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Newsstand: November 9, 2009
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The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Local Green candidate Ellen Michelson (right) discusses election results with supporters. Photo by Jerad Gallinger/Torontoist.
The 2008 federal election was a historic campaign for the Green Party of Canada. Leader Elizabeth May fought hard for and won a spot in the leaders' debates, and polls conducted throughout the writ period had the Greens supported by as much as 12 percent of the Canadian population. But although the party boosted its share of the vote on election day, the increase, from 4.5 percent in 2006 to 6.8 percent yesterday, was short of what many had hoped for and was not enough to elect Green Party candidates to the House of Commons.
So with their loftiest hopes shattered, how are Toronto-area Greens feeling about last night's results? Pretty darn good, as it turns out.
"I think we've really improved since the last election," Toronto Centre Green candidate Ellen Michelson told Torontoist at the Green Party's election night event in Kensington Market.
Michelson placed fourth in Toronto Centre, receiving 6090 votes, or 11.8 percent. That is a significant improvement over the Greens' 2006 result of 5.2 percent, but short of their 13.4 percent take in the by-election held in March of this year.
Chris Tindal, the Green Party strategist and former Torontoist contributor who ran for the Greens in Toronto Centre in 2006 and March 2008, agrees with Michelson's assessment. "We've doubled our vote in terms of the percentage" compared with the 2006 results, he said. "There's no other party that can say that tonight. That's a huge victory."
Michelson, however, concedes that her party failed to achieve its biggest goal this election. "The ultimate goal, we wanted a Green caucus in Parliament," she said. "And we're working toward that."
Regardless of the continued lack of Green representation in Ottawa, local supporters Tova Arbus and Tanya Ross share party insiders' sunny outlook.
"You always feel kind of jaded when the big parties take over and nobody really listens to the smaller issues," said Arbus. "But I think that the Green Party has worked really hard and that they have definitely stood up for what they believe in, which is important, and there's no better time than now for people to stand up and say what's important."
"I was so happy to hear Elizabeth May at the debates," said Ross. "It was just really wonderful to have her there, and I think that is a huge step forward for the Green Party."
Despite that step forward, all of the Greens interviewed by Torontoist agree that last night's results prove the need for proportional representation at the national level.
"The problem is that the voting system itself is designed so that people feel like they can't vote for their first choice party," said Tindal. "They can't vote with their heart or with their head, for what they really believe is right. And that to me means that the voting system is broken and needs to be reformed."
As for the effect of Elizabeth May's supposed deal with Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, Michelson refuses to concede that such an agreement even existed.
"First of all, there was no deal with the Liberals," she said. "There's a tradition of Parliamentary courtesy, and I think the media, the mainstream media, and the Liberals did their best to make capital out of it. I think there's been some really offensive misrepresentations, and I think in a way that's a good sign. The Green Party has now hit the big time. So the traditional politicians are playing—are trying dirty tricks with us that they didn't try before."
Looking to the future, Michelson says that the Green Party is ready for the next election, whenever it may come. But first, she has more pressing issues to deal with.
"I'm going to need a little time to catch up on the laundry," she said. With environmentally friendly detergent, no doubt.
Photo of Chris Tindal by Jerad Gallinger/Torontoist.
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After all "ABC" campaigning, after all the bullshit about strategic voting, look what we're left with... another broken government of disproportionate representation and $300 million dollars that could have been much better spent elsewhere.
I thought this blog's Green Party publicity campaign had ended when the named correspondent stopped blogging (coincidentally, right after he used the page as a by-election campaign prop).
The optimism of the interviewees aside, how can the GP campaign be seen as anything other than a disaster? National media attention, participation (and plaudits) in the debate, charismatic leader promoting more than single-issue agenda, breakthrough poll results, HoC representation by defected MP ... slight and negligible uptick in votes, zero seats, galvanizing issue (the environment) and policy response at best a peripheral issue.
I don't see why Canadians are asked to take this party seriously when its leader clearly doesn't (choosing to run in a riding she could never win, endorsing Liberals at the death).
I just want to know how the hell Olivia Chow and Jack Layton can run in different ridings. Do they or do they not live together?
Skippy - There's no legal requirement for a candidate to run in the district in which they reside, so Layton and Chow can live together and still represent different ridings. Heck, they could both live in Oakville as far as the law is concerned (although the people of Trinity—Spadina and Toronto—Danforth probably wouldn't like that much at all).
