Luckily, the leader of the Liberals has got down the chummy, spontaneous-ish format of Twitter messages (“feels privileged to count on Bob’s support. Tous ensemble!”). There isn’t, however, a feel for who Iggy is as an individual, and a sense of relationship is the point of social media. In fact, to find a pol who uses Twitter as more than an events listing, you have to look to Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May for actual replies to their readers.
Perhaps, Iggy, Harper, and Layton (or their advisors, or surrogates, or twentysomething Twitterkind) don’t want to appear too informal. Twitter can be an important tool, but it isn’t overly serious. And at a time like this, we want our politicians acting serious: fixing the economy, working on foreign policy to create more global stability, and enacting energy policies that reward efficiency and reduce the damage on the planet. Does anyone care that Jack notices “there is even snow in Vancouver and Victoria!!!”?

As well, the real-time nature of Twitter does apply a lot of stress on candidates. Could there be a pissing contest to see who can react to news the fastest? Might people relentlessly dissect what’s being said—especially when it’s as easy as going to Twitter’s search site? Indeed, Twitter messages can become 140 highly scrutinized characters.
Still, enough people in Toronto use Twitter to share links, pictures, and, most importantly, ideas, that the way political parties interact with citizens can and must change. Torontonians are already talking about and discussing how to change politics without the help of political leaders. The launch of a party spokesperson, like LiberalHQ, is interesting, although so far LiberalHQ doesn’t fall far from the tree: it is the same lumbering, way-off-the-mark use of social media seen during the election. (Sample tepid post: “Call to action: www.liberal.ca”)
As Canadian political parties figure out how to use this newfangled interwebby thing, the mind wanders and begins to dig up trivialities. For example, are you shocked to see Harper use the words “great” and “Toronto” in the same statement without spitting at the ground? (And why does the background of his Twitter page look like a Royal Bank client card?) Did you know that @LiberalHQ is following @Starbucks? (What about the Seattle-based coffee chain has got the Liberal HQ so interested? Or does HQ just really, really like coffee?) Also, why doesn’t Jim Flaherty have a Twitter account? Imagine the fun he and Harper could have:
PMHarper: What’s up with the economy, @CashManFlaherty?
CashManFlaherty: Nothing, dude. It’s all good. #ostrichmode
PMHarper: Uh, we’ll need a deficit, won’t we? Budget FAIL
CashManFlaherty: Just stay cool. Flaherty 2011 FTW!
There’s an opportunity for Iggy to open the conversation, engage more Canadians, and generate excitement for the sad, sad Liberals. Otherwise, the party’s fate may be best described by our favourite political Twitter message, courtesy of Gilles Duceppe: “;-(((“.

“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.

1:05 a.m.—Harper has three major priorities: 1. govern for all Canadians; 2. work together for all Canadians; 3. keep our promises. So basically the Prime Minister of Canada is planning on, you know, governing the country of Canada. Be still my beating heart. (HD)
12:58 a.m.—Harper is so far sticking to Oscar thank yous and generic platitudes about what we can accomplish together. So far his speech could have been given by just about anybody. (HD)
12:56 a.m.—Point taken, though he will have some decent political cover: the economic crisis is far bigger than he is, and if Canada keeps in better shape than the U.S. (which the structure of our banking system virtually guarantees), he will already claim to be doing the best anyone could in tough times. As much as he failed in his goal of getting a majority, he still inspired more confidence than Dion. I agree that it’s a loss, but not even close to a fatal one. (HD)

12:49 a.m.—Is anyone else beset by the nagging suspicion that Harper wears lipgloss? (HD)
12:47 a.m.—Harper’s making his way through throngs of supporters. When he won the first time pundits said Canadians weren’t quite sure they trusted him, and gave him a minority as a trial run. Today’s increase in support is a half-victory. We know him better now, and fears about him proving a closet fascist have dissipated somewhat, but he seems to have hit his limit. We trust him more than the other guy, but as votes of confidence go, it’s tenuous at best. (HD)
12:42 a.m.—Outremont may elect an NDP-er after all. Mulcair now ahead by some 800 votes over the Liberal Dhavernas, and may make history as the first NDP candidate to win in Quebec in a general election. Just how dead is the Liberal party in Quebec, anyhow? (HD)
12:38 a.m.—In the period of vague punditry, waiting for Harper to make an appearance. (HD)
12:31 a.m.—Some dumbass on Twitter: “for sale: used blue sweater, unused green shift plan.” Peter Mansbridge: “heh, that’s a good one.” Uh HUH. Then again, this is the network that thinks the Royal Canadian Air Farce is funny, so maybe he really meant it. (CB)
12:30 a.m.—CBC’s online maven Susan Ormiston likes Twitter waaaaay too much. (JG)
12:26 a.m.—Peter Mansbridge has a really, really punchable face. (CB)

