I really should know better than to write about the Greens. Every time I do, I get a wave of emails from Greens. Yesterday was no different. In one of my exchanges, I expanded a bit on how I think Elizabeth May’s campaign is going in Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI). I thought it might be of value to post some of that here, although I recognize that some Greens would rather not hear about it.

According to GPC sources, after over a year of full-time campaigning and $300,000 spent ($30,000 per month for 10 months, with no funds for the last couple months), the SGI team has identified 3,500 supporters. That’s still more than a third fewer supporters than Guelph (for example) had IDed two years ago at a fraction of the cost (and no doubt Guelph has even more now).

What does this tell us about how the campaign is going? Partisan Greens will no doubt point to the small-sample (i.e. high margin of error) riding poll that was commissioned 18 months ago and say she can win (despite the wide range of possible outcomes, given the high margin of error). And I’m sure we’ll see them roll out more small-sample riding polls soon that show how great she is doing. It’s a common tactic for the Greens to position their candidate as the key challenger.

The problem is, as I’ve said time and time again, these high MOE riding polls are unreliable; they simply offer too little data, are rarely calibrated to the riding demographics, and never adjusted for turnout rates of demographic groups, and often don’t weight the data to the geographic distribution of population within the riding (which is particularly important in SGI, since May will run away with the Islands, but that’s only 13% of the population). The “too little data” claim is easy to see. If such a riding poll shows Lunn and May tied at 30%, what that really means is that May could be ahead by 10 points or Lunn ahead by 10 points; with a range of 20 points in the different possible scenarios, it’s just not that meaningful. They are, in short, a poor metric of projected votes. We’ve had riding polls days before an election that are so far off the actual votes, it’s not even funny (remember how J.P. Blackburn was supposed to lose Jonquiere-Alma by a landslide? um, not quite).

There are far more reliable metrics, including understanding the demographic profile of the riding, the anticipated turnout rates of these different groups, how much of the riding has been canvassed, how many supporters have been identified, the size of the local volunteer team, the threshold required to win, and so on. There are many factors at play.

The # of IDed supporters is especially important because there tends to be a strong (positive) correlation between the # of supporters you’ve IDed, and how many votes you will get. It’s not linear of course, but for example at ~20% support, we might expect the GPC ratio to be about 2.5 votes for every 1 IDed (i.e. they ID about 40% of the votes they get). That’s consistent with what Guelph had in 2008, for example. But to get north of 35% total support (what you need in SGI), I estimate you need to ID closer to 60%. It goes without saying that IDing your support is essential for GOTV (get out the vote) operations on election day, but it’s also essential for building a huge team of volunteers to do the dirty work both now and during the 36-day election campaign. You don’t stand much chance if you don’t know who your supporters are.

Assuming a turnout of about 70,000 in SGI (factoring in a bit of a bump over 2008 since many NDP stayed home since their guy had withdrawn), having IDed 3,500 right now suggests you can count on an absolute floor of 12-13% (8,500 to 9,000 votes). But I suspect it’s even more than that. Demographics alone tell me the GPC could ordinarily expect to get 17% in SGI (I did an analysis last summer with the #s). But this does suggest their canvassing/ID efforts to date are well below expectations. If they were “on par” with the underlying demographics, they should have IDed ~35-40% of what the base demographics suggest by now — i.e. between 4,200 and 4,800 supporters. But given the effort/$ put forth, it should actually be much higher than even that.

But if you need to ID at least 60% to be in a position to win, and you need a minimum of 25,000 votes to win (that would be 35-36% support), it suggests you need to ID at least 15,000 to be in the running. Do the math. They’ve IDed 3,500 in about a yr, about 300 per month. At that rate, they would need another 3+ years to get to 15,000 IDed supporters. But of course, the rate usually declines as you go along, and we’re assuming there are even 15,000 people in the riding willing to vote Green (which there may or may not be).

In case people are wondering, given all the data I’ve seen, and assuming a fall 2011 election (and assuming they continue their work at the current pace), this is what I’m currently projecting (note: a 3% range is about as narrow as I can get it):

SAANICH-GULF ISLANDS
CPC Gary Lunn 37-40%
LPC Rene Hetherington 25-28%
GPC Elizabeth May 21-24%
NDP Edith Loring-Kuhanga 9-12%

This can and will change of course, but it gives you a reasonable sense of where things stand based on the data we have available. So assuming a fall 2011 election, I’m expecting they’ll have IDed ~45% of their votes, or between 6,500 and 7,500 supporters.

