Category Archives: polls

One Year

conservative party, green party, polls

What a difference a year can make. One year ago today Canadians went to the polls, electing a new Conservative government with 36.2% of the vote, the smallest percentage ever won by a first-place party. (The Green Party, as you know, earned 4.5%, which, in a fair electoral system, would mean 14 seats.)

In that election, the environment (also known as “that thing that keeps us alive”) was not an issue that the media or the status quo parties took seriously. It did not play a significant role in any of the televised leaders’ debates, and the winning party didn’t even mention the climate crisis in their election platform once.

Today, the environment is the number one or two issue of importance to Canadians in opinion polls, features prominently in daily news stories and opinion pieces (almost to the point of exhaustion), and Stephen Harper reportedly owns a copy of An Inconvenient Truth.

Last year, it was hard to imagine our archaic electoral system being reformed any time soon. Today, Ontario has the chance to do so as soon as October, which would likely reverberate throughout the country.

Last year, people could still get away with pretending that environmentalism was bad for business. Today, CEOs of some of the largest (and most energy intensive) corporations in America are urging George W. Bush to take action on climate change, which he referred to as a “serious challenge” in his State of the Union address just a few hours ago.

The next federal election could be in less than two months. (I wish our MPs were more willing to work with each other, but here we are.) Let’s make sure we think very carefully about where we want to go from here. Let’s not settle for second best, or the lesser of any evils.

Unlike most reasonable Canadians, I’m looking forward to the next election. If we make the right choices over the next twelve months, just imagine how much better things can be one year from today.

11%

green party, ndp, polls

You really shouldn’t pay attention to polls. They distract from real issues. They unduly influence elections. They contribute to strategic voting. They’re not good for your health.

Except, of course, when you’re doing really well in them. Then they’re kinda fun.

A new Environics poll out yesterday has the Green Party of Canada at 11% nationally. From the release:

The other noticeable trend is the continued growth in support for the Green Party (now at 11%, up 4 since Sept-October, and up 7 since June). Over the same period, support for the New Democratic Party has declined to 14 percent of Canadian voters (down 4 points since Sept-October, and down 7 points since June).

Presented for your information.

I’d Be Grumpy Too

green party, ndp, polls

I think I know why the NDP have been so grumpy lately. They must have had some advance knowledge of this poll:

It suggested the Liberals had the support of 35 per cent of respondents while the Tories were at 31 per cent, the NDP was at 12 per cent and the Green party was at 10 per cent.

Yikes! Only a two-point gap stands between the NDP and being knocked out of their perpetual third place. I wonder what the margin of error was for that poll…

The Decima poll of 1,025 respondents was conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, and is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points 19 times in 20.

Uh-oh. The NDP/Green gap is within the margin of error. This is what they call a “statistical tie.” Plus, the NDP — and the Conservatives for that matter — are probably still hurting from losing to the Green Party in the London North Centre by election. How embarrassing is that. ;-)

Keep watching those grey political skies. They may clear up soon.

Economy, Environment, Health

ecology, economy, health, polls

Those are the three most important issues for Canadians, in that order, according to a poll released yesterday. The status-quo parties are still treating them as three separate issues, but we know better. You can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy environment, and you can’t have healthy Canadians on a sick planet.

“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.” – Herman Daly, Former Senior Economist, World Bank

That’s good news for the Green Party, because we’re the only ones who can speak with credibility on all three of those issues, and how they relate to each other.

“The emergence of Stéphane Dion as the ecological conscience of the Liberal leadership campaign and the advent of Elizabeth May as leader of the Green Party, are blowing away the NDP’s chances of portraying itself as the champion of the environment.” Chantal Hébert, The Toronto Star, Sept. 13, 2006.

Our current economy is designed to use up our resources as quickly as possible. As long as we believe that “economic growth” can continue as it has for only the past millisecond of our existence, we will fail. We need to transform our economy.

Our environment is in trouble. A full two-thirds of the systems that support life on this planet are in decline. As long as environmental policies are focused exclusively on “spending money” on the environment and regulating against misaligned economic indicators, they will fail. We need to transform our outlook.

Our health system is sick. From childhood asthma in the young to a cancer epidemic in the increasingly young, costs of all kinds are rising. As long as we think we can fix our heath care system by increasing its funding in perpetuity, as we get sicker and sicker, we will fail. We need to transform the way we think about health.

Canadians are smart people, and have their priorities right. Now we’ve just got to vote like it.