I had no problem waking up to this radio report this morning, which frames this election as a choice between myself or my Liberal opponent. Have a listen.
By the way, people sometimes tell me “I agree with almost everything you stand for, I think you’re the best candidate, and I’d vote for you if you were running for another party.” There’s a problem with that: if I were running for another party, I wouldn’t be able to say the things I’ve been saying. I wouldn’t be able to represent the platform that so many people agree with once they hear it articulated.
I think people sometimes conclude that since I sound reasonable, and since they assume the Green Party isn’t reasonable, I must be some kind of rogue anomaly. I’m not. If you agree with what you’ve heard me say in a debate or in the media or on a piece of campaign literature and think that those ideas should be represented in Parliament, I need more than your good wishes (though those are always appreciated, too) to make it happen. I need your vote this Monday.
I got the “right guy, wrong party” routine from all kinds of people during my provincial campaign last fall… Liberals, Cons, NDPers — all seemed to think I had good ideas, good approach to politics, etc, but, like you say, couldn’t connect that to the party somehow.
It’s not that the Green Party isn’t “reasonable”, it’s that its not competent. It doesn’t track the issues of the day very well and its pronouncements usually display total ignorance of the actual current law and regulatory system, or the bill presently before the House, or something. In 2004 the GPC had the best mechanism any party ever had for tracking these things and responding to issues, today it clearly has one of the worst.
It’s vote is flat as a result, and nothing more than symbolic. I do think the GROW Housing project is a good thing to highlight and I hope Rae picks it up. But the GPC is not fit to hold a seat in the House of Commons and won’t be until it restores its own principles of participatory democracy and relies less on a staff bunker of ill informed people unqualified to work for a real parliamentary party.
Craig, your analysis would be better if it didn’t rely on flawed assertions, such as “its vote is flat”. Any look at rolling polls shows a steady climb since January ’06, and our vote share (as expressed in by-election results) continues to increase. The Living X series was a potentially powerful tool, but you can’t seriously say that the Party in 2004 was doing better than now at tracking issues of the day unless you have some rather powerful historical revision at work.
There are certainly flaws but you’re not doing well at proving it.