Interim Green leader here on a `reconnection' tour
Kuttner's town hall in Windsor sets stage for visits to communities across Canada
The interim leader of the Green Party of Canada will be asking a key question on a cross-canada tour reconnecting with party members this spring: What does it mean to live a fulfilled life, and how do we achieve that?
“We need to be focusing on how to how to live better with one another,” said Amita Kuttner, interim leader of the federal Greens since November 2021.
“What does it mean to have a fulfilling life and how do we get to a place where communities are stable and self-sufficient, so that everybody has food security, water security, health, shelter, and is provided for in a way that we kind of reconnect?”
Kuttner kicked off the party's “Reconnection Tour” with a town hall in Windsor Wednesday night, hoping to connect with party members and the community in rebuilding the party and preparing for the next federal election.
Kuttner said a few issues key to Windsor — the future of the auto sector, automation and climate change — touch on themes could be seen as central to the party as a whole.
“So I would like, and I think the focus for the Green Party is about, community strength, community building,” Kuttner said. “This isn't dependent on if we have industries that are shifting, but the people that are in those industries are not left out in the cold.”
Kuttner suggested the changing nature of the auto industry — especially related to climate change — is an opportunity for transition and job creation, and a chance to build the Canadian manufacturing while having workers as a central part of the transition process.
Kuttner's tour, over the course of the next four months, will move across Canada in a bid to reconnect with members ahead of the next federal election.
While the Green Party has not had a stronghold in the Windsor region, Kuttner said the party has the greatest success where its candidates are community leaders — part of the inspiration for the cross-country tour.
“Greens succeed where we've done the work at the community level, so that the MPS that we've elected have been community leaders in their own right,” Kuttner said.
“I'm hoping that people get invigorated to organize locally and actually just start with helping to solve local issues as they come up and then be worthy of election.”
And as for the question of living a fulfilled life? It's a weighty one — but Kuttner said the time to address it is now.
“This is the question I actually hope to bring everybody on the tour which is, are you satisfied with what humanity has done with our gift of life on this amazing planet? And if not, what would you like?
“I think the time is time is ripe for it. Because I think it's become so clear that the systems that we're using now are fundamentally broken, and it's leaving almost all of us behind.”