hello i'm terry more and this is planet halliburton planet haliburton takes a critical look at the human impact on ecosystems as support all life on the planet from the climate crisis to the health of halliburton lakes and forests to how we manage human and material waste planning halliburton sees global and local perspective as two sides of the same coin we value your comments questions and suggestions so please email me at planet halliburton canoe fm dot com on this episode of planet haliburton we take a look at a green new deal like proposal for repressing the general motors ottawa plant to produce electric vehicles on september thirteenth two thousand nineteen in the middle of an election campaign with eight out of ten canadians identifying climate change as a major threat to our children and grandchildren a triple bottom line feasibility study was released and also proposing that is about to be abandoned general motors production facilities in that city be turned into a centre for green vehicle manufacturing the study was done for green jobs auschwitz and the canadian worker croat federation and the principal author was rusty christians in a co op developer from campbell fern ontario today were pleased to have rushed join us for a conversation about the green jobs osh proposal how it has been received to date and its prospects down the road it's a real pleasure to welcome a planet halliburton russ great to be here i loved the name climate however so let's start with a bit of background information about you in your work as a co op developer what exactly does cooperate web developer do in could you give us a couple of examples are the kinds of co up enterprises that you ve helped establish the asher so a lot of people in the audience might know about farm cooperate iron supply co opt out airy cooperate gaily food dairy cooperation by dairy farmers or maybe the mountain equipment cooperate retail doorway gone by out great mountaineering equipment and bicycles and kayaks etc and there are all kinds of collapsing housing cooperatives healthcare collapse child care worker collapse manufacturing collapse so basically a co op developers someone who helped start up new co op or help existing ones you know grow or develop better governance structures so basically it for me personally i really focused on the business start up part and ive helped start up i guess over two hundred collapse over thirty five years and there in all kinds of sectors so i've worked a lot with food cooperatives says about ninety of them now in ontario and their focusing on local and sustainable agriculture and direct connections between consumers and farmers some of those collapse i just regular consumer collapse like if you ever go out west there's big supermarket co opt for their consumer collapse are owned by the consumers the mountain equipment collapse like that so we ve got consumer collapse but some of these local food clubs have other membership do they have farmer members and some of them have worked remembers to so it would be called a multi stakeholder club and when we're looking at the asha plant the assembly plant which is currently owned by gm but hopefully in the future the people of canada will own that plant there's hopefully going to be some kind of democratic ownership not net fairly incorporated the cooperative business but a board of directors would have representation from the workers similar to countries like sweden and germany and denmark france they all have legislation that requires any firm over five hundred employees have workers on the board of directors so it's not just shareholders because you know shareholders clearly i'd be only stakeholder in the success of businesses so the idea here is to have them workers obviously have management people and then have from community people from the community of osh why in this case for the gm plant to have some form of democratic oversight and governance of the organization so not necessarily illegally incorporated co up under the ontario cooperative corporation backed by the canadian act but some kind of a hybrid structure potentially for the auschwitz assembly plant so you clearly have had a lot of experience with twelve and helping to develop cooperative enterprise is above all different varieties what are the key features of enterprise is built on the cooperative model that distinguishes them for enterprise is built on more traditional for profit or even not for profit models here i think that big biggest difference is that cooperatives are democratic organisation just like union labour union through democratic organizations to throw the members bodiam their leadership and they can also both their leadership out so there's actually recall in cooperatives which no one our governments sometimes would be nice to have that that was a reform party idea but you know cooperatives had that for a long time and have instilled in the club with corporations act so i think the democratic aspect is really the most significant difference because if you look at a regular corporation or shareholder company if you own a controlling share and that does not even mean fifty one percent you might have even a minority interest a twenty or twenty five percent but you have that voting block and you can often sway issues just like our first past the post system so there's also in canada something called dual clash shares where shareholders like frank strown again magna international an auto parts company controls may be fifteen or sixteen percent of the equity but he has sixty percent of the vote so that for example of your class shares them in america they eliminated that about twenty years ago but we still haven't in canada so that basically fundamentally undemocratic because you ve got people with lots of wealth who are controlling those organizations those corporations whereas with a cooperative it doesn't matter what you in vast if one member one vote so you acted by say a minimum membership share like a mountain equipment club