Canadian Future Party policies coming out of the convention

Disclaimers: (1) I’m not an official party spokesperson, just a random member making a post, (2) these are my own summaries/commentary, not the actual resolution language, (3) if the below summaries disagree with whatever the party puts on the website, the website will be more accurate.

If you’ve been to the Canadian Future Party website recently, you may have noticed that its policies are a bit vague. That was on purpose: until its first convention was held, the party couldn’t give too many specifics.

Well, this weekend the party finally had its founding convention, and, among other things, has passed a number of policy resolutions. To do this, all 108 attendees sat down in one room, reviewed the policy resolutions, debated the amendments, and voted on what to adopt and what not to. As you may imagine, the process wasn’t quick, and there was more than one speech going off on a tangent. I’ve been told that this is normal for party conventions. That said, though we didn’t get through the entire agenda, I think we have enough.

So here are the policies that came out of the convention.

(I’ve also added more commentary in brackets like this; anything in brackets is not an adopted policy, just the observations I had.)

Adopted policies

Housing:

  • CMHC should start directly funding housing construction.
  • Directly address the government’s housing needs for its employees, military, and members of parliament.
  • Continue investment into the intergovernmental coordination for housing development and the housing design catalogue.
  • Create federal immigration streams for tradespeople and other construction-related fields facing shortages.
  • Fund specific projects that test new technologies that would allow faster/more efficient construction.

Temporary immigration:
(Note: Before the recent Liberal government reductions, there likely would have been something about reducing the target levels; given the recent reductions, this focuses more on dealing with other problems)

  • Set per-province temporary immigration targets (to better match the provincial capacity to absorb them)
  • Focus temporary immigration more on the occupations with structural labor shortages.
  • Reallocate/retrain civil servants to clear the backlog for fraud checks, asylum evaluations, admissibility evaluations, and deportations.
  • Limit post-graduation work permits for regulated professions, shortage fields, and PhD-level graduates.
  • Find a pathway to allow seasonal temporary workers to eventually become permanent residents.

Cost of living

  • Remove the existing protections for telecom, transport, agricultural, and a number of other industries to encourage more competition.
    • Though keep the competition restricted to countries that have equivalent employment/environmental/etc regulations.
    • This should be done within two years of forming the government.
  • (Not an official policy, but there was also a substantial anti-monopoly/anti-oligopoly tone to the discussion on this topic)

Electoral reform

  • Adopt a mixed-member proportional system within the first term.
    • Keep the existing ridings, but give each province up to 25% additional “proportional” members of parliament. These will be appointed by the parties from the party lists.

Tax reform

  • Set up a royal commission to reform and simplify the tax code. The commission will report its findings within 18 months and there must be a concrete legislation in front of the parliament within 3 years.
  • Any changes have to keep progressive taxation, make sure that everyone pays their fair share, and that the businesses stay competitive.

Responsible spending

  • Review all tax credits, social policies, subsidies, grants, and contribution programs. Drop anything that doesn’t deliver the promised benefits; simplify others where it makes sense.
  • Overhaul the government procurement to be the most transparent and efficient in the G20.
    • This should be done within two years of taking office.
    • (Not a policy, but there was also some discussion on over-reliance on external consultants)

Indigenous relations

  • Build a framework to resolve all territorial claims within 10 years. (There was discussion to do this within 5 years, but it was decided to be likely implausible given the large number of First Nations communities)
    • This framework should be based on the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
    • Once the claims are resolved, there will no longer be a need for the Indian Act and it can be repealed.

Healthcare: (In practice, most of healthcare is primarily in the provincial jurisdiction, but the federal government can still do a few things).

  • Work with provinces to create a national licensing or equivalence regime for healthcare professions; work to set up mutual recognition agreements for healthcare professions with other countries that have equivalent standards.
  • More federal funding to increase the number of residencies for internationally trained doctors.
  • Reduce administrative burden on family doctors by removing unnecessary federal health forms; compensate the doctors for filling out the remaining federal forms.

Defense policy

  • Raise the defense spending to ≥2% of GDP within four years of forming the government.
    • This will meet our existing NATO obligations.
  • Acquire a fleet of modern submarines
  • Improve defense procurement

Social positioning

  • (Not a policy, but Dominic Cardy and a number of attendees have expressed a strong support for LGBT+ rights, abortion rights, and medically assisted dying.)

If you like these policies, consider joining the party to help us turn them into reality. The party is still new, and we need a ton of volunteers to do various tasks to help us get elected.

If you think the policies could use more details, join the party and volunteer for one of the policy working groups.

If you that think an important policy is missing from the list, join the party and submit a policy proposal. Though (from personal experience) be prepared to do some homework when filling out the policy proposal form.

Policies we didn’t get to

There were a number of other policies that we didn’t get to discuss because we ran out of time. Here are a few of those that I’m hoping will somehow find a way into election-day list:

Public safety

  • Make sure that national public safety organizations have enough funding and resources.
  • Review/improve criminal laws and the justice processes to make them more effective.
  • (I also had an interesting discussion with a retired Ontario Superior Court judge at my table about the lack of resources in the justice system and the need for bail reform. Did you know that some court cases can take years to be heard?)

Environment

  • Remove the fuel carbon tax but lean into the industrial carbon tax for large polluters.
  • Promote nuclear power
  • Fund strategic infrastructure for emissions reductions for buildings, electricity, transportation

Research and development incentives

  • Set up prizes for important innovations in science, industrial fields, and social science.
    • These are largely inspired by the X-Prize and other similar prizes.

National defense

  • Rebuild domestic defense industrial base.
  • Take active steps to better defend the arctic
  • Full review of foreign affairs and defense policy

Foreign policy

  • Negotiate trade and security agreements only with the countries that uphold human rights
  • Renegotiate trade agreements with countries that don’t
    • Add 0.25% “Autocrat Tax”
  • Try to set up an “Alliance of Democracies” to better oppose the growing power of the autocratic states.