Just FYI, here’s what I had projected for EM’s last two tries — as you can see, it wasn’t too far off. So take the above for what it’s worth.

CENTRAL NOVA
CPC Peter Mackay 41-44% (actual: 46.6%)
GPC Elizabeth May 33-36% (actual: 32.2%)
NDP Louise Lorifice 20-23% (actual: 19.6%)

LONDON NORTH CENTRE
LIB Glen Pearson 33-36% (actual 34.9%)
GPC Elizabeth May 22-25% (actual: 25.8%)
CPC Dianne Haskett 22-25% (actual: 24.5%)
NDP Megan Walker 16-19% (actual: 14.1%)

I had just made my wife and I some yummy eggs benedict and brewed my favourite Dunkin’ Donuts french vanilla coffee (mmm…) when I sat down with the paper (read: iPad + wireless) on a fine Sunday morning to catch up on the Canadian political scene. What a way to ruin a fine Sunday morning, my wife said. I laughed, knowing she was of course probably right.

I knew the Green Party convention was this weekend, but I hadn’t come across anything in the news the last couple days, so I did some digging and eventually found a couple of buried pieces. And sure enough, I just about spit my cup o’ joe all over the iPad when I read Elizabeth May’s comments in the Toronto Star. In just a tiny article, May managed to spread at least 3 falsehoods.

(1) Dismissing the membership decline an a “meaningless indicator”
When asked about the precipitous decline in Green Party membership over the last year (they’ve lost 20-25% of their members), May said it was, and I quote, “a meaningless indicator”.

Wow. Members are a meaningless indicator? Nothing could be further from the truth. Members are the lifeline of a political party. They are the people who volunteer their time and energy recruiting others, knocking on doors, hosting events, making phone calls, encouraging their friends to vote, etc. They’re also the bread-and-butter of fundraising. It’s almost unbelievable that May dismisses members so casually (and callously). May’s strategy, of course, is centered on getting as much press for her as possible and seemingly hope that votes will come automatically.

Perhaps this under-appreciation of the value of the on-the-ground work by members explains why, after over a year of full-time campaigning in Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI), and spending $30,000 every month until the party cut them off in June, her team, according to GPC sources, has identified just 3,500 supporters (note: that’s about 2,000 fewer than Guelph had at the end of the 2008 election). Needless to say, the more supporters you ID, the more people you can ask for help and the more people you can get to the polls on election day. Since it will take a minimum of 25,000 but probably closer to 28,000 votes to win SGI, I’d estimate they need to identify a minimum of 15,000 supporters to be competitive. At only 3,500 now, you can see they’ve got a long way to go.

(2) Membership Renewal Notices
I was just recovering from May’s cavalier dismissal of the large membership decline when I further read that she attributes the loss to people who simply forgot to renew their membership, including her own father. She said, and again I quote, “we actually don’t notify people,” admitting the system is inadequate. “But it’s not my role as leader to work on that,” she said, making clear how low a priority it is for her to build the membership base of the party.

May is either out-to-lunch or simply lying when she says the Greens “actually don’t notify people” that their membership is up for renewal. What an insult to their membership director (Elizabeth Berman), who is nothing is not thorough. Let me introduce to you exhibits A, B, and C (click thumbnail to enlarge).

As you can see, I received not one, not two, but three notices — on Jan 6, Jan 20 and Feb 3 — that my Green Party membership was expiring (I did not renew). Sorry, Elizabeth, the Greens do notify their people of expiring memberships. As leader of the party, you might want to get up to speed on that.

(3) Priority of Electing May in 2008
The third falsehood slipped in at the end of the article — a favourite of May’s — is that the party has never placed electing the leader as a priority. What May really means is that the party has never made getting her and only her elected as the only priority (the current strategy). Certainly, electing May was a priority in 2008. One need only to look at the amount of money that was transferred to and the number of staff members in Central Nova prior to, during, and after the election to know that getting May electing was a top priority. May should not confuse incompetence with lack of priority. What May really means is that other candidates also received financial assistance. But it’s one thing for a candidate to be given a few thousand dollars, but quite another to be given hundreds of thousands of dollars. May equates these when she says getting her elected was of no particular importance.

I should have listened to my wife (as usual); it was good way to ruin a perfectly good Sunday morning. I do applaud May, however — it is a remarkable feat to distort so many truths in so few inches of ink. But does anyone care? Is anyone paying attention? Based on the anemic attendance at the Green Party bi-annual national convention (a mere 250 people), it doesn’t seem that too many people are tuning in anymore.

