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The Green Party of Canada is a federal political party in Canada.
Current status
In the 2004 federal election, it fielded candidates in all 308 of the nation's ridings and received 4.3% of the popular vote. In the 2000 election, it fielded candidates in 131 (one third) of the then 301 ridings.
For 2005, the party began to rely heavily on its Living Platform to develop policy and to recruit new members and candidates.[1] (http://www.greenparty.ca/lp/tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=173#id704412)
It recently extended this collaborative concept with the Living Agenda, a consensus-based deliberative democracy pioneered by Kate Holloway. It employs The Canadian Green Rules of Order - (a variation on Roberts_Rules) using the same tikiwiki technology as Living Platform.
These moves towards a totally open party have been spurred by some of the party's internal conflicts (see below).
Although no Green Party has ever elected a candidate at the federal or provincial level in Canada (due in part to the country's first past the post electoral system), it is nonetheless recognized by many as an "emerging force" in Canadian politics. On occasion, it has polled as high as 18% in British Columbia, 8% in Ontario and 7% federally. Such figures are roughly on par with those of successful Green Parties in other countries, including New Zealand and Germany.
The party has one elected politician, Elio Di Iorio, a city councillor from Ontario.
In the 2004 election, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and CTV Television Network refused to invite the Green Party to their televised leaders debates. This sparked legal actions by the party, and a petition by its supporters to have it included. Nevertheless, the party secured enough votes in the 2004 election to qualify for federal funding that is available to parties that receive over 2% of the vote. The party will receive $1.75 (Cdn.) per vote that it received for each year until the next general election.
Relation to provincial parties
The federal party was founded and originally promoted mostly by members of the largest provincial green party, the Green Party of British Columbia. There are now Green Parties registered in seven of the ten Canadian provinces.
The federal and provincial parties remain closely allied. While no joint memberships are issued, many officials and candidates in the federal party have positions in the provincial affiliates. The Green Party of Canada has its headquarters in Ottawa, Canada.
The current leader of the Green Party of Canada (GPC), Jim Harris. He was first elected to the office with over 80% of the vote and the support of the leaders of all of the provincial parties. He was re-elected on the first ballot by 56% of the membership in a leadership challenge vote in August 2004, but did not have the support of the provincial leaders.
History
About one month before the 1980 federal election in Canada, 11 candidates, mostly in Atlantic province ridings, issued a joint press release declaring that they were running on a common platform. It called for a transition to a non-nuclear, conserver society. Although they ran as independents, they unofficially used the name "Small Party" as part of their declaration of unity -- a reference to the "small is beautiful" philosophy of E.F. Schumacher. This was the most substantial early attempt to answer the call for an ecologically-oriented Canadian political party.
Three years later, North America's first Green Party was born in British Columbia, and later that same year the Ontario Greens were formed. The BC Greens leaped right into elections, running Canada's first Green candidate. Later that year, the founding conference of the Canadian Greens was held in Ontario. Close to 200 people from 55 communities attended, coming from every province except Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island.
The birthing process was difficult, with deep divisions between those arguing for a national structure, and those in favour of a process that would build from the regions. Trevor Hancock, the party's first registered leader, was eager to get Green politics up and running in Canada. Party members, however, chose a radically decentralized party structure and for several years a kind of green anarchism prevailed. Eventually, an uneasy agreement was reached for a federation of regional parties, with strong support for building upwards from the bottom. The question arose: "Is the priority to redefine politics from the ground up, or to play the electoral game according to the present rules? Or both?"
Many members saw the party as a way to protest the antiquated Canadian voting system, and not much more. Nonetheless it did run candidates:
The Green Party of Canada contested its first federal election in September 1984. A little over 1% of Canadians voted Green. Unfortunately, the ongoing discussions about the party's modus operandi became so exhausting that, at one point in the mid-80's, there was a near collapse of the party. It was kept alive—if not particularly active—for almost a decade under the stewardship of the BC Greens.
In the 1988 federal election, the Green spotlight was on Quebec, where le Parti Vert ran 29 candidates (up from just 4 in the previous election). Les Verts received higher results than Green candidates anywhere else in Canada, polling an average of 2.4% of the vote. The Quebec wing hosted the 1990 Canadian Greens conference in Montreal. But soon after that, Canada's constitutional problems interfered, and many Quebec candidates abandoned the Greens in favour of a separatist party, the Bloc Québécois. There were only six Green candidates from Quebec in the 1993 election.