it's a five dollar lifetime membership fee which is really nothing it's kind of token but everybody who buys a five dollar membership fee at mount equipment call up can vote and can run for the board of directors and you know that the multi million dollar organization that's basically democratically operated so we're gonna come back to this theme about public ownership of community ownership or a variety of different forms that might take but i i take it the interest in that kind of an organizational form and ownership structure would be to make it less likely for companies to be able to run away from the community's an interest in taking those jobs with them here i mean it's really the idea here is to have the organization and the business enterprise embedded in the community so that they meet a triple bottom line and you know it's not just financial i mean global capital in global corporations are really too focused on the single bottom line which is money financial the bottom line of the profit on the income statement so when we're looking at this and a cooperative they they follow a triple bottom line which includes the financially after that because otherwise you hunt in business and it also include social so making sure that meeting the needs of the community meeting the needs of the workers that there is a diversity of people on the board of directors and you know hiring is done in a fair way etc though all those kinds of social requirements and and meeting the needs of the community for good jobs and decent pay and pensions for people and then the environmental ecological bottom line too to make sure that it's not colluding in the community and am doing what it can to really increase its green operation so that you decreasing climate change gases and not using so many plastics and trying to decrease the use of fossil fuels and using more natural materials from an auto manufacturing plant is all kinds of really innovative things that have been done in terms of the engineering technology to decrease energy use and decrease climate change gases obviously battery electric vehicles are a big part of that so before we get into the details of the proposal you help put together for the gm plant in auschwitz could you give a bit of a bit of history of gmo production in that city and what the company decided to do in november of two thousand eighteen right though gm has operated and i shall offer over a hundred years it's actually a hundred and one years this year so it's been there for a long time they bought the plant from the mclaughlin family mclaughlin were pioneers in making automobile some of the first automobiles they were buggy encourage company before that so they basically you know adapted that design and made some of the first automobile so that's what gm started with they started with that plan and some of them mclaughlin went family including their original theo stayed on and work in that plant as the seal furs for the gm plant in canada for quite a few years after that and there have been many many different models of automobiles over that hundred years that gm put out and most recently in the nineties they renovated the plant and came up with what they call flexible manufacturing so they were manufacturing three different vehicles in the jam marshall plan including like sudan and then the pickup truck and another larger automobile so like not just a smallish sedan like mid sized though and there is protection of up to about two hundred and fifty thousand vehicles a year there may be more have two three hundred thousand a year in that plant and of course to production to weigh down now in closing the last pickup trucks silverado comes off the line on friday this week so how many people will be actually affected both directly and indirectly as a result of the closure this friday in what will the economic impact be on auschwitz and the surrounding region the total number of direct further job losses through the plant closure was announced in november twenty eighteen how a year ago is around five thousand job so there's around twenty five hundred direct gm employees who are working in the assembly plant and then there's another twenty five hundred people who work for various parts suppliers for gm so there's about five thousand direct job losses and then you can use an economic multiplier in math automotive industry like original manufacturing the use and economic multiplier anywhere from five to nine so the estimate that i've seen in terms of job losses around fifteen thousand do even more in terms of the surrounding community and then in terms of economic job losses in the gdp in ontario about four billion dollars a year so it is very significant because when you have manufacturing jobs that pay well about thirty five dollars an hour verses in ontario minimum wage of fourteen and then they ve got benefits and pensions and things on top of that oh it's a big big economic hit in the community was the pot what was the job tones as it did at the peak of the production and how many people around twenty three thousand people that we're working in the plant like around the mid eighties when it peak so the auto packed with something that had been negotiated between the american and canadian government and damn that was really looking at four every vehicle that with imported into canada by the big three automakers chrysler fordham gm at the time that there had to be a similar amount of vehicles produced and or exported back into the united states go over a period of time that made it big big difference in terms of the investment him original otto manufacturing and assembly in parts manufacturing in canada i guess that would have been key to building an automobile industry and ended absolutely manufacturing capacity in southern ontario sat raise every law we lost that otto pact with the free trade agreement then it's kind of in the autumn manufacturing business is going downhill since then so ten years ago gm as well as other automakers like cries learn