Perhaps I’m Not Alone
Apparently the environment is now the #1 issue concerning Canadian voters. I was home with my throat virus when Harper shuffled his cabinet, I kept hoping David Emerson would get kicked in the junk but it just didn’t happen. In fact no one even brought up his name until the evening news. No, everyone was focused on Rona Ambrose being moved out of the environment ministry. They couldn’t go 5 minutes without mentioning it, it was like watching CNN.
Yes I wanted to see her moved if not removed but I couldn’t believe the attention it was getting. Frankly I thought Kyoto had died soft and quiet under conservative rule and frankly I figured it would when I first heard the results on election night. But apparently her gross mishandling of things has made it the number one issue above even health care which frankly I thought we’d be talking about for the next decade.
Then I caught the new federal green party leader being interviewed by Peter Mansbridge on TV tonight. I was impressed by her answers but I was also surprised how much attention and serious hard-hitting questions were being tossed her way. I was further surprised to hear that she has had conversations with Harper since winning the leadership in August. Clearly there had been a drastic shift in the priorities of the Canadian electorate since I’d last paid serious attention, namely the last election.
During the course of the interview it came out that she ran in the November 27 2006 London North Centre by-election, finishing second with 26% of the votes. It was the single best showing any green candidate had ever had in federal Canadian politics. I went to wikipedia to read up a bit more…
In 2000 they ran 111 candidates, got 104,502 votes or 2.11%
In 2004 they ran 308 candidates, got 582,247 votes or 4.31%
In 2006 they ran 308 candidates, got 665,940 votes or 4.49%
It seems to me that if a federal election were to occur this year clearly the environment would be an important factor in the debate which I think is great, although personally I think I’d prefer to see health care take the #1 priority with environment #2.
Elizabeth May, the new leader of the party, has set herself a goal of 10 seats if an election were to happen this year. I think this is both attainable and groundbreaking. Let’s take a look at the popular vote in the last election…
Conservative 124 seats 36.20%
Liberal 103 seats 30.17%
Bloc 51 seats 10.46%
NDP 29 seats 17.44%
Independent 1 seat 0.55%
Can you imagine if that by-election was a microcosm for the nation? I’m not saying it was but just imagine if the greens got 26% of the vote…if we had a truly proportional system that would result in 80 seats. Or look at it the other way, seems you only need about 36% of the vote to form a government in this country, that would put them only 10 points away…
If there is a federal election this year, the country could end up looking very different at year’s end and that’s a good thing.