> slight and negligible uptick in votes
Actually I'd say it was neither slight nor negligible: they had the largest increase in popular vote share, and in terms of actual number of votes, they got nearly 300,000 more votes than last time despite the crummy voter turnout. Every other major party -- Conservatives included -- lost votes this time around.
Not that that means a lot if they can't turn it into a single seat.
Proportionately, the Greens would have won 23 seats.
So now we are measuring the success of the Green's campaign against some mythical electoral system that doesn't exist? I guess I will concede the point for fantasyland circumstances.
More seriously, you don't know what the outcome would have been in a proportional system. Many Green voters may have voted for other parties in such circumstances. One suspects that the allure of the Green vote to many is that there are no consequences to it at all. I'm not sure if voters knew that 20% of parliament would be made up from a party-chosen list of the scary-bearded men and teenage girls who made up the bulk of the 307 green candidates, the results would be the same.
Also, to the previous comment, saying that their share of the pop vote increased in absolute terms does not contradict my contention that the gain was slight and negligible. Less than 300,000 votes is nothing, given the amount of (public) money spent on the Green campaign, less than 1000 votes in each riding. To put it in perspective, the independent candidate in my riding got almost that much.
If you have to elect one person to represent your riding on all issues -- with the added choice of deciding which part you might support to deal with all issues on a national and international scale -- is it really all that surprising that there were no elected Greens -- still essentially a one-issue party?
Anyone who still believes the Greens are a one-issue party simply isn't paying enough attention. However, friend68, I don't think your argument should make a practical difference. Most people vote for parties, not personalities.
The reason it's not surprising that Greens have no seats is because we don't have proportional representation in place, aka a "mythical electoral system that doesn't exist" except in just about every other democracy in the world. And, x_the_x, to counter your suggestion, it's similarly possible that many more people would vote Green (or other "third" parties) if they thought their vote would make a difference.
Check out Mike Smith's column in last week's issue of Now. He makes a very convincing argument for not bothering to vote.
If you point is the Greens would have ~20% of the parliament if they had run in another country where a proportional representation system exists and, unlike Canada, is not a mythical system which does not exist, I won't dispute that. Provides little basis to evaluate the success of their campaign in Canada though.
Of course its possible that they would have attracted more support in an MMP system, but I doubt it. Voters tend to hold candidates to a higher standard when they actually have a chance of participating in government. Lets not forget that the purpose of voting is to chose a government and not to participate in an aspirational marketing exercise.
"The reason it's not surprising that Greens have no seats is because we don't have proportional representation in place"
I'm going to keep saying it: we do have a proportional system in place -- it balances population against geographic location.
x_the_x: don't you think some of your comments about the Greens and their voters are a bit condescending? To be sure, we don't know how people would reconsider their vote if Greens had a serious chance of being in Parliament (and some would argue that they do), but your comments about the party candidates and why people vote for them seem pretty patronizing.
escape, my response is in my first comment:
I don't see why Canadians are asked to take this party seriously when its leader clearly doesn't (choosing to run in a riding she could never win, endorsing Liberals at the death).
Thanks for your reply. Not that I want to argue endlessly, but I'll just say that I think many thought it odd that May chose to run where she did, but I also think that she seems to like a challenge and also suspect that had she run elsewhere she would have been accused of trying to grab a seat without the intention of representing the community.
Her wavering on the subject of strategic voting has been odd but surely you are not discounting an entire party on this basis. Her opinions were hers alone and as you probably know, there is a large faction of the party that is unhappy with her in this regard and is even calling for her to resign.
Chris Tindal is a Green Party strategist? That guy couldn't strategize himself out of a paper bag. Seriously though, his "insights" when I saw him on The Agenda after his last campaign were out to lunch. At his best he sounded like he was drinking the bath water of the real pundits/strategists.
Leaders of parties from all parties run in winnable ridings all the time, so I wouldn't think that would be an issue. No ridings (obviously) were easily winnable for the Greens, but she certainly could have chosen better if she actually wanted to win.
"Her opinions were hers alone..."
Not when you're the leader of the party, and you say them out loud in front of reporters.
"Lets not forget that the purpose of voting is to chose a government and not to participate in an aspirational marketing exercise"
You appear to misunderstand parliamentary government.
In a parliamentary system, the legislature selects the government. That's the definition of parliamentarism.
The purpose of voting should be to choose representatives.
The problem is that our undemocratic voting system does not fairly represent voter preferences.