12:22 a.m.—Dion, for the first time in months, talked about the economy for several minutes before even bringing up the environment. Fight harder, Mr. Dion! (HD)
12:20 a.m.—Stephane Dion is, of course, probably the smartest person to be a political party leader in Canada in years, and widely known to be a decent and upstanding person. However, he talks funny and he’s kind of a nerd. Not since Joe Clark has a political leader gotten such short shrift in Canada, frankly, and the fact that he’s going to be turfed for a limpdick like Michael Ignatieff or an unelectable near-pariah like Bob Rae is just proof that Canadians are, when you get down to it, stupid like everybody else on the planet. (CB)
12:20 a.m.—Dion: “The priority of the Official Opposition will be the economy.” (JG)
12:19 a.m.—Here’s that botched interview with Dion that has him so pissed at CTV. (DT)

12:13 a.m.—Why we cared about Guelph, incidentally: there was a story in Maclean’s about Tom King running as a candidate there for the NDP and how he was a star candidate and a Big Deal. He came in fourth. Moral of the story: don’t read Maclean’s. (CB)
12:11 a.m.—Oh, there it is. It’s west of Mississauga! We’re learning so much tonight. (DT)

12:02 a.m.—Jerad: maybe in future, the Greens can adopt this stunning “we would win if everything was different” strategy to greater effect. For example, if all the other major parties held their nominating conventions in Moose Jaw at the same time and an asteroid hit Moose Jaw and obliterated all life for a hundred miles all around, then the Greens would definitely pick up, oh, maybe fifteen seats! (CB)

Photos from CityNews’ photostream.
12:00 a.m.—Pretty much every riding where Conservatives are ahead in the GTA is amazingly close, save for Peter Kent’s win in Thornhill: the Conservative candidates are ahead by 244 in Oak Ridges-Markham, by 10 in Brampton West, and by 34, now, in Mississauga-Erindale. (DT)

11:58 p.m.—Jack Layton says “kitchen table” within the first fucking twenty words of his speech. We get it, Jack. (CB)
11:58 p.m.—RE: Duceppe. Also note that right now Duceppe essentially pulls his electoral support from the same demographics as the NDP does, which is a major part of the reason the NDP barely has any pull in Quebec. If they ditched the nationalism crap and just joined up with the NDP they would have 88 seats and maybe the left wing would really matter for once. (CB)
11:56 p.m.—Seat counts seem mostly set in stone right now, so: Tories 144, Grits 74, Bloc 50, Dippers 38, independent scallywags 2. (CB)
11:55 p.m.—Resisting the urge to throw things as Duceppe. Quebec is a nation, and their language is French. Fine, but why does that need to stop the rest of us getting things done?? Sometimes we’re a collection of separate constituencies and sometimes we’re one nation, and nationalist sensitivities aren’t more important than everything else. If we’re going to get anything done on the environment, on national childcare, on advancing progressive taxation policies, everybody to the left of Harper needs to get it freaking together. PLEASE IF YOU CARE ABOUT ANY OF THESE THINGS GET OUT OF MY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. (HD)
11:50 p.m.—Fringe update: Davenport is the hot spot in the race to finish with the lowest vote count in the city, with Marxist-Leninist Sarah Thompson in Mississauga-Erindale sitting at 56 votes, 5 below previous title holder Simon Luisi. (JB)
11:48 p.m.—But holy crap—with 50,000 votes counted, the race between Conservative Bob Dechert and Liberal Omar Algharba is only thirteen votes apart, according to the CBC. (DT)
11:40 p.m.—Pretty much every Liberal candidate in Toronto has won pretty easily, including this guy: Bob Rae, in Toronto Centre. The NDP only got Chow and Layton’s seats, and the Conservatives got Peter Kent’s. (DT)

Photo from CityNews’ photostream.
11:38 p.m.—Dion in the process of putting calls in to the other leaders. HQs described by the CBC as an “empty and sad scene.” No kidding. (HD)
11:34 p.m.—Blair Wilson comes in a dismal third place with less than a thousand votes in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea To Sky Country, proving that the Green Party is officially the touch of electoral death in this country. (CB)

11:32 p.m.—Victory! (DT)

11:31 p.m.—Peter Kent elected in Thornhill, apparently having finally found a riding where he can, you know, win. (CB)
11:30 p.m.—Peter Mansbridge noted the changes in party leadership that broke the country out of its string of successive minority governments of the 1960s (Pearson replaced by Trudeau, Diefenbaker by Stanfield). Any early guesses as to who could assume the Dalton Camp role in any of the parties over the next year? If Dion attempts to hang on, will “Dump Dion” be this generation’s version of “Dump Dief?” (JB)
11:28 p.m.—The Post is allowing reader comments again, but they’re not publishing our pun-y submissions. We will attempt to postulate a thesis as to why. (DT)

11:27 p.m.—Justin Trudeau’s victory is a rare celebratory moment for the Liberals, so naturally commentators are starting to muse about his leadership potential. That’s likely. However, if he endorses Gerard Kennedy again, that would lead credence to my “Gerard Kennedy wins the Liberal leadership race and then we have to do all this shit again” theory. (CB)
11:21 p.m.—The CBC is reporting on what people are saying on Twitter. Remove the internet, and this would be the CBC going out into the street to see what vagrants on street corners are yelling. However, this is Web 2.0, where content is king and everything is serious because it is the future, baby! (CB)