i guess now known as the aggressor more in serious financial crisis in we're bailed out by both the u s and canadian taxpayer if i recall correctly jam received in the order of fifty billion dollars from the u s government and close to eleven billion dollars from the canadian government that was led by stephen operate the time of canadian and ontario government on terra governs correct gather yeah so how is gm doing now and worse the company in terms of paying back the money that it receives from the u s and canadian taxpayers is gonna do that that's a good question yeah i mean they're actually have been totally straight answer to that question but here's what happened both in america and canada with the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine financial collapse globally gm with bailed out like you said with fifty million u s a nasty billion u s jam fifty billion fired me and then eleven billion here in canada em out with a combination of common shares and loan so they still three billion dollars that hasn't been paid back to the taxpayers of canada from our original eleven billion the harper government thought the shares which was about fifteen to sixteen percent of the common shares in the company so that's pretty strong you know minority interests and they filled their shares about five or six years maybe seven years ago and the values gone up by two or three times since then so they sold them really at a bad time plus that they would have kept the shares that would add some leverage for anna bargaining situation to try and keep that production in canada or transfer some of their production to battery electric vehicle like we're talking about instead they have basically moved a lot of that production and investment to china and mexico on now a little bit to the united states but it's mostly and lower wage environments where their investing in new technology in building battery electric vehicle so how is gm doing these days financially doing very well i mean they made very significant profit and twenty eighteen failed with a hundred and seventy four billion dollars globally and met my mary bar other theo got paid twenty nine million dollars last year and twenty million a year before so i'd say they're doing with somebody has naturally i wonder how much value added someone contributes to an organization in order to get twenty eight or twenty nine million dollars a year question probably there's no really good rationale for that from a competition point of view like henry men's breakers there after mc gill university talk about this quite a bit and he says exit executive compensation and large corporations adjust completely out of this world and extravagant and its damaging to both the corporations and to the economy as a whole so if you ve gotta pay ratio from the lowest paid the highest paid of up to five hundred that you know in other words they theo's getting paid five hundred times more than the lowest paid person in an organization that not a healthy environment for workplace that mean even back in seventy two with maybe ten to one so it really changed a lot over the last thirty or forty years so did they leave gm plant was it targeted for closure because somehow it on the scheme of things is got lower productivity or just simply not got the output per unit nearly employer cost to justify condemn jim marshall plan one many award for both the quality of the product and the productivity so that is one of the most highly skilled workforce for audio assembly in the world there is really no rationale around you know productivity or lack of in terms of closure it really is about moving their production to lower wage jurisdictions and battery electric vehicles the chinese government is trying to grapple with one point four billion people and all the pollution and coal fired generated electricity and the trying to move towards solar but they ve got a very kind of top down autocratic government that have made the decision to invest in battery electric vehicle for about fifty five percent of the battery electric vehicles in the world are basically sold in china and gm and the other large european automakers another north american based automakers in japanese a little bit have joint ventures with the chinese government to build those vehicles in china and so were thing it s basically a transfer of manufacturing for automobiles which traditionally with american and european shifting to china for the future in terms of battery electric vehicles go back to this decision to to close down the plant in ottawa and and talk about what the union did to try to negotiate a soft landing for four laid off employees my understanding is that they ve leverage some continuing production but on a much larger a much smaller scale yeah you know i'm not i'm not involved in the union that union unit for want of canada's largest private sector union and they used to be called the canadian auto workers and the canadian autoworkers called united auto workers which is what they still called in america because when bob white with the president and thats kinda move there is the research director the canadian autoworkers separated and became an independent union from the united autoworkers from united states but now we have uniform in the letter there is jerry diet and he worked and i think the lombardy plan and also in the haglund and so he's grafter person is worked his way up into the leadership of the union i think the negotiations that uniform with looking out with their always trying to maintain what they call production allocation in plan so they wanted to ensure that end they did have an agreement in two thousand and twelve that production allocation would be maintained in the plant would maintain pretty full operation and production and that gm is they're moving towards with the new chief executive officer mary barbara and moving towards battery electric vehicles that change and the production allocation of battery electric field vehicles is not being made to