Whooee! Of course, the Greens should be included. Your second paragraph sums it up as succinctly as any argument I’ve seen. Good work.

As far as the “why” regrading Harper and Layton, as has been typical lately, they’re using the same talking points. They contend that Elizabeth and Dion would be on stage both rooting for Dion as PM. That doesn’t jibe with reality. I’ve seen May interviewed several times and when asked who her first choice for PM is, she’s consistently named herself. Then, she’s noted that she’s not a complete lunatic and cannot realistically expect to go from zero to 155 seats in one election cycle. She knows that only two leaders have a chance of forming a government: Harper and Dion. Between those two, she strongly prefers Dion.

Green Party candidates will be running against Liberal candidates in 306 of 308 ridings across the country. We will be working hard to get as many votes as possible and we have a chance of actually winning in a handful of ridings. There are a couple dozen Green policies that are at odds with Liberal policies and the two parties are not, as tag-teamers Haprer and Layton contend, peas in a pod.

More than 70% of Canadians in poll after poll have affirmed their desire to see May in the TV debates. I know Harper doesn’t care what the majority of Canadians want but I expect more deference to public opinion \ from Layton and his party.

Gilles has been pretty silent on the issue. Rightly so. A leader whose party runs candidates in only one province should not be included. He knows he’s on shaky ground. Coincidentally (or maybe not), the BQ is also the biggest recipient of undeserved seats as a result of disproportional representation.

JB

Being a Green candidate, I am most certainly biased on this issue. However, I believe your blog touches the critical question, which is, what do the voters deserve and require from our political parties and from our media? Your second point is equally valid, additional debate and information can only improve the quality of the decision made by the voters.

I believe there is a third issue in terms of campaign spending. The reason we have spending limits within an election period is so that monied interests do not overwhelm the electoral process (which point appears to be lost on the Conservative Party, since they advertise between elections to avoid this expenditure from counting in their limits). The leaders debate is an opportunity for Canadians to have ready access to a succinct summary of the party principles (in both senses of the word principle). This should be one mechanism for leveling the playing field a little. Let’s not forget that the government changed the election financing rules in such a way that the traditional Liberal sources of financing were crippled (the Liberal party had by far the highest percentage of $5200 annual contributors, now lowered to $1100). Access to this advertising opportunity should naturally be given to those parties who have demonstrated a significant amount of support by the voters. For the last year, polling has indicated that the Green Party will likely receive significantly more votes than the Bloc.

Jim Johnston,
Green Candidate, Lambton–Kent–Middlesex

Sure, the more the merrier. Of course, I want a majority government elected with 34% of the vote.

Include the Green Party in the Debate…

I second DemocraticSPACE’s call for the Green Party and Elizabeth May to be included in the national leaders’ debate….

I think May should be included. I also think the media consortium should set up a clear set of rules, so in the future this isn’t a point of debate. A few weeks ago, the Green Party had no mention of an MP as being a criterion for inclusion, but now that they have one they think it’s the only criterion.

Vote-splitting is definitely a concern with the emergence of the Green Party. Keeping May out of the debate doesn’t do anything to fix that though. I hope the Green Party’s rise will lead the Liberals to support some form of PR.

I know democraticspace has published strategic voting guides in the past – will it publish one this time that encourages Green voters to vote Liberal or NDP in ridings they can’t win (which is most of them)?

The Greens should be in the debate and like Jim I am a candidate and biased of course. The NDP have proven that they can’t get a minority liberal government to take proportional represetation or any electoral reform seriously. They also can’t counter the conservative/liberal coalition alone. We need Greens in the debates and in parliament and we need to change the way we think about politics. No one is asking Jack Layton to fight for us in the debates. We are simply asking him to welcome the opportunity to debate and let things take their course. Harper and Layton are not afraid to debate the Greens but it will alter politics and so it’s a political strategy. All this nonsense about Greens endorsing the liberals is a smokescreen. For the first time hopefully Jack Layton will be seriously running to become Prime Minister and say so. For the first time the NDP will be running seriously to form government. But face facts. A liberal minority can be moved to pass legislation by the NDP and Greens but they have been useless at getting the conservatives to do anything. The NDP and liberals should have been cooperating from the start. Cooperative government is the future and the Greens are needed to bring that sooner rather than too late. The dysfuntion of the traditional parties brought us to this point and split votes aren’t the fault of the Greens it’s the failure of the other parties. That’s democracy and people will vote for whoever they think speaks for them. Stop whining and start listening. That applies to the Greens as well.

As partisan as this particular discussion is (and though I have a partisan view of my own) this fact is clear and direct: Elizabeth May has endorsed Stephane Dion for Prime Minister. Once she did that, she became a defacto supporter of the Liberal Party, and she also cast away any illusion that her party was making a serious move for political influence.