11:15 p.m.—I think it’s fair to say at this point that, certain leftist pinkos hating him aside, Jack Layton is the winner of this election on points; the NDP gained popular vote share, six seats (at current count), and Layton’s become one of the most popular political leaders in the country. Admittedly, it’s Canada, so mostly this means “we don’t despise him as much,” but, hey, a win is a win. (CB)

11:11 p.m.—Haha. The Post shouldn’t have put in reader comments along with the liveblog. It’s kind of a disaster. Go us! (DT)

11:11 p.m.—It is officially now the time where you are supposed to make wishes. (DT)

11:10 p.m.—Everybody listen! Rick Mercer is telling us what’s what. Apparently Stephen Harper is so unhappy with tonight’s result that he’s gonna take his toys home and Never. Come. Back. Wha? (HD)
11:10 p.m.—Hey, it’s been a while since we heard from Rex Murphy and Rick Mercer! Rex Murphy thinks Dion is an idiot because he advanced a bold carbon tax policy and politicians are supposed to be craven cowards, and he also thinks that losing an election is awesome. Rick Mercer says that Stephane Dion is going to get kicked out as leader, which is the boldest political prediction since betting that the Tories would lose the 1993 federal election. Remember: these people make millions of dollars for this shit. (CB)
11:05 p.m.—MuchMusic interviews young, relatively ignorant voters! This is different from the usual interview-the-plebes fare, where one interviews older, relatively ignorant voters. One student is scared of the Tories, who will rape your dog and cut it up into steaks. Another is worried about her student debt, because voting for a different party will make it all go away. (I believe the NDP promised to outlaw debt collection agencies!) Can we go back to when young voters were apathetic and didn’t care about politics? At least then, they were quiet. (CB)
11:00 p.m.—City is broadcasting bloggers on the web on the TV! And people’s Facebook comments! THEY ARE CUTTING EDGE YOU KNOW! (CB)

10:57 p.m.—True story: I was chatting last week with a friend, and she said, as we were discussing the election, “Jack Layton is a scumbag.” Understand that this is someone who is a diehard left-wing socialist pinko by any reasonable account, too. And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard such things from the wacko commies I know. There is no moral to this story, except that maybe Layton should shave his moustache or something like that. (CB)
10:52 p.m.—So if Harper failed (because he didn’t bring home the majority predicted just a month ago), and Dion failed (because he didn’t offer Canadians an alternative they found appealing), who exactly is the winner tonight? The NDP is doing well, but Layton is so far still 10 seats off of the party’s high-water mark under Broadbent. General consensus: we all feel meh about everybody. (HD)
10:52 p.m.—Green percentage of the vote seems pretty set in stone: six point five percent. In 2006, they got four point five percent. This means they will only need another two elections to get enough votes to achieve matching funding! (CB)

10:47 p.m.—Alright, we’re ready to project the winner. According to the votes coming in, Canadians—by an overwhelming majority—have elected Barack Obama as their next prime minister.

Photo by Joe Crimmings.
He is pretty much the greatest. (DT)

10:47 p.m.—Peter Mansbridge is now engaging in delusional journalistic fantasies about floor-crossing and Speaker appointments taking the Conservatives into majority territory. Yeah. Whatever. (HD)

10:43 p.m.—Tories are at 143, twelve seats away from a majority—chances of them actually getting it are still relatively small, but less small than they were. (CB)
10:40 p.m.—Kennedy now ahead of Nash by about 800 in Parkdale-High Park. The NDP will beat their heads into a brick wall if they lose this. (HD)
10:38 p.m.—Szabo and Crombie now both declared in their ridings. Hey, at least the Grits at least aren’t tanking as bad as the Tories under Campbell. Small victories, right? (HD)

10:37 p.m.—Joe Volpe’s now in the lead in Eglinton-Lawrence…looks like the 15-year shutout of any party running in the 416 with “Conservative” in their name is back on! (JB)

10:35 p.m.—Jerad is off to go cover the Green Party…party around the corner, and he’ll be back soon. For the sake of eliciting giggles in his absence, here’s a shot of what the Green Party headquarters on Dundas East looked like yesterday, as captured by reader Kirk Pierrepoint yesterday. Heh. (DT)

10:34 p.m.—Global is trying to make people believe there might be a slim chance of a Liberal/NDP coalition government. They would have a better chance making people believe that the Tories will sell Quebec to the Bloc in exchange for a minority. That is more plausible at this point. (CB)
10:31 p.m.—Low-profile Liberal MP Gurbax Malhi, who has held the 905 riding of Bramalea–Gore–Malton for 15 years, is getting a scare from Tory challenger Stella Ambler. CTV has her up by 400 votes. (JG)

10:27 p.m.—Olivia Chow and bride-of-politician Christine Innes within a hundred votes of one another. Coattails apparently don’t come longer than Ianno’s. (HD)