the gm offshore plant is being made like i said earlier the mexico china and a little bit in the united states so the three hundred job that they're talking about i dont think people even share that there going to be three hundred jobs but it's basically a small stamping plant where they'll stamp fenders and different body parts and those of paint shop that may operate but basically they'll be making for my understandably making part four of models that are no longer being produced but that they still need parts for active service in our people's automobiles it's gonna go from five thousand jobs to three hundred if three hundred jobs are actually maintained that that question mark so in this in this context of very large lay offs with gm essentially really walking away from the vast majority of its employees and a city has been operating in four hundred years this idea of turning the former gm plant into a centre for green vehicle production gets raised where did the concept come from and how did you become involved in that kind of interesting about a year ago when the plan the announcement was made the plant closure was gonna happen simultaneously by independently both this organization called green jobs joshua that has come out of the grass roots of the auto workers union to to to the local at gm asha so basically just grassroots union members organise green jobs are sure to look at alternative to internal combustion engine production so looking at battery electric vehicles and all kinds of potential in a public transit etc not just the automobiles or individual he no cars or truck fell back as it could be ambulance who could be no emergency vehicles hydro vehicles etc so they were looking at that and how that plan could be transformed into about electric vehicle plant and at the same time they canadian worker croat federation with looking at that's the same idea and originally that's how i got involved because i work with the canadian worker croat federation of the worker co op developer and they were trying to get hold of the union through the uniform national offices and the uniform national office wasnt being responsive and we finally found a way to prevent professor at the university of toronto who knew some people at the uniform local beauty to inertia and we got connected to them and we organised a meeting in april and then we were talking about you know what the best thing we can do and what the strategy and the idea came up what we need to do a feasibility study and they asked me to do it so that's that how that unfolded so the report is called a triple bottom line thing and you did mention that before in terms of having multiple purposes are monterrey goals associated with a just besides the economic bottle line bottom what tom what is what exactly are the key components of the triple bottom line proposal and how did it tion then too to the proposal you ve come up with regarding my green or battery electric vehicle production right so you're a traditional feasibility study for a business enterprise or start up you really just looking at the financial aspects and whether or not you know it the organisation can break even with a certain period within a certain period of time what kind of capital is required to invest in the business to get it started up what kind of working capital you need so that all kinds of financial variables and things in your crunching numbers and looking at what you think might be feasible and then you looking at the markets and you know how many of these products we think it reasonable to sell and where the market how we can promote to them so all those kind of really traditional business ideas which you have to include that in the triple bottom line but we didn't want to limit ourselves just to that because we don't just want to set up another organization that is just going to try and compete in the global market that's not really the point the point is that we want to try and choke canadians that we can build what we need ourselves we need to move to a low carbon ur zero carbon energy economy in the coming decade and because of climate change and we need to look at what are the products in our country that we need to manufacture ourselves for our youth that will help us move in that direction show some leadership the men that kind of idea could be replicated in other manufacturing sectors or other sectors of the economy so we wanted to look at it from a broader point of view and not just a financial point of view like how can we compete with china mexico or you know with gm how could we compete with other auto manufacturers i mean it would be very hard to do that just on a financial basis so we wanted to look at it more broadly and the environmental benefits we wanted to put evaluation that the decreasing climb climate change gases and carbon dioxide by four hundred thousand ton over the five years for five years of operation in this organization would be a really positive thing and also the social aspects of the job creation and not hollowing out the local economy and the community of auschwitz and you know we're talking about numbers and climate change in these different concepts but when that many people get laid off in a community and lose that kind of economic impact the emotional impact on individuals and families now right at christmas happening you can imagine there's gonna be a whole lot of tears and you know people are gonna be recovering from there if they can recover for a long time like this really deep emotional wound for people and the people in russia and that communities are extremely proud of being auto workers than the quality of the product they make and we're talking five or six or more generations of people that have making but making automobiles in that city and now basically do not seem to be making anything more in terms automobile this friday so it's a huge blow to their pride and there you know emotional well being and i think that an important social aspect that we need to look at because