I hear the arguments for the Greens being included in a leaders debate and am willing to offer some counter arguments, if people. are willing to debate it reasonably.

The Green Party should not be in the debate until they actual ELECT a Member of Parliament. Wilson will never sit as a Green Party MP. The Green Party may poll well once in a while, but they still can’t break 5% nationally. A poll means nothing.

Until the Green Party has established themselves as a legitimate party, they don’t deserve to be at the debate. Four debaters is already getting crowded.

As to the Bloc Quebecois, my party, that they don’t run a full slate of candidates is irrelevant. They still have larger representation than the NDP.

Gilles Duceppe was elected under the banner of the Bloc Quebecois, if not officially, before the 1993 federal election, and the BQ had a large presence in the House of Commons because of the creation of the party.

The BQ also deserves to be at the English debate, for those who would propose replacing Duceppe with May, because anglophones do live in Quebec and they have every right to hear what Duceppe says as a francophone does.

The Bloc Quebecois also receives more votes than the Green Party in every federal election. Significantly more. The Bloc Quebecois also has the funds and the membership.

In any case, the Green Party will bring nothing new to the debate as the Liberals, NDP, and BQ already represent their views.

And if Blair Wilson becomes the reason the Greens get to debate, than I hope the Marijuana Party finds itself an independent who wants to make the news.

We need the voters to decide who is at the debate, just as they decide who is in Parliament.

The Green Party held a national news conference this morning (Aug 3 @ 11 am) at which every national news network was present. CTV carried it live. The Green Party outlined 15 facts as to why Elizabeth May must be included in the debates. For these documented reasons see http://greenparty.ca/en/node/6801

PJC: by all means, post your counter arguments. If they’re fair or reasoned, they’ll be debated likewise. Of course, if they’re partisan TP, you know what to expect.

Chris, you said: “A few weeks ago, the Green Party had no mention of an MP as being a criterion for inclusion, but now that they have one they think it’s the only criterion.”

Clearly you haven’t been paying close attention to the Greens. First, for some time they’ve been demostrating a number of other qualifications for being in the debate – none of those denigrate actually having an MP. Second, they’ve been throwing huge effort into the current (soon to be cancelled?) by-elections, including a credible chance of winning in Guelph – primarily to get that one MP to overcome the debate exclusion pretext. Finally, the Greens are NOT now claiming that one MP is all that matters – they are still pushing all of their other (quite valid) qualifications, as you can see here:

http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/6801

It’s been the consortium who fell back on the no MPs excuse, and all the Greens are doing now is reminding them that the excuse is no longer valid (if it ever was).

Firstly, I should like to say a big THANK YOU to you Greg for saying clearly what over 80% of the population of this country are saying. Let Elizabeth Speak.

Secondly, it would seem that our esteemed leader is afraid of Ms May. This garbage that the Liberals and the Greens are one and the same is of course horse feathers. Could it be that the combined forces of Ms May and M. Dion will clearly out preform our current PM. Many seem to think so, including Chantel Hebert in todays Toronto Star.
http://www.thestar.com/article/489482

And finally me thinks that the inclusion of Ms May into the debates is likely to hurt our PM quite a lot. Just maybe he feels that her 2,000,000 votes will be enough to stop him from having the absolute power he knows he deserves.

Let the Green Party into the televised debates.

http://www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca/

I will openly disclose that I support the NDP and I DO think the Greens should be included.

The Grits and NDP do NOT mirror all the views that the Greens have, and people concerned about the left being further fractured (thereby giving Tories more power) may be surprised to realize that the Greens encompass views from all over the political spectrum, and they should not be clumped with the left.

Perhaps some people who vote Green may realize that their vote is not necessarily a vote for the left – something that could help Jack Layton; likewise, some people who thought a vote for the Greens was too far left might realize that perhaps the Greens are exactly the alternative they were looking for.

My point is that Canadians don’t really know the Greens and have clearly demonstrated that they want to know more.

And if you’re concerned about the house of commons is becoming a jumble gym of colours, look at British parliament — they have no fewer than TWELVE parties represented! (albeit with twice as many seats as we have in Canada).

Both Reform and the Bloc won by-elections to get their seat in the house as part of the criteria for the debate. Blair Wilson was never elected as a Green, and its a shakey prospect that he will get elected as a Green seeing how he barely won the seat as a Liberal.

This doesn’t change the facts that the Greens have never elected anyone members of parliament as of yet.

I for certain will not watch the debates unless the Green Party is involved. At very least it will add a new perspective to this event.

The way it is now, the leaders come in with canned responses to avoid give their opponents the “knock out” punch that usually don’t answer the questions the moderator asked. And too often the moderators let them get away with it.

Boy, do I ever miss Tim Russert.