I feel obligated to follow up on a story I’ve been following, although I’m fairly certain most of my readers don’t really care about the internal politics of the Green Party. Even still, I can report that Green Party members green-lighted (which means passed without debate in Green lingo) motions to change the party leader’s term from a 4-year term to an indefinite one by 74% and endorsed current leader Elizabeth May by 85%. Of course, that Green members did not red-light (i.e. reject) a single one of the 74 motions up for vote tells you how silly their online voting process is. In fact, technically, there are contradictory motions that were yellow-lighted (to be debated at the convention next weekend) including a motion that would call for an immediate leadership race and other leadership related items (although don’t expect these to go anywhere). These results are not surprising (at least not to me), although when 82% of members don’t bother to participate, it’s hardly a victory for democracy — yes, turnout was just 18% (although ironically that was higher than last time).

Let’s put some (rounded) numbers to illustrate the conundrum the Greens face (note: I’ve updated the numbers to reflect the actual results; it appears I was being generous in my initial estimates):

# of GPC members before this yr = 10,500 (roughly)
# who quit this year = 2,300 (roughly)
# remaining as of now = 8,200 (roughly)
# who voted online = 1,500 (but only 1,000 on the leadership question)
# who endorsed May = 846
# who endorsed a term change = 679

As you can see, politics is largely self-selecting. Before balloting even began, over 2,000 GPC members (i.e. over 1-in-5) had already voted — with their feet — and left the party. We can only speculate why they left, but it’s probably not unreasonable to guess that a small percentage of them were EM supporters or perhaps we might say that a majority of them were probably not May supporters. So it’s probably not too much of a stretch to say that those who are still GPC members today are largely May supporters. One wonders how the online voting would have looked before the mass exodus of members.

Secondly, as has been reported, the vote was manipulated. Some might say manipulated is too strong a word — perhaps influenced? Others might say it’s fair game for the leader, Council, and their supporters to run a propaganda campaign to promote their favoured positions. Personally, while I don’t have a horse in this race since I have no longer have any affiliation with the Greens, I think these maneuvres were unethical, as May and her supporters were in a clear conflict of interest position. The fact is, the average member doesn’t pay attention to internal machinations. So when they get an email from the leader telling them what they should (and shouldn’t) do, they probably do it. And when they read “party considerations” warning them of the dire consequences of some motions, they probably heed them. And when they see that “Federal Council” has proposed a motion, again they probably are inclined to support it. And when they get a PDF with instructions from “supporters of Elizabeth May” telling them explicitly what to do, they probably follow them.

That so many people already left and the vote was manipulated ensured (at least in my mind) that the Council motion to change the leader’s term just as it was about to expire would be green-lighted and that May would be overwhelmingly endorsed. But the GPC is hardly better off today for all these acrobatics. After all, over 1-in-5 members have quit. And of those remaining, 1-in-6 have said they’d rather have nobody than May (i.e. the 15% who refused to endorse May), and 1-in-4 are uncomfortable with giving her (and subsequent leaders) an indefinite term. Of the 10,500 members they had a year ago, only 846 have stood up to endorse May today.

So while the outcome was not a surprise, one gets the sense that it was a Phyrric victory (and a battle that could have been avoided by simply following the constitution; the end result would have been the same). I suspect that a majority of those left in the party are probably more May followers than Green followers (some have called this phenomenon “the Elizabeth May Party”). One certainly wonders what will happen to those people when May eventually leaves (although with an indefinite term with a low review threshold, I am not of the opinion that May will leave even if she does lose in Saanich-Gulf Islands — and no, I don’t think Council will accept Steve May’s argument (part 1 and part 2) that the leadership review requires 60% of all members in good standing as opposed to 60% of voting members).

So while partisan Greens will certainly celebrate these results, the fact that so many voted with their feet even before votes were cast doesn’t bode well for them at the ballot box next time. It remains to be seen if the Greens have helped themselves or just prolonged the inevitable.

John McCain’s presidential campaign was a fine mess in August 2008 when he reached into his bag o’ cheap political tricks and pulled out a Sarah Palin. The dynamic of the race was instantly transformed. And it worked… that is, until Palin actually spoke. It was clear that, despite her aw-shucks “folksiness”, Americans just didn’t think she was up to the job. Her subsequent interviews showed just how shallow McCain’s choice was — she was clueless on both substantive and trivial matters.