that can have an impact on our health care costs and public health you know alcoholism all kinds of impacts that i factored into the economic equation so i think that an important social aspect to look at and then i already mentioned the environmental part so we want to put a value on not just the financial and of course that have to work in the cash will have to work but also the social and ecological impact of moving towards a manufacturing system that is both ecological social and economic so to address those kinds of non economic issues in these sort of the hollowing out of the community in the end the sort of devaluing of the skills that goes along with with closing a plant like this is where green job joshua came from my guess is out of that kind of desire to dairy that i'm are yet the more i just think of the more holistic in point of view on the economy and let you know it's not just external living usually like if you look at any economic textbook that is there still teaching economic neoclassical economic externalize the social cost the health costs and the environmental costs and companies don't pay for those right they re society pay for them and so that's not in their incomes david their balance sheet and accounts don't measure that stuff so that's what we're trying to do we are measuring it could in the end what you measures what becomes important so we want to make sure that we do have measurements for that so we can show hey not only is this place gonna now break even within the first four years it's also going to create these battery electric vehicles arrogant decrease climate change gases and going to create good jobs for people in the community so that the community can be held here the people are gonna be on a much better in a frame of mind i'll be able to keep their homes and stay in the community and the community won't be hollowed out like you said earlier so let us focus a bit on the on the business plan side of things and when you did the feasibility study you can install a numbers in and you took a look at market share and all this kind of stuff and and then you came up with a couple of options in terms of the business plan what are the essential elements of that business plan what what conclusions did you come to hear it what's that would be really interesting axis guys like you said crunching the numbers i did twenty four version the spreadsheet had read these image you ve got bigger and bigger court so it s really interesting distorted them aside because we really feasibility study publicly during the election campaign on september thirteenth we got a lot of media coverage we had coverage in the national media through bbc television and radio we had average from the toronto star and other newspapers global news local more local at breakfast television and city tv etc and basically there with no criticism of our calculations so that that i was expecting somebody to dig into the numbers and say well that doesn't make sense or you know those margins are wrong or that expansive that wage rate there's no way you can do that and that doesn't add up you know i've expecting something like that but we did our calculations really carefully we check them over many times like i said we did twenty four versions of the spreadsheet so in the end we haven't had any questions about our numbers at all nothing so that really interesting to me so in terms of a key components we had to look at thirty two or three key components go number one there are still three billion dollars with outstanding that hasn't been paid back to the taxpayers of canada so that a potential in a way that the canadian government could go back to gm and say look like this plan even even valued anywhere close to that we're gonna take this plant overcoat you haven't paid us alone right though that there may be that could be a potential negotiating position of the canadian government to take they could pay won't look we're not gonna pay anything for the plant we're just gonna fix it planet because you haven't paid our alone just like any banquet lazier a farmer and you don't pay your loan the bank this is your property so you know it's the same idea what we did is we looked at the enterprise value of gm asha based on their global operations in their operations in canada and came up with a range of value from about one point two to one point four billion and that would be to the fore ten million square foot plant in the five hectares of land that its on so basically we take the whole plant over and then we were looking at somewhere in the range of four hundred to five hundred million dollars to do the redo the assembly plant make battery electric vehicles like a lot of the equipment is in there now can be used because battery electric vehicles have bodies and chaff even things like that but of course battery electric vehicles are actually simply to make they don't have all the moving part though there is no direct engine like electric engines on the wheels ratan having transmission and now all the complications of an internal combustion engine and all the oil changes need to be made etc like they just too much simply vehicle and they ve been around for a hundred years to like battery eclectic electric vehicles are in a new idea what's really change the equation is the batteries themselves because there are a lot more efficient they last much longer in their cheaper to make though that have traditionally been the major barrier for electric vehicles is just the cost of the battery so that's been a big big difference that public investment is a big part of it like basically this is not going to happen unless the canadian government makes a decision that you know this is worth investing in like they made the decision last year to invest in the terms mountain pipeline through that four point five billion through we're not even close to that amount of money and we feel that this is really adding value in moving us in the right direction in terms of decreasing climate change