Category Archives: green party

Félicitations, Stéphane

green party, liberal party

I’ve spent the day watching the Liberal leadership convention, and Stéphane Dion was just announced the winner of the final ballot. Those of you who have been watching as well will remember Stéphane as the “green” candidate, literally. He was the only leadership contender whose supporters weren’t using red as their primary colour.

And, of course, I want to also congratulate my former Liberal opponent Bill Graham on the completion of a very successful leadership term. I like Bill a lot, and he’s been a good MP for Toronto Centre.

Watching the leadership race of a rival political party from some other parties can be a conflicted event. On the one hand, you want the best candidate to win for the sake of the country. On the other, you can’t help but speculate on which leadership candidate might be the greater benefit to your own party.

Thankfully, we don’t have that problem (or at least not nearly as much) in the Green party. At the end of the day, what’s good for our party is good for the country, because unlike other parties, we’ve explicitly said that the implementation of our policies and the health of our democracy come first. (It’s sometimes said that we’re the only party that hopes to work itself out of existence.)

Dion, therefore, was the best choice by both measures. Not only does he have the best values and priorities of any of the Liberal leadership contenders, he’ll also be the most willing to cooperate with Green MPs. His biggest challenge, of course, is that he’s still the leader of a party that is systematically invested in the status quo. It will therefore be harder for him to change our country’s disastrous course, which is just one of the reasons why we still need new voices in parliament.

The next few months will be interesting.

London Debrief

green party

So many others, including Elizabeth, Adriana, Camile, Jim, the other Jim, and more, have already said it. I’m not sure what to add.

Today, the Greens are the story. It was true that we had a shot, and the numbers don’t even tell the full story of how close we came. Due to the overlapping municipal election, the federal campaign only started to build real momentum in the last week, and wasn’t going full-tilt until this past weekend. I’m certain that with one or two more weeks, we would have taken the riding.

Sobara says this result should worry the Conservatives. He’s 1/3 right. It should worry the Liberals and NDP too. Compared to the last election, we took six and nine percent from them, respectively, and another six percent from the Conservatives. As Elizabeth says, we’re not vote splitters, we vote unifiers.

We beat the governing party, and the NDP, who started the campaign by saying “the Greens won’t be a factor,” came a distant fourth. Everyone who voted NDP because they thought that candidate had a better chance, or Liberal because they were afraid of the admittedly frightening Conservative should, in the words of the NDP attack piece, “think carefully.” Same for everyone who didn’t bother because they didn’t think their vote would change anything. We’ll always get distorted election results, and have a less healthy democracy than we should, until people feel like they can vote for the candidate they want.

Congratulations to everyone involved, this is great stuff to build on and we’ve definitely shaken things up. As usual, I can’t wait for the next campaign.

ps. Anyone who wants to debrief in person, I’ll be at the Toronto Centre Greens pub night tomorrow (Wednesday) at The Ben Wicks, from about 7:30pm on.

NDP Attacks Greens!

green party, ndp

Oh boy is this an exciting day. The NDP, whose candidate said at the start of this campaign that the Green Party wouldn’t be a factor, has been distributing a specifically anti-Green flyer. Clearly, we’ve now convinced them that we are a factor. There’s much celebration here in the May campaign office.

I heard about the flyer today from a disgruntled NDP volunteer I bumped into while canvassing. She’d been shocked to see it and had refused to hand it out. She mentioned that her young daughter, who’d been canvassing with her, had been particularly upset by the whole thing.

For the text of the flyer, Elizabeth May’s take on the attack, and some pretty funny context to a quote of Elizabeth’s that had its context unduly removed, check out Elizabeth May’s blog post.

Tomorrow. Monday. This is it.

Two Days To Go

green party

I’m blogging from inside “the green house,” a rented London home filled with 30+ volunteers from across the country. And yet, that’s nothing compared to the approximately 75 people who were in the Elizabeth May campaign office for this morning’s briefing, or the others who showed up later.

We’re very optimistic here. And we have reason. For example, check out the final results of this poll from am980.ca:

Ok, I know, that’s not a scientific poll, but boy is that a good margin. Regardless, maybe you should also check out this leaked NDP poll which puts us neck and neck with the Liberals (and the NDP and Conservative candidates “out of the race”).

Also, check out this news story on tonight’s Saturday Report on CBC. (Update: that link now goes directly to the right video clip.) I did three showings of it on my laptop here in the house to make sure everyone had a chance to see it.

Finally, today’s letters to the editor in the London Free Press could not have been more positive for Elizabeth, or given more compelling reasons why now is the time to vote Green.

Today’s message? Elizabeth has a real shot here, and she is the strategic choice. You, or someone you know in London North Centre, could be her winning vote. If you’re here or know someone who is, please make that appeal. The house of commons doesn’t need another back-bencher; it needs Elizabeth. (The green house, on the other hand, needs to settle down so I can get to sleep!)