Federal Election 2021 Meet the Candidates: Green Party Kelly Green

Meet the Candidates Federal Election 2021 edition is The Gateway’s series of interviews with candidates running in Edmonton Strathcona. This is the first of five articles.

With the September 20 federal election just around the corner, The Gateway sat down and interviewed candidates from the major parties running in Edmonton Strathcona electoral district.

Kelly Green, Green Party of Canada candidate for Edmonton Strathcona, was interviewed for the first installment of this series.

After graduating from the audiovisual communications program at MacEwan University, Green worked at NCS-TV in Yellowknife. Afterward, Green spent time in Toronto growing a media distribution and production company before returning to Edmonton in 2011 to work as a public bus driver.

The Gateway spoke with Green to find out more on how, if elected, he plans to represent the residents and students of Edmonton Strathcona in the House of Commons.

Responses have been edited for clarity and length.

The Gateway: Why did you decide to run in this election?

Green: Because of the climate crisis. We need a strong voice to speak out against the oil and gas industry in the heart of Alberta.

What is the single issue that is most important to you?

The climate crisis.

What is your party doing to support post-secondary institutions, specifically when considering any financial cuts they may be facing?

We support free tuition for all students and fully robust funding of the institutions in which they study.

When looking at student affordability, there are many components to consider including food and job security, student debt, housing, etc. If elected, what component would you prioritize when supporting students?

I think one of the biggest things that we would do is institute a guaranteed livable income. This will give a little amount of income to everybody in the country. So that’s gonna help deal with a whole lot of the other issues that come up with being a student, and combine that with free tuition. I think it’s a very good deal.

How will your party concretely work to address climate change?

What we’re looking to do is to remove all the subsidies from oil and gas production and exploration, cancel the pipelines, and put hard targets on reducing actual emissions by 60 per cent by 2030, rather than the other schemes that talk for net zero or reducing emissions by 2050. Those just are not enough.

I think if people go to greenparty.ca, they will see that our Climate Action Plan is the most robust of all the parties.

How will your party concretely work to support Indigenous communities and students?

One of my top priorities is to have all 94 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations enacted. So we need to respect that commission, we need to respect the Indigenous peoples that brought about that work, we need to listen to them, and we need to ensure that all 94 of those recommendations are met and that we exceed that we honor the treaties properly, and we even start working towards getting the land back where appropriate.

Given the U of A does have our French-speaking campus, Campus Saint-Jean, what is your party doing to support French Canadians?

We’re gonna be doing the exact same thing for them as we would every other Canadian, we’re talking about a guaranteed livable income. Talking about free tuition. We’re talking about adequate funding for educational institutions across the board, not to mention our health care system and all the other social supports that go with it.

So we’re not necessarily singling out any one particular group, we just want to do the best thing for everybody in this country.

If you were to choose one initiative or area of policy, which makes your party stand out from the rest, what would that be?

The environment.

Fun Question: If you could steal credit for any great piece of art, song, film, book, etc, which one would you claim?

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.