10:26 p.m.—Technically Turner didn’t cross the floor: he was kicked out of his caucus. But still, file under: hair-splitting that leaves the voters unmoved. (HD)
10:25 p.m.—Do not underestimate Lisa Raitt’s ability to bring out the well-known Cylon vote. Her laser vision is worth half a riding all by itself. (CB)
10:25 p.m.—Paul Szabo and Bonnie Crombie, both Liberals, leading in their ridings. The 905 belt is staying at least partly red. (HD)
10:24 p.m.—CTV has Halton Lib MP and prolific blogger Garth Turner losing by more than 1000 votes to Conservative Lisa Raitt. I guess local residents prefer a parachuted candidate to a floor-crosser. (JG)
10:20 p.m.—It’s getting worse for the Liberals as the night goes on. CTV now predicting they are going to lose 14 seats in Ontario. Unclear if it’s greater comfort with Harper or a deep antipathy to Dion, but in either case this is a bigger crash-and-burn than polls predicted. (HD)
10:20 p.m.—Michael “undermine Dion? No, no, you’re thinking of Bob Rae” Ignatieff leading in Etobicoke Lakeshore. Of all the seats the Tories have snagged in Ontario, they couldn’t have gotten this one? (CB)
10:18 p.m.—CBC has longtime Oakville Liberal MP Bonnie Brown down by 500 votes to former Conservative MPP Terrence Young. You bet the Grits didn’t see that coming. (JG)
10:17 p.m.—We, uh, don’t all share Chris’s opinions about stuff. Just sayin’. (DT)
10:16 p.m.—Joe Volpe in Eglinton-Lawrence is having a hell of a night. He’s currently trailing a Tory. So unhealthy for the ego. (HD)
10:15 p.m.—CBC predicting that the Tories will gain a net ten seats in this election in Ontario. Given that the Tories’ official policy towards Ontario can best be described as “moderate disgust,” one can only conclude that this province is filled with submissive gimp-people who gain erotic pleasure from their political leaders telling the world to invest elsewhere. (CB)

10:10 p.m.—Pretty boy Mark Kelly waxing ominous about Dion’s future. Expect predictions of a Liberal leadership convention with your morning coffee. (HD)
10:10 p.m.—Winner of the “most boring election night liveblog” award: National Post. Torontoist owns you! (JG)
10:08 p.m.—Here’s a photo of Hazel McCallion on City’s set, just generally looking tough, just because. (DT)

Photo from CityNews’ photostream.

10:02 p.m.—CTV and Global are both predicting a Conservative minority. You think? (JG)
10:02 p.m.—Bob “Who, me? Undermine Stephane Dion behind the scenes? No, no, I think you’re talking about that Ignatieff fellow” leading in Toronto Centre, albeit by a smaller margin than expected considering that the Tory candidate is some 27-year old whose political claim to fame is that he used to be a personal aide to Stephen Harper. Again: this dickwad got Harper coffee and he is running in second place in one of the biggest ridings in the country. I never want to hear a Canadian make a smug joke about Sarah Palin ever again, except for me of course. (CB)
10:00 p.m.—CityTV wins the award for most cantankerous pundit. Octogenarian Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion, is there nothing you can’t do? (JG)
9:58 p.m.—Parkdale-High Park bulletin: Nash and Kennedy tied with… wait for it… 71 votes each!! Get comfy kiddies: this one’s gonna go for more hours than you can bear. (HD)
9:56 p.m.—For the first time in many a year, the Tories have won a seat in PEI. Gail Shea has taken Egmont away from the Liberals. (JG)

9:55 p.m.—NEWSFLASH: Tory leads in Alberta! This merits the CBC’s attention somehow. Oh wait, it’s that the NDP are close! I can’t believe I have to say this, but: BEING IN SECOND IS NOT A GODDAMNED STORY. (CB)
9:54 p.m.—Speaking of potential E! commentators, CBC’s hand-drawn graphics look like a bad Perez Hilton post. At least they’re not drawing stink lines on Stephen Harper (then again, the night has just begun!). (JG)
9:53 p.m.—John Rafferty is leading in Thunder Bay-Rainy River for the NDP. John Rafferty has run as an NDP candidate about eleventy thousand times, and he’s finally winning. I’m sure he’s quite nice, but there’s something essential to be said about the nature of Canadian politics here. (CB)
9:52 p.m.—The CBC says the story is Ontario. Ontario-haters, start your engines, too. (HD)
9:52 p.m.—Everybody but the Liberals gaining votes in Ontario. Dion-haters, start your engines. (HD)
9:50 p.m.—CBC has white guys with beards opining on the almost-totally-unknown election standards. I am a white guy! I have a beard! (Well, not a full one, but I can grow it out.) Give me a job, CBC! I promise to speak in respectful dulcet tones! (CB)
9:50 p.m.—Conservatives get no seats in Newfoundland and Labrador. All hail Danny Williams! (JG)
9:48 p.m.—Well that’s not a good metaphor at all. (DT)
9:48 p.m.—Maxime Bernier is leading, for the moment, in Beauce. I guess Quebeckers said “hey, he lets his girlfriend look at state secrets, and I would too, let’s be honest.” (CB)
9:45 p.m.—Here’s a fun game…Canadian elections are more like… (DT)

