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Karen Levenson

Animal candidate for Guelph
Global science on climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, and zoonotic disease transmission

Affordability & Childcare

Banking

Karen Levenson's promise

Establish government-owned retail banking.

Food & Nutrition

Karen Levenson's promise

Implement science-based, grade-appropriate education on the environmental, animal cruelty, and public health hazards of animal agriculture and monocropping. Introduce plant-based school lunch programs. End subsidies/tax breaks for animal agriculture/mono-crop farms. Subsidize biocycle vegan agriculture. Subsidize the research and development of plant-based technologies and products.

Guaranteed Livable Income

Karen Levenson's promise

Support a guaranteed livable income program

Living in the North

Karen Levenson's promise

Assist communities/families to develop climate emergency evacuation plans. Retrofit public infrastructure to withstand extreme weather. Expand mental/physical health services for climate challenges. Fund compassionate conservation, wildlife protection, and habitat restoration jobs. Ensure low-cost, high-speed internet services and infrastructure.

People with Disabilities

Karen Levenson's promise

Provide tax breaks to companies hiring, training, and accommodating people with physical/mental health disabilities. Award government contracts based on full-diversity hiring and retention. Eliminate physical/social barriers at all levels of government. Ensure job protection and retraining for health-diverse workers. Fund national physical/mental health diversity inclusion campaign.

Climate Change & the Environment

Carbon Capture & Storage

Karen Levenson's promise

Develop a nationally comprehensive ecosystem map; Enlist provinces and municipalities to create programs, apprenticeships, and jobs that map out natural ecosystems that store large amounts of carbon across Canada; Create ecosystem sanctuaries for the conservation of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems; Freeze development of ecosystems; Charge carbon-producing businesses a quarterly carbon production fee based on carbon output.

Coal

Karen Levenson's promise

Prohibit the use of coal as an energy source.

Conservation

Karen Levenson's promise

Remove wildlife management and conservation from the Ministry of Natural Resources file. Create a Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Protection, based on the principles of Compassionate Conservation. Eliminate all wildlife management involving culls or nuisance removals. Instigate human-activities management strategies to protect individuals, species, and natural habitats.

Effects of Climate Change

Karen Levenson's promise

Adopt a recovery package that accelerates the transition to a zero-emissions future by 2025. Commit to a climate change tax for all industries based on their overall greenhouse gas emissions and depletion of natural carbon sequestering ecosystems.

Energy Efficient Buildings

Karen Levenson's promise

Retrofit all public buildings with energy-saving equipment. Require new construction to be designed with energy-saving, climate-protection quality materials. Develop best practices for energy conservation in government buildings. Provide tax incentives for refitting homes and offices with energy-saving technologies. Fund community education on increasing energy efficiency at home and work.

Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Karen Levenson's promise

End all fossil fuel subsidies. Fossil fuels destroy ecosystems, threaten biodiversity, destabilize the climate, and threaten the futures of children globally. End all federal investment in fossil fuels. Require the fossil fuel industry to fund global aid to the poorest, most vulnerable, and least equipped nations to increase their resilience in the wake of climate breakdown.

Green Innovation

Karen Levenson's promise

Invest in plant-based technologies and product research and development. Fund new academic programs that foster plant-based research and development. Create a Federal Department of Plant-based Innovation and Knowledge-Sharing and appoint a cabinet position.

Pesticides

Karen Levenson's promise

Eliminate the use of pesticides, insecticides, and toxic chemicals for home or industrial use.

Health & Healthcare

Future Pandemics

Karen Levenson's promise

Eliminate animal agriculture, fur farms, aquaculture, and the wildlife and pet trades. Prohibit the marketing, sale, and purchase of wildlife trade products or services, including trophy hunting. Cooperate with global efforts to prosecute Canadians involved in poaching, trapping, and hunting of wildlife outside of Canada. Eliminate animals in biomedical and defense research.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure Blockades

Karen Levenson's promise

Protect and support protesters, witness-bearers, whistleblowers, and the media from interference or arrest during non-violent efforts to gather evidence/or prohibit the destruction of habitats and the killing of species.

Jobs & the Economy

News Media & Journalism

Karen Levenson's promise

Prevent the RCMP from using broad exclusion zones to exclude journalists or restrict media access

Biography

submitted by the candidate or their team
Karen Levenson is the Animal Protection Party of Canada candidate in Guelph. She is an author, researcher, and scholar with 20 years of experience in professional animal and environmental activism.

We need to think of climate change and mass extinction as part of the DNA of all the other economic, social, and environmental issues and concerns we face. Climate breakdown and mass extinction are not issues related only to fossil fuels or the energy sector. They are the consequences of failures of policy in every aspect of our government. Canada's federal support of animal agriculture, forestry, overfishing, and the chemical and mining industries are heating the planet and killing us. Climate breakdown and mass extinction result from our expectation that an endless growth economy is possible; it is not. We need federal leaders who will help Canadians transition away from climate-destroying and biodiversity-killing industries. We need federal leaders who will educate our citizens about the climate, health, and poverty-ending benefits of a plant-based diet and lifestyle. Climate breakdown and mass extinction cannot be solved with a few minor tweaks to longstanding domestic and international trade policies or by carbon credits or an emissions tax.

Proposing haphazard or disjointed climate and biodiversity protection policies won't stop mass extinction and climate breakdown. The policies of the main four parties will not lead to the deep environmental and social changes we need to take in Canada and globally to stop climate change and biodiversity loss.

Reason for running

submitted by the candidate or their team
The citizens of Guelph need leaders capable of developing comprehensive and integrated policies that deal with climate breakdown and mass extinction.

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