Are Canadians Ready for Greens in Parliament?

Remove all ads!

During the summer, pollsters get to take the time to explore some different topics than what is usual since parliament takes its recess. Harris/Decima polling has promoted some statistics that have definitely perked my interest. As a member of the Green Party I always get a little happy inside when I see the Greens polling so well. It goes without saying that some of the rise of Green vote intention comes from talks about where leader Elizabeth May plans on running for the next election, but it seems that in places like British Columbia the Greens are becoming much more mainstream. So, as the question goes, do we think Canadians are ready to have Greens in parliament?

Harris/Decima reported yesterday that nationwide the Greens were holding at around 11% support, which is a fairly commonplace poll number across multiple pollsters. That isn't surprising, what is interesting is their Green statistics in British Columbia. Harris/Decima reports that there is nearly a 4-way tie in popular opinion in the province:
CONSERVATIVE: 28%
LIBERAL: 20%
NEW DEMOCRATIC: 26%
GREEN: 24%

(The Greens are doing stronger than the Liberals?!)

The Leader of the Green Party Elizabeth May also seems to be a godsend for the Greens. Almost 50% of Canadians want to see her enter the House of Commons according to Harris/Decima. Of the people who were polled 41% said they wanted to her her in the House of Commons as opposed to 36% that did not (everyone else didn't care). Again, promising news since Elizabeth May has allegedly decided to run in Saanich-Gulf Islands in British Columbia where many people think she has a stronger chance to usurp Minister on the State of Sport, Gary Lunn (who used to be Natural Resources Minister, but messed up bad). The same poll shows that many Canadians can support Green Party economic policies. Of the people who were polled, questions were asked in regard to the Green Income Splitting policy, fitting into the general theme of this post the outcome was positive for the Greens showing that about 59% of people polled supported the idea, and 22% of people did not support it. Perhaps it is time for the Greens to start advertising more of their economic platform, which falls in suit with this income splitting policy.

And finally, I have one more Haris/Decima poll to present. This one is about environmental initiatives by the government and the public. Not much explanation is needed here since the majority of the reaction is predictable. Most people feel that more action on the state of the environment is needed. This post shows the most bias, since most of the questions are directed to make people answer yes, but this is present in almost every single poll.

So, I'm back to my original question: Is Canada ready for Greens in Parliament? I want to know what any Canadians here think, as well as opinion from third-party citizens.

I think Canada is. Nearly 1 million votes for the Greens in the last election showed that we are, and the numbers keep climbing every public opinion poll I see. I talk to a lot of people about politics, and public affairs and the number of people I see who can support the Green Party keep going up, especially in young people and women. I met with the Deputy Leader Adriane Carr (she also founded the Green Party in North America) who told me that the Greens are also the party with the most second choice candidates, and hold the least number of Canadians that would refuse to vote for them. Our electoral system is holding us back from being elected, so the Greens are going to have to get over it and try and elect candidates under the current system.

 

WHAT... is your favorite colour?

Green! Wait, wait, no, blueeeAAAAaaaarrrrgggghhhh....

Sorry, but all this Canadian politics doesn't mean much to me. Minister on the State of Sport? An election (presumably a national one) being held somewhere? Can someone explain this?

The one thing I'd caution you on is that there's nothing that can turn people against a politician (or party) quite like having them in power. A lot of people in the US (and probably elsewhere) have won, even with substantial support, only to blow it and loose big-time come the next election.

 

From what I've noticed they tend to maintain their popularity right until a couple of weeks after getting re-elected, then blow it completely. Pretty convenient pattern if you ask me

 

Well, yeah, but it doesn't get formally tested until another election comes along.

 

That's a typo. It should be Minister of State for Sport. A minister is the politician appointed to run a government department, like say Hillary Clinton runs the US foreign office. A Minister of State is like a junior minister. He takes on a specific role within the department run by one of the senior ministers. In Ireland Arts, Sports and Tourism gets a full blown department to itself. Minister of Fun we call it, it's the cushiest job ever. You get to spend all your time going to sports events and photoshoots with bikini models.

I can't say I know much about the Canadian Greens and I'm not going to make the mistake of thinking that they are the same as Green parties elsewhere other than sharing a name. Nevertheless, if you're a Green party member I'd definitely look at the Irish Greens for a note of the dangers ahead. Getting into parliament is fine, it's a matter of gradually building up your support. You don't actually have the power to do anything so you're fine to make worthy speeches without having to put them into place afterwards. Lots of people feel good about worthy causes such as the environment so support should be decent. I'm sure ye'd do an awful lot better in a PR system than a FPTP though.