9:41 p.m.—May brags about how this time around the Greens got 9,000 votes in the riding rather than 6,000. This would be a whole lot more impressive if there had been a Liberal candidate in the riding this time around. Dear Elizabeth May: elections are not like the Special Olympics. You are not a winner just for coming out. (CB)

9:38 p.m.—Elizabeth May: “We ran the kind of campaign that other politicians can only dream of.” Yes, the kind where you wake up at three in the morning, shaking and wondering where all the spiders crawling over your body went. YOU LOST, LADY. (CB)
9:36 p.m.—The Tories lost a shitload of support in Newfoundland. Moral of story: do not mess with Danny Williams. (CB)
9:35 p.m.—Now that Elizabeth May has lost her fourteenth possible chance to become an actual elected member of Parliament, can we please please please consign the Green Party to the dustbin of history where they belong, rather than letting them split vote after vote? I speak as someone who voted Green, incidentally, and I was hoping maybe they’d become relevant, but they’ve gotten their fair share of kicks at the can and it is only right and proper that we give the Marxist-Leninists or the Marijuana Party their chance to be the official “I Wasted My Vote And All I Got Was A Smug Sense Of Self-Worth” voter option. (CB)
9:34 p.m.—Atlantic Canadians veering leftwards: NDP and Greenies picking up support, Tories and Grits both down. (HD)

9:33 p.m.—Of note: Electionprediction.org predicts 125 Tories, 94 Grits, 36 Dippers, 51 Bloc and two independents. And as we all know, the internet is never, ever wrong. (CB)
9:31 p.m.—Lloyd’s wearing an orange tie. Subliminal message much? (HD)
9:30 p.m.—Polls in Toronto are now closed. (DT)
9:28 p.m.—Meanwhile the real Rex Murphy is using his evil laser eyes to tell us about why this election is all about Stephen Harper. And Rick “Will Never Be Canada’s Jon Stewart No Matter How Much He Tells You He Is” Mercer wants to talk about Stephen Harper too, and telling stories about spending time with political leaders and oh my god you sellout douche shut the fuck up. (CB)
9:27 p.m.—Some member of the Air Farce is doing a bad Rex Murphy impersonation and telling bad jokes about the political leaders. Memo to CBC: all of your political humour is miserable dogshit. You are the establishment. Deal with it, will you? (CB)
9:26 p.m.—CBC also has Allan Gregg, better known as the great white miserable failure of Tory politics. For some reason, this makes him a political worthy. HEY CBC I THINK THE GREENS ARE GONNA GET 450 SEATS! GIMME A COMMENTATOR JOB! (CB)

9:23 p.m.—Oh, CBC has Andrew Coyne on their panel! He’s so sensible! (CB)
7:39 p.m.—Just for kicks, here are what the two other leaders looked like voting.

At left, Elizabeth May; at right, Stephane Dion. Photos from the AP.
And here’s Jack Layton. At least as far as who looks happiest, the race so far is between May and Layton, with Dion dead last. (DT)

How Do You Get To Massey Hall?

I don’t know, I only came close. I can at least tell you that practice has nothing to do with it. I’d practiced my speech a lot.
Last night I was invited to represent my party (the Green Party of Canada) at Vote Out Poverty, a sold-out event at Massey Hall put on by Make Poverty History and the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice. I was really excited about it. Poverty–domestically and internationally–must be aggressively addressed, and I looked forward to explaining what we propose to do about it. Besides, it would be an honour to share the stage with the likes of Mary Walsh, Stephen Lewis, The Nylons, and others. When I arrived, I was greeted outside by a nice woman with a headset and a clipboard, given my ticket and told that someone would come get me before it was my turn to speak along with the other federal representatives (Ken Dryden and Jack Layton).
Then, before the event started, a twist. The woman with the headset came back and told me that I wouldn’t be allowed to speak, because we’d “RSVPed too late” and there wasn’t time to change the script. (My attendance was confirmed that morning. There’d previously been a mix-up at the federal office since the invitation was sent to Elizabeth May a day before her hip replacement surgery.) I expressed my disappointment (politely, it wasn’t my wrangler’s fault after all) and asked if she could double-check if it really was impossible to add the words “and, from the Green Party, Chris Tindal” to the script. She went off to see what she could do.
Then, with the event already underway (The Nylons were singing John Mayer’s “Waiting for the World to Change”) she came back and told me that I’d been added to the script and would be able to speak after all. “Great, thanks,” I said.
First, the provincial representatives spoke. It was a very NDP-friendly room. The Liberal was heckled, the Conservative John Tory’s Candidate was outright booed, and Howard Hampton was given several standing ovations. Then, the federal representatives spoke. Um, except for me. I don’t really know why. They just never introduced me as I stood in the wings, waiting. Once Jack was done doing his thing they moved on to the next part of the evening.
Regardless of the fact that I’d canceled two other events to be there, I was already becoming profoundly discouraged at the way this campaign is going. Just a little more than one week left and we’ve talked about almost nothing other than funding for religious schools, as if that’s the only thing that mattered. And then there’s the referendum, which, we’re told by polls and news articles, Ontarians like when they understand it, but might vote it down since they don’t. Add to my frustration-pile that Howard Hampton reportedly went on CTV two nights ago and told outright lies (sorry, but there’s just no other word for it) about what the Green Party stands for. You can only get away with that if people don’t actually know what we stand for. And you can only ensure that if you make sure we’re not allowed to speak for ourselves.
Leaving the event, I couldn’t help but ask myself: “Ontario, you wouldn’t really keep voting for the same parties, using the same voting system, and expect a different result, would you?” After all, you’re not insane.
ps. In good news, as I separate myself from the event, it went very well. The crowd was energetic and inspiring, as were the speakers and performers. At least some people are talking about issues that matter.
Chris Tindal is the federal Green candidate in Toronto Centre. Campaign Confidential is a recurring Torontoist column, designed to explore the “behind the scenes” of political campaigning.

