Hello everyone, today I am not Jordyn, the grade 12 blog post writer for My Dog Ate My Blog. Today, I am a member of the Ubiquitous party of Canada or the UPC. You are probably wondering why you have never heard of this party and that is probably because it doesn’t actually exist, it is a party my group (Alex V, Alex O, Meg, Liam, and I) are in the process of designing, publishing and campaigning for our PLP Humanities class. You may recall my last blog post, Election Reflection, where I focused on the results of the Canadian Federal election in September which I am mentioning because that is what forced me to think about what I would want in a government and what other Canadians would want in a government. So I was wondering, “Could I do better?” That is the name of this entire project so I’m not actually sure about that as I have no experience in politics whatsoever and not too much knowledge in that field but I am working on it so we will see how it goes and I’m sure it will be reflected in the final product. For right now, I will share with you the press release we created to explain what makes us unique and why you should choose us, the Ubiquitous Party of Canada (all hypothetical of course)!

OUR PRESS RELEASE

All right! So let’s start by covering the name. The dictionary definition of “Ubiquitous” is “present, appearing, and found everywhere.” The reason we chose this name is because we are everywhere at once, watching you all the time mwa hahahaahahah! Just kidding, that is not at all why we named ourselves that. It is because we pull from many different ideologies from across the political spectrum making a kind of mish mash of different ideas hence the use of “Ubiquitous.” Now that we have the name covered, let’s take a look at the colour. Although brown maybe an ugly colour to some, to us (and this website) brown is the colour of resilience, dependability, security and safety. As a political party, we hope to be all of those things! But I am sure that is what most, if not all political parties try to do so what makes us different?

WHY ARE WE SPECIAL?

As I wrote about in my Election Reflection, the pandemic as well as many “wedge” issues, have created a divide in the country more than we have ever seen. Maybe not necessarily more of a division, but deeper divisions in the same place they were before. It is very clear that Canada wants parties to collaborate, we want different ideologies and different platform ideas to be mixed which is why we elected another minority government. We are different than other parties because we are trying to take the best assets, goals, and plans from both sides of the political spectrum, from the two most prominent parties in Canada, the Liberals and the Conservatives which are what create our minority government. Here are a couple of our platform pieces that support this idea of a party ideology that stretches across the political spectrum.

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

This is an idea that has been circulating throughout global and Canadian politics and economics for a while now. Time is of the essence as COVID and automation are both creating changes in careers, wage, and the overall economy and deficit we are in as a country. UBI has many benefits but to name a few: Basic income has the potential to boost business activity and entrepreneurship, grow Canadas economy, create jobs, reduce poverty, recreate a middle wage rather than there just being extremely high and extremely low, etc. Candidates and representatives from all parties are in favour, showing it stretches across the political scale. There are several ways that UBI can be paid for, the most interesting personally being taxing environmental degradation which I am excited to look into more.

INVESTMENT IN RENEWABLE ENERGY

The most rapid renewable energy job growth has come from solar and wind sectors which we want to implement as a source of clean energy and a source of employment. We know we want to invest on solar power and do more research into wind power.

INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION IN GOVERNMENT

A way that we can give the first peoples of Canada a voice in decision making is by giving about 15 communities seats in parliament. 5% of Canadians are indigenous, therefore, people from our First Nations communities would have about 15 seats in parliament. Truth and Reconciliation and completing the 94 calls to action are a large part of the Ubiquitous Party of Canada platform and we believe the best way to do this is by giving our first peoples a voice.

TWO-TIERED HEALTHCARE

To create an incentive for more healthcare workers as well as the option for accelerated healthcare, we would like to implement a two tiered healthcare system. Personally, this sis not something I am super versed in so I am excited to learn more.

In the most recent federal election, the citizens of Canada gave the government a clear mandate to work with other parties, to build a government on multiple platforms and ideologies by voting in another minority government. This is something I mentioned in my election reflection and what inspired me to create a party that includes both conservative and liberal ideologies and beliefs. On top of that we want to focus on working with and negotiating with other parties in our system to get a wide variety of platforms and values as well as input on our plans and goals for the future. If you want a party that is considers all ideas and all people, a party that is ubiquitous, then choose us. The Ubiquitous party of Canada.