Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘green party’

What does your party believe? I’d venture a guess that only a small number of Canadians who vote actually bother to read their party’s platforms… or the platforms of the other parties.  Even if we concede that politicians break campaign promises all the time, shouldn’t you know what your party is promising before casting your ballot?

Read the platforms here:

• Liberal Party of Canada
• Conservative Party of Canada
• New Democrat Party of Canada
• Bloc Quebecois (in French)
• Green Party of Canada

Then, when you’re done, check out the candidates in your writing. Read up on their voting records, if they are already MPs. Read their blogs, find their  Facebook pages, check out anything they’ve written or published. Make sure you know who you’re voting to send to Parliament on May 2nd.

An uninformed electorate gets the government that it deserves. So get informed.

Wait, am I reading this right? Georges Laraque is now the deputy leader of the Green Party?

The same Georges Laraque who, after two woeful seasons in a Habs’ jersey, thought this would be a logical career move?

And to think people were taking the Greens seriously last election, even predicting that they would win seats. How far they have fallen…

17.

That’s the number of seats where the Liberal-Green combined vote total was higher than the vote total for the winning candidate.

Of those 17 seats, 9 were won by the Conservatives. The remaining 8 went 5 to the Bloc and 3 to the NDP.

Of course, it’s illogical to assume that all or even a large portion of the Green Party’s votes would have gone to the Liberals. Despite both parties having run on “green shift” platforms, they are quite different, and many people who voted Green did so largely because they did not want to vote Liberal.

And yet… With all the discussions around vote-splitting, I can tell you that Stephane Dion is eyeing those 17 seats today and wondering whether his “friendship” with Elizabeth May was worth it.

As for May, she probably understands a bit better how Ralph Nader must have felt in 2000.

Is a Liberal-Green alliance really such an outlandish idea?

Well, this is a new one, I have to admit: A politician apologizing for not smoking pot:

“I am not a fan of marijuana use. I have to confess this — I know all politicians are asked. I’ve never used marijuana. I apologise,” said Elizabeth May.

May’s Green Party, of course, calls for the legalization of marijuana in its platform.

No, not a merger, just some limited cooperation.

The deal between the Liberals and the Green Party that will see the Libs step back so that Elizabeth May can compete seriously for a seat, is, on the surface, a smart move for both parties. The Liberals have made it clear that, under Dion’s leadership, the environment is their #1 issue. The Greens have always made the environment their #1 issue. So they’re competing for the same pool of voters, and that pool is getting bigger every day as climate change has gradually shifted from being a “polls well but irrelevant on voting day” issue to an issue that can actually affect election results.

But will it backfire? If the Libs move left, will that just open up more space for the Conservatives to make gains in the middle? Conversely, it was arguably the Green Party that – despite a lack of elected MPs – elevated the environment to such a key voting issue in the first place.

The Liberal Party can’t afford to become a one-issue party, even if it is tempting for them to spend the entire next election campaign attacking the Harper government on its environmental record. (The ads are already in the can, I hear). That’s what fringe parties are useful for; bringing single issues to the forefront. But both parties that can govern – the Libs and the Tories – need to campaign on a range of issues representing the broad spectrum of governmental responsibilities. Anything less simply isn’t fair to Canadians.

The Green Party once again managed to get over a half a million votes with no elected representatives. They were far and away the most successful “other” party, but it’s hard to think where they might go from here. If they were unable to elect a candidate in an election that pretty much encouraged protest voting due to widespread disgust with the mainstream, it’s hard to imagine how they might build on their current level.

As for the other parties, none fared particularly well. The ultra-right Christian Heritage Party won 28,000 votes, and the ultra-left Marxist-Leninist and Communist parties combined for only 12,000 votes. The Marijuana voters must’ve been too busy smoking up to bother to vote; only 9,000 of them turned out. The Libertarians picked up a mere 3,000 votes, and the Canadian Action Party had 6,000 supporters.

None of them takes the prize for least-supported party, though. No, that award goes to the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada, which obtained a whopping 72 votes – mostly, I suspect, from monkeys trained to mark Xs on ballots. Someone might’ve pointed out to these guys that the constituency to which they were pandering – the four-legged one – doesn’t tend to have a high turnout at the polls.

Still, you gotta kinda admire someone for being crazy enough to collect signatures, pay a registration fee, get their name on a ballot, maybe even knock on a few doors or put up a few posters, all to get a mere 72 votes. It speaks to the heart of our democratic process that anyone, no matter how nuts, can run for election.