Torontoist: The Green Party didn’t really improve their showing much in the 2006 election. How do you think that you can do better next time?
EM: We are going to do way better next time. The most obvious answer [for why the Greens didn’t do well] is that we were once again excluded from the Federal Leadership debates. That sends a pretty obvious message to the voters, that this isn’t a serious party, because if they were really a serious party, they’d be in the debates. And I’m absolutely convinced I’ll be in the debates next time. For one thing, the media consortium that makes the decision is not following a rulebook of any kind, they’re not following a set of statutes based on Elections Canada laws. They make a decision based on some criteria, and also based on ratings and watchability. There are three criteria that I’ve heard of – one, that you’re a truly national party, which the Green Party is, but the Bloc Quebecois is not. And the Bloc is in the debates, which the Green Party is not, so obviously it’s a sliding criterion. The second is that you have seats in the House of Commons, which the Green Party does not yet, but the Bloc does. But the third criteria, where I believe I can tip the balance, to not have argue my way into the debates complain, or threaten, or cajole, or run a public campaign to get into the debates, is “are you a force in Canadian political life between elections, are you present?” And that’s where we really weren’t. But my commitment is that the Federal election campaign starts now.
T: So where do you think all these votes are going to come from? In the last election, some people blamed the Greens for Harpers’ victory by taking votes from the NDP.
According to a recent poll, around 1/3 of Canadians would vote the Green Party as their first or second choice, and the biggest chunk of Canadians who would have us as their second choice are conservatives. People think that we’re targeting, as they put it, the NDP, and … not really. If you look at where a party has disappeared on the political spectrum, it’s the Progressive Conservatives, many of them aren’t happy. I’ve had people in the Conservative party who’ve ripped up their Conservative membership cards and joined the Green Party to help my campaign.
Despite some of the more recent kind of lefty online columns suggesting that I’m a right wing person, it’s not a matter of (Conservatives) liking me because I represent something right wing. They like the Green Party because they’re completely disenchanted with where Harper has taken the Conservatives, and they can’t vote Liberal or NDP. So they’re going to come to us.
T: But still, there’s a lot of similarities between views of the Greens and the NDP when it comes to things like the environment and social justice. What would you say the difference is?
EM: It’s huge. Any of those left-right labels are really anachronisms and come from a different time. So in terms of the model of left and right, we have the idea of who controls economic production. But the assumption of unlimited growth – that’s implicit whether you’re looking at a socialist model, or a capitalist model. The goal is unlimited growth, and the only question is who’s controlling it. The understanding of Greens is that unlimited growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, as David Suzuki says, and what we need to have is sustainable development, living within ecological limits, nurturing communities, using economic activity to improve quality of life, but not destroying the biosphere.
The other big difference between the Green Party and all political parties is that our vision and our goals are by definition long term. Other political parties are responding to what I consider phony issues of the day, some of them quite trivial. Where you can have an entire campaign over a fairly run of the mill, garden variety scandal, that, while significant, is not earth-shaking, The sponsorship scandal doesn’t threaten my daughters future. And it was able to eclipse the real threat to our kids’ future because it had all those qualities that elected politicians jump for – a short term, salacious, scandal, money, it had those elements of being tawdry. Fiscally? A hiccup. Ethically, pretty embarrassing, but not something that the entire future of the country should hang on – what we thought of what the Quebec Liberals did with sponsorship funds. To me that’s a non-issue, compared to the climate crisis, compared to Canada’s place in the world and whether we shift from being peacekeepers to being an adjunct to US military misadventures.
Fundamental questions were never addressed to Stephen Harper, because it’s easy in politics to play the game of short term trivia, and much harder to say, “ok folks, this is a democracy, we have some hard work ahead, because the real threat to our security is that we’re destabilizing our life support system”. So the differentiating factor for Greens is that we think long-term. We’re keeping our eye on the ball, which is planet Earth. Without a functioning, healthy, life support system, nothing else we talk about really matters. Obviously the GP talks about more than survival, and we have a full range of positions and policies on all the issues that other parties talk about. But our footing, our grounding, is to first take care of fixing the drift of our society towards a suicidal course, fix that, realign your economic signals to ecological results, fix the fiscal system so that the incentives towards appropriate behaviour become part of the economic rationality of decision making. We’re always explaining that we’re not right and we’re not left, because people like to put political parties in their convenient boxes with all their ideological bag baggage. And we don’t have any of that baggage; we’re a completely different animal!
T: The Green Party seems to be getting a lot more press since you came into the picture. Why do you think that is?
It’s hard for me to say. The level of press coverage has a lot to do with the fact that the mainstream, the parliamentary press gallery, took me seriously because they know me. When I announced I was running for leader, in the first 2 weeks after I announced, I already had more press than the collective press of 5 of the Liberal contenders who announced in that period. Part of that is excitement on the part of the media that, for one thing, and I hate to say this as if it’s a matter of being better than other candidates, it’s not that. But being a woman added another element. Being a woman who gives good sound bites, they come and talk to me and ask me questions.