In the summer of 1988, the BC Greens tried to get the Green Party of Canada onto its feet by hosting a conference -- the first federal gathering since the founding meeting in 1983. The main accomplishment of that conference was the acceptance, after five years as a registered party, of a constitution. The party continued to field candidates at the federal level, and provincial parties were organized in a few other provinces, led by consistently strong efforts in British Columbia.
In the spring of 1996, although the hopes of electing a representative to the BC legislature proved premature, one candidate in the interior of the province received over 11% of the vote. Overall, the party's proportion of the popular vote surged to a new high.
At the party's 6th annual gathering in Castlegar, BC, in August of 1996, major constitutional amendments were passed, and policy was agreed to in a wide variety of areas. An important step forward was the structuring of a Shadow Cabinet, whose mandate was to create a platform for the next election in 1997.
The Castlegar gathering marked the beginning of a new era in Canadian Green history, and a somewhat uneasy one at that. In spite of a concern about the nature of leadership in a decentralized party, the Greens' first leadership campaign had been underway for the previous six months. Four candidates contested the leadership. A mail-in ballot was held: Wendy Priesnitz (from Ontario) beat Don Francis (Quebec), Jason Crummey (Newfoundland and Labrador), and Harry Garfinkle (Alberta) to become the Registered Leader of the Green Party of Canada.
In January 1997, Wendy Priesnitz resigned. Harry Garfinkle stepped in to be the Interim Registered Leader of the Green Party of Canada, and a leadership convention by mail-in ballot was held.
British Columbia's Joan Russow became leader of the Green Party of Canada on April 13, 1997. Russow won 52% of the ballots cast in the 1997 leadership race, surpassing Ontario's Jim Harris (39%) and Rachelle Small (8%).
In the 2000 election, the party nominated 111 candidates, in nine out of ten provinces -- all but Newfoundland and Labrador -- and in one of three territories (Nunavut). These candidates collected 0.81% of the total popular vote.
Candidates were not run in Newfoundland and Labrador, as a result of ongoing divisions over Joan Russow's refusal to endorse the Green candidate in an earlier St. John's West by-election (the candidate in question supported the seal hunt and mining development). This caused much uncertainty and friction between Newfoundland's Terra Nova Green Party Association and the Green Party Leader.
In the 2001 Quebec City protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Russow was the very first person thrown in a jail built specially for protesters, for taking a photograph of it from outside. Joan Russow promoted the Green Party as a leader in the anti-corporate and peace movement, but was undermined when the German Greens supported the bombing of Belgrade. As other members of her party supported military intervention, Russow's leadership was called into question.
Russow stepped down as party leader in 2001 and left the party to join the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Volunteer efforts were substantially absorbed in provincial campaigns between 2001 and 2003, and the federal party became dormant between elections, as was typical in the past. Chris Bradshaw served the party as interim leader from 2001 to February 2003.
In February 2003, Jim Harris, in his second bid for leader, defeated John Grogan of Valemount, British Columbia, and Jason Crummey. Crummey was originally from Newfoundland and involved with Newfoundland and Labrador Terra Nova Greens. Harris, an author and public speaker and member since 1987, had the support of all provincial Green Party leaders. His election was taken by many as reflecting a desire among the members to "become serious" in achieving electoral progress, and to steer away from any explicit anti-political ideas.
Full slate
In 2003, there were ongoing disputes between Harris and another member of federal council, Julian West. Harris's critics believe that Harris had promised Adriane Carr, the BC Greens leader, that he would engineer, the expulsion of West from the federal council. In October 2003, six party councillors who opposed West's expulsion resigned in disagreement with Harris. Three of them joined the New Democratic Party, and one was immediately appointed co-chair of the NDP environment committee. The Green Party then initiated a successful fundraising campaign in order to realize Harris's goal of running a full slate in the upcoming election. This initiative included borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars against the $1.75/vote expected to accrue to the party after the election. The party began organizing vigorously in all provinces and territories with paid staff, who some long-time Greens saw as simply mercenaries or interlopers. Nonetheless, even many of Harris' opponents ran for office in the June 2004 election.