The real trouble comes when you try to enter government in a coalition. That's what will make or break ye. The Irish Greens as a junior partner have confined themselves to getting some 'green' policies put through and leaving pretty much everything else up to the main party. The problem is with the main party proving to be disastrous people are regarding the Greens as useless and cowardly. When times are bad the vast majority of people don't actually care as much about the environment as they said before. The Greens were almost wiped out in the last local elections and will be hard pushed to retain any of their seats in the next general election. They've destroyed years of patient build up and there's a real possibility that the damage will be far too fatal for them ever to recover. On the other hand the German Greens seem to have done a decent job when they entered power and are now a fairly mainstream party as far as I can tell.

 

Yeah after getting to parliament the next obvious step would be trying to get to the cabinet and that's when things get tricky. Since I doubt I'll ever see the day in any country when the green party is actually the biggest party forming the cabinet or the cabinet coalition there need to be some measures taken. The extreme elements need to be cut away, the other parties aren't likely to be willing to cut all support for nuclear power, oil drillings, forest industry. They also aren't likely to be willing to sacrifice much money for campaings to get people to eat less meat or legalize marihuana. Basically unless they want to end up as a chronic opposition party allways complaining and allways avoiding power, parties need to be able to compromise and this might raise up serious credibility issues within their base and even dealignment of the base.

A cynic might say that this process will filter the green party to a part among the rest, willing to sacrifice their ideals for power, but then that's politics in countries with multi-party cabinets. The Finnish green party is growing and doing quite well and being the fourth largest party in the country and having been part of three cabinets now (Lipponen I, Lipponen II and Vanhanen II) but they have been forced to make compromises and actually sponsor bills that the majority of their voters would probably quite strongly disagree with.

 

Yeah, I figured 'Minister on the State' meant 'Minister of State', and I knew what that meant. I had just never heard of a Ministry of Sports before! Yeah, I can imagine that's the cushiest job ever!

 

I think many (maybe even most) Canadians wouldn't have a problem with 1 or 2 Green Party MP's, but most would want it to be limited to that (at least for now). The Greens are seen as being too narrow in their focus, and have zero exprience in running a country, so if they were to get any significant amount of influence in the House in the near future, that could be disastrous for Canada.

 

As a bit of a follow up:

This is actually the direct result of poor voter turnout, the majority of Green Party supporters are people 18-25 the age group with, statistically, the worst turnout. As we learned in October of last year, the number of people who say they intend to vote is a much different number than the number of people who actually do vote. It will be interesting in the future to see if the people who supported the Greens when they were younger will translate into an older support base once the demographic ages.

Indeed it was, I apologize, thanks for pointing that out.

Since the Greens are as new as they are, and are just gaining any amount of popular support now the most we can ask for is 1 or 2 MPs. Hahaha. We are definitely not vying for power at the moment, just providing an alternative to the old-line parties in Canada that really haven't been performing to democratic standards that Canadians deserve in a democracy. You bring up a good point about people seeing the Greens as too narrow in focus. This is a misconception and the Greens really do have one of the most developed platforms of any of the other major parties. It is one of the challenges within the Green Party to hammer out their message, while trying prove they really are more than a fringe, one issue party. Don't be surprised that if another election were to come along that the Greens are going to be campaigning more on the issues of Healthcare, Parliament and Senate, and a Green Economy all in addition to their platform for the Environment. I'll be the first to say that the Greens are rather inexperienced in running a country (since they have yet to win a seat), and are definitely not ready to form a government. That is where our goals of electing a leader to parliament as a first step to changing the Canadian political scene come in. I also think that more people in Canada don't really understand that we don't directly vote to form government, and that is a big hinderance to the Greens, because, even in a riding where there is a strong GPC candidate people still think they are wasting their vote.

Also, as an update to the whole Elizabeth May orphan riding deal, if anyone is interested: Stuart Hertzog from Victoria is going to run for nomination as a candidate for the Greens in Saanich-Gulf Islands, the riding that Green leader Elizabeth May has allegedly chosen to run in. So, if Ms. May does choose to try and defeat Gary Lunn in the upcoming election she will be challenged from within her party to claim nomination for the EDA. A lot of blog sites have portrayed this as a wildly negative thing for the Greens, but I really don't think it is. Both are allowed to try and run to represent their party regardless of where the leader decides they want to run - that my friends, is participatory democracy.

 

I don't have anything against the greens, but I always took them for a one issue party. If they come up with a great platform, then it's a lot better! However, like a lot of people said, they don't have any experienced deputies, so have greens in power right now wouldn't exactly be a good thing.