So part of the press coverage is about the fact that the national press already knew me, and gave a lot of coverage to the fact that I’d won, and to our convention. So I began a good get for local media too.
What I want to give the Green Party , what I promised to give the party, was a higher profile.
T: So you think media coverage is important?
When the Green Party is in the media a lot, that carries with it “you are successful”. The other thing, though, and why I really want media attention for the Green Party is that we have a message to communicate, and our downfall in the past has been the short span of the Canadian election cycle. We simply don’t have time between when the writ is dropped Nov 28 and people go to the polls Jan 23 to tell all the following: who we are, what we stand for, why our policies make sense, and why people should vote for us. Of the four key points, we’ve got to get 3 of them out of the way before the election – who we are, what we stand for, and why our policies make sense. The fourth, we can convince them after the writ drops, why they wanna vote for us. But you can’t do all four in eight weeks, it’s just impossible.
T: A criticism of the Green Party has been that you don’t have very detailed policies in your platform.
The goals are there, but we simply haven’t got the capacity for the nuts and bolts of every policy area that one could imagine. And so I really want to have much more detailed policies about what the Green Party feels about crime and punishment, much more detailed polices about how we eliminate poverty in Canada, and more detailed policies around health care. It is good to point out that health care is disease care and yes, we need to focus on prevention, but we also need to point out what we’re going to do to reduce wait times and to protect the universality of Canadian health care. So there’s some areas, many, many of them, that we can in the party persuade the public that we are a party of ideas, content driven, that’s innovative in finding solutions. You’ve heard of the Green Party, well this is green plus; whatever you thought about the Green Party before, there’s more.
I’m a policy wonk, I’ve been deep, deep, deep, into policy for decades.
T: Recently Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff came out in favour of a carbon tax, which is something the Greens have been talking about for a long time. How do you feel about that?
EM: I’m happy if people steal our ideas. I’m not going to say “they’re awful; they just took our carbon tax idea. I’m going to say “thank God”, because the issues that Greens care about are far too urgent for some long-term game plan for Green power. We’re about the Green shift, and if we can get the societal shift to happen before we form a majority government, I don’t think any Green Party member is going to complain. So that’s another thing that distinguishes us from other parties, because they play their short term partisan games and forget all about the fact that depending on the party, one hopes they had larger goals than a couple more seats.
It’s much more important to change societal behavior than to win seats. And I hope I don’t frighten you by clarity, but we absolutely must shift how we live on the planet as a species. So the Green Party’s constantly in there taking the day to day trivia of news coverage of political life and clarifying it in the framework of “does this advance our chances of survival or not?”
There’s a craving, much more of society than other political parties understand, a craving for the truth, a craving for a party that tells people what’s really going on and provides solutions. It’s so powerful that I think we can avoid those worst case scenarios – for example, with the CO2 increase where we hit the tipping point, and lose the Gulf Stream, and lose the West Antarctic glaciers, and see 40 foot walls of water hitting all the coastal cities. Those scenarios aren’t empty threats, but they’re not predictions, and they’re not inevitable, and we can avert them.
T: Young people seem to be a natural constituency for the Green Party, and yet they tend to have a very low turnout during elections. How will you engage them?
EM: One of the reasons that young people don’t vote is that if they aren’t voting Green, they’re entirely disillusioned with the whole process. I mean, you look at the same four guys in suits, standing there, mouthing the same platitudes at every meeting, every debate, not engaging with each other on anything that actually matters, not talking about climate change or Kyoto at all, not talking about global issues, or trade deals or inequities in our system, basically choosing their message based on their party’s polling and focus groups and pre-ordained scripts. Well of course these people are feeling disillusioned, and the disillusioned don’t vote. You have to have a sense of empowerment to vote.
And so one of the most exciting things at the convention was the creation of a specific youth caucus called Generation Green, which will not only bring thousands of new members to the Green Party, but will bring voters into the system, it will change the dynamic of elections. And they’ll be creating their own blogs, their own space, their own webpage.
In the sense of previous Green Party decision making, there was the sense that because so many candidates were under 25, so many key players were young, there was no need to ghettoize in a special youth organization. But the message that you send to people in high school or university who aren’t already part of the Green Party and don’t already know that you’ve got a lot of young candidates, is not a good one. So I couldn’t be more thrilled. Youth was one of my key priorities.
I think they will vote, when they’ve got something worth voting for. It’s generation Green – this is our demographic.
T: What do you think of the current relationship between Toronto and the Federal government?
EM: To give credit where credit is due, the new deal for cities is pretty brilliant for Green thinking. They tied the federal gas tax money to the idea that it couldn’t go to the cities unless the goals were sustainable. Now we probably would have defined sustainable differently, but it’s substantial progress.