Is it possible that Green Party leader Elizabeth May just had her own McCain moment by naming ex-NHL enforcer Georges Laraque as Deputy Leader of the Greens? (notwithstanding the obvious colossal difference in importance between the VP of the USA and DL of the GPC) It may be too soon to tell, but there are parallels…

May’s party, like McCain campaign in 2008, is in a mess (declining membership, de-registered EDAs, shrinking contributions, declining poll numbers, in debt, etc) and her cadre has been under fire of late for doing all kinds of acrobatics to change the party’s constitution at the last minute to avoid facing the membership in a leadership vote at this month’s GPC convention. Faced with this mess, May needed to change the channel and get a momentary boost heading into the convention. Enter Laraque.

It’s actually a time-honoured political tradition when a politician finds him/herself in trouble to pull a publicity stunt to change the channel. Unfortunately, these stunts rarely endure. As McCain’s choice of Palin demonstrated, at the end of the day, people will see the publicity stunt for the cheap trick it is; and ultimately, it just makes them look desperate. It may well be the same with May’s McCain moment as well.

I was reserving judgment on the move until I read the National Post’s interview with him. The early returns are not exactly flattering. When asked to name his top 3 Green policies, Laraque responded:

“I just got a big book about all the policies. If you ask me in a month, I’ll be able to tell you. So far, the biggest policy is about promoting the environment. In the coming weeks, I will be studying and meeting and reading with Elizabeth [May] a lot more on those environmental policies to be more informed on the specific policies that they have.”

Oh boy… Moreover, that Laraque has so many other things on the go that he doesn’t want to “tie himself up” with the Greens — he’s not even going to run as a candidate — makes me wonder how long this marriage will last. In some ways, it reminds me of the Blair Wilson stunt. It was bad enough that the GPC made the Laraque announcement in B.C. (and not Québec) on the Saturday of a long weekend when people were more interesting in consuming brews than news, but to have Laraque doing front-page interviews so ill prepared is simply amateur hour. It’s really not unlike what happened when Palin first spoke to the media.

Let me be clear: I’m critical not because I think Laraque is a bad guy (on the contrary, I applaud his activism), but rather because I think this is a case of both parties (May and Laraque) seeing a mutual benefit from what amounts to a publicity stunt. May is trying to change the channel and Laraque being able to claim a title with the Greens helps his green business pursuits. I just don’t believe this will be a durable, long-term serious partnership.

Of course, May has come to Laraque’s defense saying he’s a “fresh face” who is “not a policy wonk”, echoing McCain’s characterization of Palin two years ago. And as far as I can tell, Laraque likes the Greens because… well… he watched a documentary 18 months ago which prompted him to become vegan plus he likes animals and thinks we should care about the environment. That’s all well and good, but hardly enough to be second-in-command of a party receiving almost two million in taxpayer dollars.

One key difference between May and McCain, however is that while McCain portrayed Palin as an “everyday” person — Jane America — May is explicitly counting on Laraque to “use his celebrity status” to court voters. As May said, with a straight face: “I was looking for someone who could really take us to the next level.” This is consistent with May’s strategy of getting press and expecting the votes to flow automatically (needless to say, this is folly — you *earn* votes by doing work on the ground, at the grassroots level, not with publicity stunts — a lesson that after four years on the job May is clearly still learning).

Even still, May is vastly overestimating Laraque’s celebrity. The reality is — and not to disparage the guy but since the Greens keep calling him an “NHL star” — if we’re being honest, he was a fringe NHLer who wasn’t especially well-liked at his last stop in Montreal. While May claimed “we are very fortunate he is willing to stop playing hockey and help his country,” the truth is, he didn’t really choose to stop playing, he was bought out of his contract and unable to land an NHL job this summer.

No doubt partisans (in this case, people whose allegiance is more to May than the party) will applaud her choice, just as die-hard Republicans did of McCain’s choice of Palin. That’s what partisans do. But I suspect the Canadian public will not be so easily fooled.

Is Laraque here to stay or is he just the latest in a series of parlour tricks meant to short-cut the more difficult task of building the Green party’s grassroots for the long run? Only time will tell whether this was May’s McCain moment or not.

It seems that some Greens don’t believe my claim that the GPC has seen a 20% decline in average party support from this time 2 yrs ago (i.e. a few months before a prospective election). So I thought I would explain it. The most reliable metric of where a party currently stands is the average of the most recent poll data from all the major pollsters. This not only gives us a larger sample size, thus smaller margin of error, than individual polls (albeit over a longer polling period), but it also evens out the differences in sampling methods (some pollsters use traditional telephone polling, others select from online user groups, some prompt for party names, some don’t prompt, some include leader names, the wording is all slightly difference, some ask the support question up front, some at the end, and so on).