I also think there should no longer be French/English debates – it should be done with simultaneous translation the same way parliament conducts business.

my apologies, this. should have been posted here

The Green Party, and other “small” or “fringe” parties have been trying for about 20 years to get into the “big” or ‘established” parties leadership debates. For twenty years the media the Ontario Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Canada,CRTC, CBC ombudsman and a whole bunch of people have found the argument to include the Greens, the Communists and other parties in the “big” parties debates unpersuasive. They have had to settle for the “small parties” debates and that, or a reduced role in the big parties debate, is probably the most likely and fairest outcome I can see.
—————————————————-
” In 1993, the leaders of seven minor parties participated in a secondary debate at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre that was televised by CBC. It was a bizarre bit of political theatre, featuring the Green Party trying to talk about the environment, the Christian Heritage Party about biblical ethics and the Natural Law Party about the nation-healing powers of yogic flying. The experiment was not repeated in the 1997 campaign.

In the last election, those three parties, along with the Marxist-Leninist Party and the nationalist Canadian Action Party, captured a combined 1.1 per cent of the vote. The Green Party had the largest share of the bunch, at 0.4 per cent.”
————————————-

The Green Party,the Communist Party and other parties have been running candidates for over 20 years and have failed to elect a single MP or MLA during that time , A reasonable projection is that neither the Greens nor the Communist Party or any other of these “small” parties will elect any MPs in the next federal election. Why give one or all of these parties the Communists, Green, Marijuana, whatever,the opportunity to participate in the “big” parties” debates.

As discussed in the deliberations on past leaders debate, the argument om percentage of votes is more for a PR system than a “first past the post” system. Should a party that got .4 percent of the vote in one election, as the Greens did, that would entitle it to one seat in a pure PR system, get to be in the debate? What about a 1% threshold that would entitle a party to 3 seats in a pure PR system or a 5% threshold
that would entitle it to 15 seats. An interesting argument considered in the deliberations but no resolution, no threshlod set.

Lastly we need to reject the argument that to be included in the “big” parties debate a party needs to run candidates in all the seats and we need to reject the argument that the Greens are running candidates in all the seats. Obviously Bloc, Reform and other parties took part in the “big parties” debate without running candidates everywhere. And much as they don’t like to talk about it in this context, but will use it in other contexts, the Greens and Liberals are not running candidates in all ridings because they have a deal
————————————–
“Under the terms of the non-compete agreement, May has agreed not to run a candidate against Dion and will essentially endorse him as prime minister.

“This is not a large-scale merger of parties. This is an extraordinary expression of putting principle ahead of politics as usual,” May said.

During the news conference May touted Dion as the answer to Canada’s climate change struggles, saying she has worked closely with him and has become convinced he is the best choice to lead Canada.”
————————————————-
This deal means not only can the Greens not argue they are running candidates in all ridings, but also clearly puts May and the Greens in an alliance with the Liberals. If May does get into Parliament with all the benefits that would follow, she wuld largely have Dion and the Liberals to thank and, as the member of a party without the 12 seats required to have official party status in the House, will most likely depend on the Dion and the Liberals to be allowed to ask questions in the House, sit on committees and do other Parliamentary business. She may not officially join the Liberal caucus but presumably would be working closely with it and Dion. Her life and political aspirations would be a lot easier if Dion is Prime Minister. in the likely event of a minority government, we can expect May or any Green elected to Parliament, would be supporting Dion as PM. Does anyone think she would spend much time in the debate attacking Dion and the Liberals instead of propping them up? Her future depends on working with Dion and the Liberals.

If there can’t be a “small party” debate ( and I gather May and the Greens aren’t arguing for the Communists or Marijuana party or any other “small party” to be allowed to debate with the Greens, then yes, I seriously think it would be interesting to allow May a small part of the debate by Dion offering some of his time. How could the media and others refuse? Could be a brilliant idea.
Comment/commentaire by PJC 09.05.08 @ 1:06 pm

PJC — as a good NDP soldier, you are doing a fine job of repeating NDP talk points but unfortunately for those of us who value democracy and fairness ahead of partisan politics, your argument is thoroughly unconvincing.

First, it’s incredibly weak to use evidence from 1993 (when the Greens were indeed a “fringe” party) to support the case why the Greens should not be included in the debates 15 years later in 2008 (when the Greens are a significant player in national politics). Your argument rests on the incorrect premise that the Greens in 2008 are just as fringe as the Marijuana Party, Communists, etc (I’m sure you know that the Greens had 24 times more votes than the next leading party in 2006 — and they are currently polling at twice their 2006 level), and that there is no difference between the Greens of 1993 and 2008 (the party had grown twelve-hold during that span).