Things have obviously gone very, very badly since Mr. Harper became Prime Minister. The idea of money for cities is there, but the idea of sustainability is gone. Now the money can go to highways, it can go for anything. On top of that of course, there’s no predictability. We need the sustainability and certainty of knowing you don’t have a 3 year program you have a ten year program, because if you’re going to be investing in major infrastructure to improve mass transit and intermodal connectivity within your cities, you don’t want the uncertainty of knowing your program may only last 3 years.
Clearly the current relationship between the federal government and the cities is not good. Prime Minister Harper is the first prime minister in the history of the country who doesn’t like the role of government. It’s a very fundamental thing. So if the federal government can make life better for the cities – eh, he doesn’t care. The federal government shouldn’t be interfering in provincial jurisdiction, and that gives him the perfect out, he doesn’t want to be there. But that’s not what’s really driving it. What’s really driving it is that the federal government should be limited to such a remarkable degree that it can’t do anything in the lives of anybody, and it certainly isn’t there to reach Kyoto targets. The one thing it may be there for is the military budget and taxation to support the military. So you look at the current relationship and think, boy, this needs fixing.
Now it still needed fixing when the Liberals were in power, and one of the key things that is wrong with the relationship between the three levels of government is that there is a profound disconnect between the policies at the different levels, and there’s a lot of turf protection. And what people want to see is that everyone is pulling in the same direction. So policy alignment is important.
So when you look what’s the problem with relationship between the cities and the federal government, part of it is the ideological problem with Stephen Harper as prime minister. But part of it is an institutional, systemic, long-term problem that’s best summed up by saying everybody’s scared of change. Except the Green Party. And that’s why we’re going to rock politics. We have nothing to lose, everything to gain, and even if we have something to lose, as long as I’m leader, I’m never going to trim our sails, or hedge on the full complete statement of the world as we see it because there’s some fragment of some vote somewhere that we could alienate. The public’s going to smell that a mile away, and I just never will do it. For democracy to work you need at least one party to say, we will speak the truth all the time, even though we don’t know the truth and we’re all searching for the truth, and we can get very philosophical about it , the reality is we should at say what we understand to be the truth.
T: What about gun violence?
EM: I’m against it. I know some people like it, but I’m against it.
T: (makes drum roll and cymbal sound) Seriously.
EM: Seriously? Now that we have the long gun registry is all set, it’s crazy just to get rid of it because it costs too much. Even the police associations want it.
But the more that we restrict access to handguns, long guns, the better. The biggest, most lucrative sector in the world is the arms trade, and it’s also world’s biggest polluter. But this amoral trade in weapons happens all the time, trading to one side, selling to the other. I see an extension of gun violence and the need to have gun control, is that we need to have arms control on a global basis, conventional as well as nuclear, chemical and biological.
T: OK, but what would you say about here and now in Toronto? We can’t pass a law and the get the US to stop selling cluster bombs.
EM: Because we are a truly a global party, in 90 countries, we are raising the issue consistently and clearly of militarism and why…. Put your money where your mouth is. And our platform is good on this, talking about the 26% increase in military spending globally from 1996 to 2006. You don’t get peace by accident, and you especially don’t get peace when the profit is in war. So we really have to name it and have to take it on. So inner city violence, and gun violence need to be addressed with programs to keep young people engaged. I mean, it’s not as simple as every kid should get access to a basketball court. On the other hand every kid should have access to a basketball court, and after school programs that make sense, and programs to engage youth in important community activities.
And every child should feel valued, every child should know they’re the center of the universe for their family, their village, however it’s seen. The commoditization of everything, giving the child a message that they’re basically a meaningless speck in somebody else’s consumer society, the alienation that comes from single serving meals and walking with your Walkman on through the fluorescent lit mall, has to be counteracted really forcefully by one thing, and that’s love. You can’t legislate love, but you can nurture – again back to Jane Jacobs – family, you can nurture community, or you can decide your number one goal in planning the community is the car. We can stop planning our communities around the car and start planning them around the child. And this may sound naïve, but that’s the essence of preventing violence later, is a valued, loved, empowered human being from crawling across the carpet towards a family that loves him to graduating from university. And that is an investment, if you want to put it in economic terms, some people who are really cynical want to reduce everything to an economic equation.
T: So what’s next?
EM: This is going to be really exciting. Tell people on the blog to join the Green Party now, because we are going to have a great ride. We are going to have the most amazing fun in the next cycle before the election, and during the election. We’re picking up steam, and we’re just going to take Canada by storm, and it’s going to be an extremely empowering fun experience. Canada is totally ready for passionate, well reasoned, well researched, principled positions from a party that is going to make a difference. The fun of that is in being part of it. It’s a really good idea to join now.
Remember, you heard it here first. For the latest Green policy release, see here.