NDP would strengthen Arctic sovereignty

On the heels of NDP Leader Jack Layton's pitch to Canadian voters in Toronto on Sunday, Ken Bolton, the Yukon's federal NDP candidate, presented the party's platform to local media this morning at his campaign headquarters in Whitehorse.

On the heels of NDP Leader Jack Layton’s pitch to Canadian voters in Toronto on Sunday, Ken Bolton, the Yukon’s federal NDP candidate, presented the party’s platform to local media this morning at his campaign headquarters in Whitehorse.

“This is the first time a national party has put out separate platforms for issues facing northern families and aboriginal people,“ said Bolton.

In the party’s Platform for Canada’s North and Aboriginal Platform, the NDP promises to conclude outstanding land claims, implement those already settled, spend more on northern infrastructure and finance a Northern Development Agency.

Bolton said asserting Arctic sovereignty would take more than a bolstered military presence. He vowed the NDP would increase RCMP, fisheries and environmental protection officers stationed in the North.

The sad state of salmon stocks in the Yukon River and protection of the Porcupine caribou herd were also touchstones.

“I will not be afraid to pick up the phone to the governor of Alaska to make it clear our position (against drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge),“ Bolton said.

From a national perspective, the NDP platform includes more than $50 billion in spending over four years that would be paid for through a $50 billion increase in corporate taxes.

Amid NDP supporters gathered in Toronto’s Bathurst subway station Sunday afternoon, Layton promised to restore 2007 corporate tax levels, raising the current rate from 19.5 per cent to 22.12 per cent, and erase the Conservatives’ plan to reduce corporate taxes to 15 per cent by 2012.

“That fear is very much a right-wing generated fear,“ Bolton said when asked if there was concern the NDP tack on corporate taxes would drive manufacturing and other industry-related jobs to countries with lower rates.

“We’re not going to give handouts to banks and oil companies that don’t need it,“ he added.

If the NDP formed the government following Oct. 14’s general election, each child 18 and under would receive $5,000 per year and more than 500,000 child care spaces would be created over four years.

As well, spending on post secondary education would, among other things, be aimed at raising the number of doctors and nurses in Canada by 50 per cent. The NDP has also promised a $1,000 annual grant for undergraduate students.

Layton has also pledged $1 billion a year for five years to improve the lot of aboriginal people and has promised to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

“The ($5 billion) would meet all the objectives of the Kelowna Accord,“ Bolton said of the 2005 agreement among federal, provincial, territorial and aboriginal leaders that the Conservatives failed to implement after winning a minority government in January 2006.

Bolton also suggested Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s interest in the North is merely fair-weather.

“Jack Layton would be a prime minister that knows and loves the North,“ he said.

“The last time Harper was here (in the Yukon) he left before he even had supper.“

Layton and his wife, Olivia Chow, did a river trip in the Yukon this past summer.

The prime minister made a brief foray into Dawson City by air from the Northwest Territories late last month.