Green Party goes for gold
By Michelle Catton

Tom Manley, Green party candidate in the riding of Stormont-Dundas-Charlottenburgh, inspects some organic vegetables he grew in his garden.

OTTAWA | Oct. 31, 2003 — Dreaming big, but yet to deliver.

That’s how the Green Party of Canada describes its track record on the federal scene. In the next election, which must be held by 2005, it aims to make its dream a reality, and break free from the fringes of Canadian politics.

“We’re hoping to fill the full slate,” said Frank de Jong, leader of the Ontario Green Party. He says the party will run candidates in all ridings in the next federal election. “The challenge will be to have a platform and resources ready to go. We need to be as professional as possible.”

High hopes

Green supporters are heartened by the results of recent provincial elections. In Ontario, they quadrupled their total number of votes, and in B.C., they took home more than 12 per cent of the total vote.

The Greens have also widened their platform to make their party more competitive. The party platform now includes policies on education, arts, immigration, national defence, and health, while maintaining its focus on the environment and sustainable agriculture.

Electoral challenges

“New parties have a hard time breaking into the Canadian system, especially if they have diverse support across the country,” says Alice Ormiston, a political scientist at Carleton University. Because candidates must only receive more than the other candidates in their ridings to win a seat in Parliament, the Green party could get 12 per cent of the total vote nationwide and still not win any seats. “Under this (electoral) system, it’s going to be hard for the Green party to break in.”

Ormiston says parties that have strong support in one region, like the Bloc Quebecois, have better chances of winning. Although their proportion of the total vote is low, they can still win seats because of localized support. The Green Party's support is spread across the nation, so it has little chance of winning seats in Parliament.

Not surprisingly, the Green Party of Canada includes electoral reform as a major element in its platform.The Greens want proportional representation. If a party receives 12 per cent of the total vote, it would win 12 per cent of the seats in Parliament.

“The system in Canada is flawed,” said Tom Manley, a business owner who ran as a Green candidate in the recent Ontario election. “It caters to a two-party system, but we know there are more than two solutions to every problem.”

Moving forward

Manley ran in the eastern Ontario riding of Stormont-Dundas-Charlottenburgh, and placed third, ahead of the NDP candidate. He is considering mounting a federal campaign, and says a priority of the national Green Party is separating itself from the fringe.

Although the Greens have expanded their platform, they have maintained their original focus on creating a sustainable environment.

“We widened the breadth of our program, and broke out from being a single-issue party,” says Manley. “People feel that they’re investing their vote now.”

The Green Party has been around for 25 years, and Manley says it is not going to fade away, “People are ready to see environmental issues addressed head-on in the political arena.”

Crashing the debate

Manley isn’t just practising wishful thinking. In the last Ontario election, de Jong was excluded from the televised leaders’ debate, although the party ran candidates in 102 of 103 ridings. A poll conducted by Oraclepoll Research found that over 70 per cent of Ontarians wanted to see the Green leader participate. In the last B.C. election, the Green leader was allowed to debate, and the party received a greater proportion of the total vote than ever before.

“It’s not such a big deal to add one more chair,” said de Jong, who is optimistic that Jim Harris, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, will have a seat in the federal debate. He says his exclusion from the Ontario debate was “a black day for democracy in Ontario.”

Both de Jong and Manley agree that forming a government is not a real possibility for the Green Party this time around. Manley believes just talking about issues in the public arena can make a difference.

“I’m in the politics of change. Being a threat, being on the radar screen, can affect change,” says Manley.