Internet innovation
While the organizing and election planning was centralized, policy development was decentralized. In February 2004, the Green Party of Canada Living Platform was initiated by the Party's Head of Platform and Research, Michael Pilling, to open the party's participatory democracy to the public to help validate its policies against public input.
Its innovative Rank a Plank system let net users "rank planks" in the 2004 platform, and this gathered some 60,000 online votes by election day.
Policy direction
The direction of the 2004 platform, while retaining similar ecological themes, shifted in other aspects from a radical-left to a centrist or even right-of-centre stance. An emphasis on a green tax shift which favoured reducing income and corporate taxes while increasing taxes on polluters and energy consumers created questions as to whether the Green Party was still on the left of the political spectrum, or was taking a more modern eco-capitalist approach.
However, as early as 2000, the party had published platform comparisons indicating the reasons why supporters of any of the five other Canadian federal political parties should consider voting Green. The centrist view was not new and had always been advocated by the party's "lobbyos" - those who saw the Greens as largely a validating body for public policy to be advocated to, and through, other parties.
2004 election and aftermath
In the 2004 election, the party received a significant increase in media coverage on the strength of its 308 candidates, the platform, and a national leaders' tour. The party began to be included in almost all national political polls. Their popular support peaked at 7% during the campaign, and they finished with 4.3% of the popular vote. However, even the party's strongest candidate, Andrew Lewis in the riding of SaanichGulf Islands, placed a disappointing fourth despite the party spending significant resources in the hope of winning the seat.
In August of 2004 at the national convention near Calgary, Alberta. Jim Harris was re-elected, with a reduced majority of only 54%. Most of the interim council that he had appointed weas also elected. This group later became Harris' "Election Readiness and Campaign Team". Rival Tom Manley polled nearly 37%. A low response rate from members meant that only about 28% of current GPC members voted for the leader.
Most conference debate centred around significant constitutional reform proposals, and the role of membership in ruling on matters of policy and the constitution. The conference ended with a re-affirmation of a hybrid that was developed during the campaign: a centralized executive with decentralized policy and constitutional development. Some party members believe that Harris does not suppor this approach and favours hiring more staff to develop policy.
Harris was also reported to be "targetting" the GPC's International Secretary Elio Di Iorio - the party's only elected politician.
Policies
The GPC had originally adopted a form of the Ten Key Values originally authored by the United States Green Party.
The August 2002 Convention adopted the Six Principles of the Charter of the Global Greens, as stated by the Global Greens Conference held in Canberra, Australia in 2001. These principles are the only ones included in the GPC constitution. At the same time, the party adopted a rule that forbade membership in other political parties - which was again controversial among members who advocated a policy of co-option and the open declaration of such cross-memberships.
Current policy
The policy platform for the 2004 federal election can be found on the internet on the platform website (http://www.greenparty.ca/platform2004/en/index.php?p). The incomplete list of issues covered in a platform in case of a 2005 election can be seen at the Living Platform 'all platform planks' page (http://greenparty.ca/lp/all+platform+planks).
Election results
| Election
| # of candidates nominated
| # of seats won
| # of total votes
| % of popular vote
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| 1984
| 60
| <center> 0
| <center> 26,921
| <center> 0.21%
|
| 1988
| <center> 68
| <center> 0
| <center> 47,228
| <center> 0.36%
|
| 1993
| <center> 79
| <center> 0
| <center> 33,049
| <center> 0.24%
|
| 1997
| <center> 79
| <center> 0
| <center> 55,583
| <center> 0.43%
|
| 2000
| <center> 111
| <center> 0
| <center> 104,502
| <center> 0.81%
|
| 2004
| <center> 308
| <center> 0
| <center> 580,816
| <center> 4.31%
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Although the party did not succeed in winning any seats in the 2004 election, its result (4.31% of ballots cast) was a significant breakthrough for the party, and the party now qualifies for federal funds as it surpassed two per cent. This amounts to about Cdn $1 million per year.
Leaders
Affiliations
The GPC is a member of the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas and recognized by the Global Greens as representing Canadian Greens federally.
Provincial Green Parties
See also:
External links
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