Yesterday was International Day of UN Peacekeepers. It started me thinking about our once proud tradition for peacekeeping through UN initiatives and how little we hear about peacekeeping today. Canada has fallen from being the single largest contributor of UN Peacekeepers, a position it often held, to 58th, just behind Uganda and barely ahead of Zimbabwe. Canadian peacekeeping participation consists of 99 policemen, 37 military experts and 24 soldiers. The Green Party will re-establish Canada among the global leaders in peace building, peacekeeping and international diplomacy. Green Party MPs will push forward the re-alignment of our defence spending to increase our capacity and speed in delivering disaster assistance (through DART) and our contributions to UN Peacekeeping forces and missions and decrease our contributions to the NATO war effort. Once more we can have pride in our international reputation as peacekeepers.

For the past two weeks one of the hottest topics in the political scene has been that of MPs expenses and the lack of transparency surrounding them. If elected I will publicly vow to have my expenses open to the public. This is taxpayers’ money and the taxpayers deserve to know how it is spent. The Green Party believes in an open, honest government. We will institute a code of conduct and an independent complaints process to ensure that tax dollars are not used for partisan purposes ie pre-election advertising. We will strengthen the mandates of Independent Officers of Parliament, including the Auditor General and the Information Commissioner and we will replace the current Ethics Commissioner, who reports privately to the Prime Minister, with an independent Ethics Commission reporting to Parliament. These are just a few of the changes the Green Party will push forward in Parliament. More details can be seen in our Vision Green policy published online at the Green Party of Canada website.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the family and friends of Private Kevin Thomas McKay, killed in action, by an IED in Afghanistan. We will be at the Highway of Heroes to honour your repatriation.