gases worth the transvaal pipeline is basically in cleaning the opposition movement the tar sands in alberta and i call it the tar sands myself because i grew up in alberta that's what we always called it now bertha they ve changed the name to the oil sands make it sound better it gets really of tar like that if more descriptive so that the whole aspect of the public investment important component and then we looked at government procurement so we have all kinds of fleet vehicles that the federal presidential and municipal governments have an use every day so for example canada post has about fifteen thousand vehicles on the road its single largest fleet of vehicles in canada the canadian union postal workers have had a proposal on the table since twenty eleven regarding shifting the fleet the battery electric vehicle so we could use government procurement to help this plant in terms of some of its initial fail for the first year of production we're looking at eight thousand vehicles producing ether vehicles and they would all be purchased by government procurement through government procurement so the federal government a bit from the ontario government like ontario hydro and o p e g in and then municipal government have police forces in ambulances and other vehicles that neil parks and recreation etc that they could transform over to battery electric vehicle for the whole idea around government procurement of these vehicles is a really important part especially in the first start up phase we're looking at time by the end of five years that the canadian government fleet would be about fifty percent battery electric vehicles the ontario government fleet would be about thirty percent and the municipal fleets and the largest municipalities in ontario would be thirty percent so our financial forecasts based on that kind of government procurement and fails to private companies fleets etc because there's not enough government procurement in canada alone to support the volume that we need to get to to break even and make a small profit for the plant so that that's the direction that we're moving and however what's really important in the beginning is that government procurement to get it off the ground to get the operation moving so in year one we start out with a thousand vehicles off the line that doubles basically every year to year five we're looking at fifty six thousand vehicles so i mean this would be a way for governments not only to invest in in in maintaining a manufacturing sector within ontario i mean this as being a bit this is a big head to the manufacturing sector suddenly away to reinvest in that while at the same time helping to meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets from the paris climate for which there are challenged to do either not meeting those targets and tat we're losing all its manufacturing capacity and is not just about asha and it's not just about battery electric vehicles it's about all kinds of different manufacturing and you know what can we do and in our country in terms of rebuilding some of those manufacturing bases and instead of building know old products build the products that we need for the future for a green economy like that basically the fundamental idea instead of importing them exporting our you know the old canadian thing right of exporting our raw materials and resources and importing finnish good like let's make them here we have the ironic thanked me is gm obviously and all kinds of other car companies have the technology like this is not this is a completely proven technology is not experimental they're just basically delaying the production about electric vehicles until there's bigger government subsidies so that gets cut off their price that they actually make the money on that in the end they really get the subsidies not the consumers and because they make a huge margin on pickup trucks and suvs which are seventy seven percent of vehicle sales private vehicle filled with canada last year are pickup trucks and if they make a huge margin profit margin on those vehicles so they don't want to stop that gravy train and the governments letting them get away with it and in ontario after the greenhouse gases come from transportation we don't make some headway in the transportation second we're we're gonna we're not were simply not going to meet those targets not played not play of our fair rule in in dealing with the climate crisis and it seems to me that the government is leaving it up to the so called free market rain exacting than you know actually making some kind of a significant stand like they they took a stand and purchased the transit pipeline i guess awaited somehow you know make people in alberta and the large oil companies and fossil fuel companies feel better about the liberal party or something but you know that is completely the wrong direction to move in and we had five hundred thousand people demonstrating during the election in the city of montreal one thousand people across the country indifferent theories about the climate strike and i mean that's a pretty strong message but i'm not sure the politician they listening so you announced the the the details of this triple bottom line report during the election campaign and just one question about the both the studies are we surprised when you did the analysis that dumb that manufacturing of electric vehicles and actual could be turned out to be done in such an economically viable fashion put great question i am laughing because honestly when we were talking about this a year ago i was extremely sceptical i ve gone me i don't know like i'm i'm not sure that's gonna work i mean the only way you ever know a few crunch the numbers and so when we started doing that and looking at the procurement market from different levels government and their size of their fleet and you know really digging into the detail it started to become clear that you know what this is possible and some people might come back and say well an assembly plant like