Green Party leader brings message to Hamilton

The leader of Ontario’s Greens is positioning the party as an alternative to the three main parties that make up the “political status-quo.”

Mike Schreiner was in Hamilton on Wednesday to support the area’s Green Party candidates as he looks for “breakthroughs in ridings across the province.”

Schreiner notes that the Green Party supports Hamilton’s 14-kilometre light rail transit (LRT) corridor from McMaster University to Eastgate Square.

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He joined NDP Leader Andrea Horwath in promising 50 per cent of the needed operating funding, in addition to the $1 billion construction cost committed by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.

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Schreiner also pledges more GO Train service into Hamilton, as well as more GO busses between Hamilton and surrounding municipalities, and he insists that the Greens are the only party being “honest” about how they would pay for expanded transit.

He says that includes using “congestion charges to drive into Toronto” and “commercial parking levies in the GTA.”

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Schreiner adds that the Green Party supports supervised injection sites to address the opioid crisis and would sell marijuana through private, licenced cannabis dispensaries rather than 40 government-run outlets.

He insists that the government’s plan will not address the underground market and that “the Liberals are the only party, maybe the only people in the history of the province, who are going to lose money selling cannabis.”