GREEN PARTY MPP TO SPEAK FRIDAY IN BRACEBRIDGE
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
BRACEBRIDGE — Expect a lot of talk about climate change and flooding here Friday night at a Town Hall with Green MPP Mike Schreiner.
He’ll be at the Lions Hall on Fraserburg Road, which 15 kms farther out has been closed for a week due to flooding. And reports are residents may be stranded out there another week, says the military leader who was there Wednesday doing “wellness checks.”
Unfortunately Ontario’s first elected Green MPP and the Leader of the Green Party won’t have time to visit much of the flooded part of town, says local GPO riding president Arleigh Luckett who offered him a tour.
He’s busy at this weekend’s Ontario Chamber of Commerce convention at Red Leaves in Minett, where he’s a guest speaker; and where Premier Doug Ford and some of his cabinet is expected to attend.
The Lions Hall is at 325 Fraserburg Rd., next to the Bracebridge Fairgrounds at J.D. Lang Park, and the meeting is from 7 to 8:30 p.m.
But do expect him to bring his party’s gas pump stickers, unveiled Thursdsay, which parody Premier Doug Ford’s anti-carbon tax stickers.
According to CBC reporter Mike Crawley, the Ford government’s anti-carbon-tax stickers are getting the parody treatment.
he Green Party of Ontario unveiled its own version of the sticker Thursday, with a similar graphic design, lettering and colour scheme, but a completely different message about climate change.
Ford’s carbon tax stickers draw criticism from Ontario Chamber of Commerce
Gas stations face $10,000/day fines for failing to post Ford’s carbon price stickers
“Climate change will cost us more,” declares the Green Party’s sticker. The version Premier Doug Ford revealed last month declares, “The federal carbon tax will cost you.”
Gas station companies that fail to post the government’s sticker on the pumps could face finesof up to $10,000 a day, under new legislation the Progressive Conservatives call the Federal Carbon Tax Transparency Act.
Schreiner said his stickers will be offered free to gas stations who want to display them alongside what he calls “the propaganda stickers being forced on them by Ford.”
Schreiner told Crawley in an interview Wednesday that he and his staff wanted to inform people “about the real costs of the premier’s campaign to sabotage climate solutions. So we thought, ‘Why not just produce a sticker that tells the other side of the story?’”
Since Schreiner was elected as the MPP for Guelph last June, a party release says “his respectful and down-to-earth approach has frequently attracted the attention of the Queens Park press gallery.”
His first private member’s bill to protect an important drinking water source passed second reading with unanimous support.
At the Town Hall, Schreiner will give an update on current issues before the legislature and respond to questions from the audience.
According to Arleigh Luckett, president of the Parry Sound-Muskoka GPO constituency association, the Town Hall is open to the public. Interested high school students are also encouraged to attend.
“We are looking forward to this opportunity for residents of Parry Sound-Muskoka to hear from and be heard by a sitting MPP,” she said.
In Guelph, Schreiner regularly holds meet-ups at coffee shops and town hall meetings with his constituents. While his first commitment is to represent his constituents in Guelph, as Ontario’s only Green MPP and the Leader of the GPO Schreiner also wants to hear from people across the province.
Parry Sound-Muskoka had the second highest result for the GPO in the 2018 election with candidate Matt Richter, says the release.
