Canada's Green leader, and the MP for Saanich and the Gulf Islands calls the Prime Minister's transit announcement in Victoria yesterday "an opportunity to choose a no-carbon solution squandered."
Elizabeth May calls out Justin Trudeau's announcement about a $79-million joint federal-provincial-municipal commitment to buy to buy 'cleaner' buses.
May says out of 118 new promised buses -- only 10 will be electric, another 26 will run on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
While Trudeau called the announcement good for the environment, May says CNG is a fossil fuel and burning it produces greenhouse gases. She adds worse still, it's produced by fracking, which pollutes water, causes earthquakes and sends methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
May says the Green Party's Climate Action Plan -- dubbed " Mission Possible" -- calls for all new cars to be electric by 2030, and for all internal combustion engine vehicles to be phased out by 2040.
And David Merner, Green Party candidate for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, adds "we have less than 10 years to fundamentally change the direction of public transit in Canada. What do our leaders do? They invest millions of dollars in buses that run on fracked gas and fossil fuels. It's almost unbelievable."
May says China boasts a fleet of about 421,000 electric buses, but as othewr countries move forward with fleets of electric buses, here in Canada it's business as usual, which isn't good enough.