wasting.

LEGAL SYSTEM

Every single day, in courts all over the world, lawyers, judges, and juries not only decide who is right and who is wrong but must also decide how much mental anguish and suffering was caused by whom and to whom. We aim to minimize unethical behavior in the court system. Taking advantage of people at their weakest moments is unconscionable. The courts system should be here to offer a foundation of law to our democratic society. The legal system anchors our democracy, but who anchors the legal system?

• Plausible deniability can be better characterized by the use of high quality auditing from the law society and the federal court system.
• Individuals fair access to the legal system is limited.
• Historically, philosophers anchored the legal system, we support reinstating this tradition.
• The legal system shouldn’t be used as a weapon and penalizing individuals who do that should be easier.

Further Considerations

Appendix 1, Section 2: How would we best…