Secondly, it is not a reasonable premise to say the Greens cannot win a seat. They may or they may not. The evidence shows that when the Greens spend as much as the other parties, they are competitive. The difference is that the Greens don’t have nearly the same financial resources as the other 3 parties. Let’s put some numbers on this — in the 2006 election in Ontario, here is what each party spent on local campaigns:

As you can see, there is a strong correlation between money and results. The Greens got the best bang for their buck; the Greens have done well with very limited resources. This is made even more clear when you consider that they have only spent significant dollars in a riding just once — in the London North Centre by-election, when they finished 2nd with 26%. How well would the Greens have done in Ontario in 2006 if they had the $2.8 million the NDP had? We can only speculate, but if they had 7 times more money (what the NDP had), is it not reasonable to think they would do better? Possibly even be competitive with the NDP, perhaps?

By denying Green participation in the debates, you are really saying that only those parties with deep pockets already can play the game. You reduce democracy to purely a game of who has the most money. I, for one, strongly object to this view, and frankly, I’m surprised an NDP supporter would endorse this view. The debates are one of the ways we level the playing field. I would not support the Greens inclusion in 1993, but I would today. At issue is whether the Greens today are a player in national politics. You would have to have been in hibernation to think otherwise.

The public financing system does have a threshold to receive public dollars. Only the Libs, Cons, NDP, Bloc and, yes, Greens exceed the threshold. Why should we fund the Greens but not allow them to participate in the debates?

When the Liberals in Québec agreed not to run a candidate against incoming Parti Québecois party leader, did that signal an alliance between the two parties? Of course not — any more than the agreement by Dion and May to not run against one another in their respective ridings does.

The Greens offer a different perspective than the Liberals – have you compared their policies across the board? Your idea to “allow May a small part of the debate by Dion offering some of his time” is elitist and patronizing, and again rests on the false premise that the Liberals and Greens are the same (a classic NDP talking point designed to thwart the loss of NDP support to the Greens). Should’ve Québec not allowed the Liberals a seat in the debate because they didn’t run a candidate against the PQ leader?

Personally, I think that the Greens have demonstrated they are a player in national politics and as such they should be included in the debates (I come to this judgment not by a single criteria but by a host of measures: they exceed the threshold for receiving public financing, they’re competitive when they can spend to the limit, they run a full slate of candidates, they now have an MP, they have consistently polled around 10%, 1 in 12 Ontarians voted Green provincially, their top issue – the environment – is the top concern of Canadians, and so on).

If you took off your partisan glasses and look at it objectively, you might understand why the vast majority of Canadians (4 in 5) support the Greens inclusion in the debates. The remaining 20% are hopelessly partisan, but I do thank you for demonstrating the mentality of this minority viewpoint.

Hi Democratic space,
Thanks for your nice work!

Just a little correction,

The main reason why the liberals in Québec didn’t not run a candidate in Charlevoix is that because it was a by-election to bring the party leader to leader to parliament. There is some sort of unwritten rule that no major party (in theory)put a candidate in the ballot.

In 1985, when Robert Bourassa has lost its election in Bertrand, a by-election was called for early 1986 to give Bourassa seat in Saint-Laurent. The PQ didn’t not put any candidate.

In 1996, a by-election was in Jonquière to bring Lucien Bouchard to the National Assembly as the Prime minister. The Liberal Party and the ADQ did not nominate any candidate.

In 2003, André Boisclair was elected in a by-election in Pointe-aux-Trembles as the PQ leader.
The Liberals and the ADQ did not nominate any candidate.

I don’t really care that Dion had done this deal with May. But basically, the situation is really different to the Québec scenario here as we are not talking about a party with an official party status in opposition or a by-election to put the PM in parliament.

As per the Green Party in the leader debate, they now have a ‘’seat” so they can have a place in the debate. However, the problem is that one-issue parties will always have problem electing MP with our current electoral system.Also, I think that an idea of a Liberal/Green coalition is not feasible at my eyes as there is just too many ideological differences even with the environnment question.

Also, the French and English debates deals with very different issues.

MB — yes, in Québec, they didn’t run a candidate against the party leader, as is the case with Dion and May. Also, you might want to question your assumption that the Greens are a one-issue party. As I see it, they have polities on a range of issues, as other parties do. But they do have an image problem, as you have demonstrated.

Yes, the Green Party should be included in the leaders debates because they are a significant force in Canadian politics with views and policies that matter to the electorate.

The Greens matter to those who support them, those who don’t, and those who are unfamiliar with them and want to learn more.

Because so many Canadians support the Greens, they should be given an opportunity to speak for themselves.

Because so many Canadians don’t support the Greens, they should receive due criticism and be more openly challenged by other political parties, the media, and analysts.

Because so many Canadians are unclear about who the Greens are and what they really stand for, they should be admitted to forums, like the leaders debates, where they can make claims about themselves and where those claims can be scrutinized by supporters and critics alike.

The significance of the Green Party today is so undeniable that I have little doubt that the media will exclude them from the leaders debates this time around.