that has to have two hundred thousand vehicles rolling off the line every year otherwise is not economically viable but what were showing is that well it's actually economically viable at around forty five thousand vehicles per year so there are those numbers are actually comparable because they're looking at also getting a certain return on investment that meets our capital requirement shareholders on the stock exchange and what we're thing is it may we can actually make money and meet our other criteria around good job creation and decreasing climate change gases while making a profit its if not twenty percent return on investment you mentioned during the election can when you drop the study during the election campaign the considerable interest from the news media was there much interest from the political parties that i think all the political parties there was a challenge because you know it's all kind of message is happening during a political campaign including treat old black face shamardal and all that stuff and andrew share what they really insurance broker with the justice system and you know he collected at twenty five for the first time fill thought like you really had a career before that in the private sector so there's all kinds the message is going on it's hard to break through on that but we did have a really great community meeting in ottawa on september nineteen and just about a week after we release the study and there was ninety two hundred people their community people auto workers retired autoworkers municipal politicians provincial politician federal candidate so i think that in russia for obvious reasons it had more leg than you know in the national campaign could have so many other issues going on however we did get the study into the hands of the anti p leader and the chief of staff of the end bp and their supportive of it and you will notice that i think just last week the ftp introduced a motion in the house comments about the green new deal so this is part of the green new deal but i think what really intriguing the people on the reason we're still talking about the study that it's not just a theoretical idea it's a very concrete it's got all the numbers talks about the number of vehicles how many jobs what kind of investment required what the decrease in greenhouse gases like it's all been measured and quantified in its real like this is completely doable and it's not just the sort of motherhood statement about a green new deal the last friday there was a meeting with the canadian locked labour congress brought together a whole bunch of researchers from across ontario from different unions and different communities to talk about this feasibility study and to talk about other things too like sidewalk labs in toronto and things like that and just thirty new technology and disruptive technology and the canadian union postal workers researcher had researcher was there and he just felt that the study was brilliant because it makes it very concrete nets it very clear example about what could be done what we can do if we have the political will and i think that in that point about the political will and i in a just to emphasize what you ve already mentioned and emphasizes that you know the federalism buys the pipeline the ten or morning can hinder morgan pipeline for four point five billion and god knows how much more monies can happy put into it nor to get an operational quite that island the apparently they're gonna put the blame the shovels in the ground this week or some time before christmas and there's also they ve been given they given about a billion dollars away in cleaner in clean attack and innovation grants and loans including one to fear cries or i'm told four eighty six million dollars not as though they are not investing in the energy sector also among my question by billions of dollars of your leg than recap subsidies of one kind or another yes right so i i i understand that near the from today's perspective his his commitment to the pipeline was was the price of at least as he describes the price he had to pay in order to get the pan canadian climate change plan which was supposed to provide in the key element of which was the carbon tax and then and then medium many of the provinces that did supported in it up in the backing away from it but what my question is whether or not the truth oh government now has expressed any interest to be heard from these guys at all from the government about whether not they're interested in looking at this in any way shape or form now we haven't heard from them and i think part of the challenges you know what the union too with uniform in the current national leadership with cherry diet i mean they support the liberal party and now we haven't even we ve had some discussion with the local in our political action committee from u uniform two to two local in inertia there's been some discussion with can bind the like sustainability environmental officers national staff person for that but in terms of actual decision making power and you know he doesn't he he'd have not much power so it's gotta happen at executive level and at this point they haven't talked to us they don't appear to be that open they ve taken a position that where you ve kept their foot in the door by keeping of three hundred jobs were hoping there's gonna be more jobs will be created in the future so i think that you know the position of uniform and it would be great if they embraced this position they have passed a resolution at there national convention to support a green new deal but again that mother but they haven't come out specifically to say we really support the feasibility study to transfer the technology to the asha assembly plant make battery electric vehicle so yeah we ve got some significant political barriers that as you mentioned the proposal seems to me anyway to sit right into the type of development that is called for in green new deal type action on climate change and economic justice issues