This is one of the 26 segments of Guy Dauncey’s Climate Emergency: A 26-Week Transition Program for Canada. Excerpted by permission.
We will develop a Green New Deal in partnership with business, labour unions, First Nations and non-profit societies to manage Canada’s 20-year transition off fossil fuels in a planned, coordinated manner.
Through programs to be announced over the next six months we will assist in the development of a million new green jobs over the next 20 years. Our challenge will not be finding sufficient training and jobs for the displaced fossil fuel workers, but finding and training sufficient workers to take all the new jobs that will be created by the transition.
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We will extend the work of the Task Force on Just Transition for Coal Workers and Communities to include all fossil fuel, forestry and agro-industrial workers whose jobs will disappear because of the transition, and we will enact a Just Transition Act to protect them financially with a two-year Transition Wages Guarantee averaging $50,000 a year, and with job placement assistance, free college education and business or cooperative start-up support. Canada has 250,000 direct jobs in fossil fuels, so the 20-year transition will affect an average of 12,500 jobs a year. At $50,000 per affected worker per year, plus relocation costs, the cost is estimated at $1.5 billion a year. Cost: $1.5 billion per year.
To operate and administer the Transition Wages Guarantee and other initiatives to be announced in the coming months, federal and related organizations will hire up to 1,000 additional staff. Cost: 1,000 new staff @ $50,000 = $50 million per year.
