Erica Charlton, the Green Party candidate in Bay of Quinte riding, makes it clear there is an enormous amount of work to be done to reverse the effects of climate change in Ontario.
It will be expensive, but the cost of the status quo is not something we want to contemplate, she warned.
“It’s going to take a considerable amount of effort from everybody,” said Charlton of transitioning to a sustainable future. “I think that’s part of the Green Party that makes us one of the most ambitious parties is that understanding that this transition is not going to be easy. It’s going to take a lot of work. But the reward of that work is what keeps us going,” said Charlton.
“Because having a viable future isn’t an option. It’s going to be costly to rebuilt, to retrofit, to transition workers from fossil fuel and non-environmentally friendly industries into new ones. It’s all going to cost a lot of money. But, at the end of the day, what we cannot buy our way out of is the effects of the climate crisis. Regardless of how much money we save by not transitioning to an electric transport system now, we won’t be able to just purchase a new environment in the future if things go south in the way that they’re prospected to,” she continued.
Charlton grew up in Prince Edward County where she attended Prince Edward Collegiate Institute in Picton and later attended Carleton University in Ottawa where she earned degrees in law and psychology. She worked for a number of years with wireless company Glentel as a retail manager and also worked as a volunteer at radio station CKCU.
The mother of one moved back to Prince Edward County and has transitioned to a career in the IT field while earning a diploma in health informatics technology.
Charlton is no stranger to politics, running for the Greens in Bay of Quinte riding in the last federal election in 2021. She is now bringing her energies to provincial politics for the Greens. She entered the political realm to work toward a sustainable future for her son and future generations.
“I specifically joined the Green Party because I want to be able to look at my son in the face and say that I’ve done everything I could to ensure a viable future for him. When I came back to the area I realized the effects of climate change have already approached here. I want my son to be able to grow up with the same opportunities that I did,” said Charlton.
She noted the Green Party is serious about climate change noting the other parties, including the incumbent Progressive Conservatives, “aren’t creating new solutions to old and existing problems that we have.
“But, the Green Party out of all of the parties as I see it is one that bases their values and bases their policies on science and what scientists have said and what research has been done in certain areas to come up with the best solutions.”
The election issues in Ontario in general and the Bay of Quinte riding in particular are the climate crisis, health care — specifically mental health — affordable housing and creating new housing opportunities for constituents, said Charlton.
She explained all these priorities can have integrated solutions by solving them concurrently.
“Being on wait lists for mental health services doesn’t solve problems, we have to reduce the wait time for our constituents. Part of our housing crisis affects our mental health situation as well. Getting the government to sit back at the table to look for co-op, and co-housing opportunities to get people into supportive housing situations. A lot of our homelessness is reflective of our inability to take care of mental health situations in Ontario as well.”
Charlton said the Green Party is committed to reducing urban sprawl by creating new housing and retrofitting current housing to make it more energy efficient within the framework of current infrastructure. She noted the Green Party would work toward compacting the density within urban areas and developing brown space that already exists in these areas.
“Developing within the city that people can access by foot, by bike or within a 15-minute transit ride. These are the kinds of things that are going to reduce our carbon emissions. As well as reducing heat emissions from our buildings, stopping the sprawl, which includes putting up highways through greenbelts,” said Charlton in a broadside at Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, whose government plans to build a highway to cottage country through environmentally sensitive areas.
Moreover, the Green Party in Ontario favours providing subsidies for citizens to purchase electric vehicles as well as the complete electrification of public transit, all designed to reduce the carbon footprint.
Charlton and the Green Party believe that when sustainable communities, including affordable transit, are developed it will save time and money for everyone, which is especially relevant in the current economic climate where costs for families have gone up significantly.
“We want to create communities that people can walk within. An issue we are having right now in terms of affordability is cost of transit. Our transit system within the Bay of Quinte is okay, but it’s not great. It doesn’t access rural areas and it doesn’t extend beyond the borders of Belleville. But, that’s where we’re having new developments, new communities built. So with creating a more dense environment where we have more buildings and more units, we will reduce not only the amount of time travelling, which is costly and the time of travelling itself costs people money as well, give people more opportunities to have reliable transit that’s closer to work, creating more daycare spots, putting up buildings that are not only residential units, but have lower-level day care and business opportunities as well. Just reducing the amount of time that people take to get to and from work, increasing their opportunity to get to and from work, having more housing opportunities for them as well, will reduce the overall costs of what they’re looking at and create a better quality of life at the same time,” she said.
Protecting farmland and wetlands in the province from the effects of urban sprawl are also key to lessening the effects of climate change, said Charlton. A recent Ontario Federation of Agriculture analysis found Ontario is losing farmland at a rate of 70 hectares each day, which translates to the equivalent of five family farms each week between 1996 and 2016.
“We need to prevent urban sprawl that is taking over our farmlands and our wetlands that are creating less biodiversity within our environments. There are things that are going to help us to mitigate the worst effects of climate change that are already here, our wetlands clean our water and save us from flooding,” said Charlton.
The Green Party also plans to invest in health care to keep it in the public domain as well as to invest in keeping seniors in their homes longer, said Charlton. In terms of long-term care, the goal is to phase out for-profit care homes in the future and revert them back into the public realm.
“As we saw during the pandemic our private solutions for long-term care was one of worst hit. There were significant holes,” said Charlton.
Charlton said the Green Party has the ambition and the leadership to be an agent of change that will bring a better, more sustainable quality of life to all Ontarians, including those in the Bay of Quinte riding.
“Right now more than ever we need leadership, we need people that are going to take our values to Queen’s Park and stand up for them. Right now we have (Green Party leader) Mike Schreiner who as a single MPP has done amazing work that should be inspiring for all us to know that it only takes one person and one amount of effort collectively to make change happen. And that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to build a better quality of life for the Bay of Quinte and we’re going to be leaders in the climate crisis in innovation and progress,” said Charlton.
(Written by: Alan Rivett)