that has meant no just about everybody now seems to be at least paying rhetorical support or giving rhetorical support for including a provision for just transition to assist workers in communities that are affected by a move toward a lower carbon and low carbon society so economy so that gm is easiest is justifying the closure there because they're moving to green production they just want to move the production facilities to mexico to china that right and so i guess the question is who is going to stand up for the communities in canada in owen and support this because of the federal government has also extending its support for not just the tar sands but the liquefied natural gas expansion the pipeline to support that northern bc and and so on so it will be interesting to see whether or not the pressure from the community and from other organizations that like this idea as to whether or not we can get the liberal government on side with this i really think that the key like there is a lot of grassroots support and growing grassroots support in ottawa and now with plant closure there can be a lot more autoworkers you know who are going to be wondering okay now what am i gonna do and you know let's put some support in our action behind a feasibility study so there's that aspect and then the broader community em local politician i think the ontario government you know it's a bit of a barrier to because they cut the subsidies to electric vehicles they ripped out my electric vehicle charging stations that the taxpayer is paid to put in some go train station's etc so they're kind of moving in the opposite direction that we need to but when it comes to the people in canada you know when you ve got sixty seven percent of people in different opinion polls saying that they support the green new deal and part of that green new deal is actually increasing taxation on large corporations and closing tax loopholes and tax havens as wealthy people are hiding their money in swirling their money away and then you know that two thirds of the population and that's right across different political straight to convey our concern people are concerned about their children and grandchildren as they should be and you see you know young people taking leadership really like i don't know when they ever done that before i dont remember that in my lifetime that kind of leadership on the climate strikes on friday afternoon not going to like we're talking about high school students and even younger kids it's amazing well known that grassroots action is really what's gonna put the pressure on the politicians we really have to continue to build that honours the extinction rebellion this all kinds of different grass roots movements that are happening that are growing very rapidly around the issue of the climate crisis so we just got a minute or two here left i just want to get your sense of where do you think the proposals gonna go for hearing i was a phased one feasibility study sir his face to do this and do you think that their strong enough support locally that you can move that you can move this thing forward yeah so basically what we really need to do is to a fully comprehensive business plan i think that would be the next step originally we thought okay what will do this preliminary feasibility study men will do you know a feasibility study a man of business plan but i think we can scale to the next stage which is the full business plan and in order to get the money to do that and you know get the kind of expertise and engineering and consulting and political advice etc that's gonna be probably around three hundred thousand dollar job to do that so we need the support of the federal government to do that so the atmospheric find that operate these be called the toronto em for not just the atmospheric fine cause they expanded their area to hamilton as well as greater toronto area end durham region so the asha plants and durham region and we put a grant application into the atmosphere trying to help us move forward and try and get the federal government support support next step which would be doing okay so one thing i wanted to mention before we go is that you're gonna be in halliburton naturally on february the eleventh annual report that europe will however be held for four eight enviro cafe presentation on this green new deal idea for actual at the at the invitation of armand haliburton so we'll put some information with respect to the study plus all that and the and the coming event in february upon the planet haliburton website and encourage people to have a look at that and to join us for further discussion so i want to thank you for taking the time to you with us today was really great i end this this this is adding some meat the bones of this green new deal idea this if there ever was an idea that fit that more this is it thanks a lot it it's been a pleasure today and i really think it just help people see that we do have a pathway into the future that we there's no reason to give up like yeah it's hard to create anxiety climate the climate crisis but there are positive pathways and we can make it happen grades so thank you once again for taking the time to be with us tonight thanks jerry who can see you in february ok take care but i thank you for listening and just a reminder the planet hellburners broadcasts on the second last monday's of each month from seven to eight p m and reared on the following saturday's between seven and eight a m ass episodes can be streamed off the website or found in all major podcast platforms such as itunes google play and spotify just a few words about planet halliburton theme song is called gratis on i want you to panicked by the sweet genes one thank karen and jelly co authors of this peace for their wonderful tribute to wear the timber and their agreement to let us use it as the theme song for planet haliburton s greatest song i want you to panic and that's available through a link on our website and on our podcast thank you for joining us