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Maybe it's timely to mention that Green things are growing in Nova Scotia.
There is a local Green Party of Canada (GPC) mailing list. To join, just
send email like this:
To: majordomo@chebucto.ns.ca
Re (or Subject): [this line is ignored and may be left blank]
Message: subscribe gpcns-news@chebucto.ns.ca
~paul :)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 20:40:26 -0300
From: Frank de Jong <fdejong@greenparty.on.ca>
To: unlisted-recipients:; (no To-header on input)
Subject: [ONTARIO] GREEN PARTY MAY SURPRISE US ALL AT POLLS
GREEN PARTY MAY SURPRISE US ALL AT POLLS
The Toronto Star, Ian Urquhart, Queen's Park, May. 21, 2001
The breakthrough result for the Greens in last week's British Columbia
election has given new reason for hope to their Ontario cousins.
In B.C., while the Green party did not capture any seats, it won 12 per cent
of the vote and was taken seriously by the media for the first time.
"The Greens are picking up steam across Canada," exulted Ontario Green party
leader Frank de Jong last week after the B.C. votes were counted.
In the last Ontario election, the Green party fielded candidates in just 58
of the province's 103 ridings and got 30,749 votes, a mere 0.7 per cent of
the total. But in the next provincial election, de Jong said his party plans
to run a full slate of 103 candidates. And de Jong, a Toronto public school
teacher, will demand a spot in the televised leaders' debate, as was granted
his B.C. counterpart, Adriane Carr.
The Greens will also be running a candidate in the Vaughan-King-Aurora
by-election next month. In the previous Ontario by-election earlier this
year in Parry Sound-Muskoka, the Greens got 12 per cent of the vote and
finished in third, ahead of the New Democrats, although that was a bit
misleading since the Green candidate (Richard Thomas) had a high local profile.
The Green surge has Ontario's opposition Liberals and New Democrats -
particularly the New Democrats - concerned. They see some of their vote
potentially slipping away to the upstarts.
Maybe. But a higher profile brings more scrutiny, and Ontario's Greens may
have some difficulty withstanding that. Their platform is oddball, to say
the least.
They are strongly environmentalist, of course: against nuclear power, fossil
fuels, mining, cars, sprawl, and garbage. ("There should be no such thing as
garbage," states the platform.) They are for conservation, wildlife, trees,
pedestrians, transit, renewable resources like the sun and the wind, and
vegetarianism. ("The Green party would encourage people to ... eat less
meat, eggs, and dairy.'')
But a lot of the other ideas in the Green platform either ape the Tories or go
them one better, viz:
Shift taxation away from income and onto consumption, particularly of
non-renewable resources. Because income taxes are steeply progressive and
consumption taxes are flat, the weight of such a shift would fall
disproportionately on lower-income taxpayers.
Full funding for religious schools, although under the aegis of public
school boards. The Tory tax credit would only pay up to 50 per cent of the cost.
Decentralization of power away from Queen's Park and toward municipalities,
which would be constitutionally entrenched and have "full legal authority"
to pursue their goals.
Deregulation of electricity. Like the Tories, the Greens worry less about a
California-style breakdown of the system than about the power monopoly
inherited by Ontario Hydro's successor companies.
The Greens themselves do not deny the rightward tilt of their platform. "We
don't want to be seen in the left bracket," said de Jong.
Of course, some would say their platform is irrelevant because the Greens
are not about to win an election in Ontario, and even a single seat in the
Legislature seems out of reach today. The Greens have only 500 paid-up
members, according to de Jong, and their recent annual convention drew just
65 people.
But if their popular support rises sharply in the next election, they could
split the opposition votes and help the Tories to win re-election. If that
sounds far-fetched, consider Al Gore. He would be president of the United
States today but for Green candidate Ralph Nader's vote-splitting run in
last fall's presidential election.
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