My only question is how much different is the Green party and the NDP? Would a fusion be something to consider? For lack of choice in Canada (a right wing party in the conservatives, a center right party with the liberals (who also have a big corruption shadow to overcome)), most people who are able to vote don't do it because they feel their voice means nothing. Now, if you take the left wing parties (Greens, NDP, Bloc Québecois, who all have similar visions, if you exclude the seperation of Québec) and form a new party, there is now a viable third option. Then, things would get interesting...

 

I tend to have a knee jerk Alberta RedNeck reaction to Greens and all other environmentalist folks. I don't trust them, I think they are juvenile and naive, and I don't think that they have much respect for the rule of law.

Bet I made some enemies there, huh?

The support for the Greens is diffuse. Were Canada to go to a Proportional Representation system they might have a chance at getting a few seats, but really, they are a one issue party and I don't think that support for them will ever be concentrated enough to elect more than one MP.

 

That's the key, isn't it? With any FPP electoral system, parties like Greens simply do not stand a chance. Special Interest or Minority parties simply don't stand a chance (for better or worse). It really amazes me that the Greens can get so much support state (nation?) wide, simply for this reason. Either the people casting such votes are irrational or haven't thought it through properly, else they are casting their votes that way simply to make a point, knowing there is little hope of getting any seats.

We've had similar things happen over here before. '81 election, Social Credits (the then 3rd biggest party) got 21% of the votes, yet managed to haul in a grand total of zero seats. I would be very surprised if the same thing does not occur in BC.

When are these elections? I was under the impression that you had just had a General Election last year. Or are people expecting snap elections like the last few?

 

Both Greens and Libertarians suffer from being defused parties here in the US.

There was a story in one of the papers a while back that someone in the Libertarian party suggested they get as many members as a they could to move to a specific New Hampshire town so that they have enough of a concentration somewhere that they can influence the way an election turns out in terms of a candidate of theirs actually winning. Don't think it ever happened.


About Canadian politics in general.

I was surprised last month because a few Canadians I talked (from outside of Quebec) at a wedding told me the the Bloc was actually conservative in its policy leanings independent of how you think calls for a separate state go.

To add to that they suggested that American Indians near and in the territory that the Bloc would like to pull away from Canada have little or no interest in doing so.

I was surprised with the first point because I thought the Bloc was a left leaning regional party that added in separation nonsense.

 

Of course they think that. Usually, the Bloc is seen as a satanic party outside of Québec, just as the conservative are seen by québecers...
But seriously I'm not sure what they were referring to. There might be a few motions that the Bloc might have put forward in the house of commons that was conservative, but in general, the Bloc is very leftist. Just in recent news, the Bloc strongly fights against budget cuts in the arts. It opposes the 5% budget cut imposed on art institution that would greatly affect the likes of CBC/SRC, the arts council and the national film board. The Bloc also fights the conservatives over the 26 millions that were cut from the arts in 2008. The Bloc also is strong supporter of environment issues like the Kyoto pact. And the Bloc also strongly opposed the conservatives when they tried to enforce the law and sentences of minors who were convicted of a crime. Gilles Duceppe stated that you can't send minors to prison, it would be like sending them to the "school of crime".

I'm not sure what was the point of that argument. Translated from the mission of the Bloc is : "The sovereignty project is democratic, inclusive and respectful of the rights of the english minority or the native american nation. it is opened on the world".

Why is it relevant that the native americans oppose the independance as an argument against the Bloc? Of course, the opinion of the natives is relevant, but the independance is a democratic process. If the natives are against it, let them make their voices heard. If the majority opt for the independance and the natives are against it, well, it is democraty. Not everyone will be happy with every decision. It would be like saying "Barack Obama as a president is a bad thing because some people in the US are against it". At the opposite end of the spectrum, in both referendums, the people who voted "yes" accepted the fact that a majority of people said no. (or most people, if you exclude Parizeau and the like... )

I would also like to point out that the independance issue is a provincial one. The Bloc cannot make the independance of Québec. That falls to the Parti Québecois in Québec. All the Bloc can do is encourge and fight for the right to independance. But more than that, the Bloc's real job is to fight for the interests of Québec in the federal scene (which many question as still valid a job).

And as Jacques Brassard, a former deputy of the Party Québecois, said : "The Bloc is just a clone of the NDP". Both a very leftist in their ideas.

 

Thanks for the reply, don't live in Canada so much of what I hear is from afar. What my understanding already was is that the Bloc were left leaning independence supporters-the former politics I generally support but not the latter.

They were actual Canadians challenging my understanding of the situation, so I felt it would be irresponsible to ignore their opinions.