Here are the latest numbers by the major pollsters for the Greens:

Ekos – 10.1%
Environics – 6%
Angus Reid – 7%
Ipsos – 10%
Harris/Decima – 10%
Nanos – 5.1%
Average = 8.0%

So the Greens are currently polling 8.0%. Now let’s compare this to summer 2008:

Ipsos – 11%
Environics – 8%
Harris/Decima – 13%
Angus Reid – 8%
Strategic Council – 10%
Average = 10.0%

So the polling average is running 2 points lower than in 2008, i.e. 2/10 = 20% lower. Hence my claim that the Greens are down 20% from two years ago.

Update: I thought I would just copy a comment I made below to address the question of whether this drop of 2 points is significant…. the aggregate data gives us 10,874 samples (note all data is publicly available, see Wikipedia for links), which gives a margin of error at the 95% confidence level (i.e. 19 times out of 20) of +/- 0.9%. So the current data tells us that we can be 95% confident that the GPC is between 7.1% and 8.9% (i.e. 8.0% +/- 0.9%). Assuming the MOE is similar for the 2008 data, back then would have said we could be 95% confident that the GPC is between 9.1% and 10.9% (i.e. 10.0% +/- 0.9%). As you can see, the low end of the 2008 data is higher than the high end of the 2010 data, which suggests that the drop from 10% to 8% is beyond the margin of error of the data, thus is notable.

…put another way, at 95% confidence, there is only a 2.5% chance (100-95/2) that the GPC is above 8.9% right now and a 2.5% chance that the GPC was below 9.1% in 2008. So the probability of both those events occurring (such that the GPC is NOT statistically below where they were two years ago) is 0.06% (0.025 x 0.025), i.e. virtually no chance. Is it possible the actual GPC support is less than 20%? Yes. There is a 0.06% chance that the actual GPC support is essentially unchanged, i.e. only 0.2 points (or 2%) less than 2008 (high-end 2010 = 8.9 vs low-end 2008 = 9.1)…the scenario I describe above. But that’s the same probability that the difference is actually 3.8 points (or 38%) less than 2008 (i.e. low-end 2010 = 7.1 vs high-end 2008 = 10.9). So the odds that the GPC has declined by only 2% is the same the odds that the GPC has declined by 38%. What we know is the average decline is 20%, as I claimed.

Note: it should be said that latent support (from the polling average) is not the same as projected votes for many reasons: last-minute changes in support, strategic voting, differences between party supporters’ demographics and turnout rates, differences between the scale and sophistication of get-out-the-vote operations between parties, and so on. e.g. the Greens were at 10% in summer 2008, 9% by the end of the fall campaign, translating to 6.8% at the ballot box. If it followed the same pattern this time (and it may or may not), the Greens at 8% now, might expect 7.2% by the end of a fall campaign, translating to about 5.5% at the ballot box.

After my update on the Green Party’s mess the other day, I received a number of emails basically asking me (and I’m paraphrasing) “how are the Greens different from the other parties?” It’s a fair question and goes to heart of why should someone vote Green. Greens typically say something about “transcending” the left-right political spectrum, but that really just begs the question (it allows the party to fill a vacuum for people dissatisfied with all parties, but that quickly hits a ceiling, as they are seeing right now).

The basic question is, are the Greens offering something that other parties are not? If they are not, why should someone vote for them? Elizabeth May has positioned the Greens on the left to centre-left, somewhere between the NDP and Liberals, which means competing directly with the NDP and Liberals for votes. So for the Greens to win votes, they must take them directly from the NDP or Liberals.

Yet, there has been a vacancy in the Canadian political spectrum since the merger of the Alliance and PC party — the centre-right, what we used to call “Red Tories”. The NDP are left, the Liberals are centre-left and the Conservatives are right, but there is no centre-right option. I believe this is a hole that Greens could fill and it would make the Greens much more relevant to Canadian politics. And there are a lot of current Greens who consider themselves Blue-Green, and would embrace a centre-right approach. But there are also a lot who are not, so no doubt this approach would push some current Greens away (probably to the NDP).

But think about. If you are socially progressive, care about the environment, peace and social justice, why not just vote NDP? Not as pro-union as the NDP? Then why not just vote Liberal? But why would you vote Green when you have at least two other options on the Canadian political left? (three in Quebec)

The fact is, for the Greens to be relevant, they have to offer something different. And they aren’t different enough right now. For the Greens to be electorally successful, they need a clear identity; embracing the Red Tory tradition would give them an explicit identity — socially progressive, fiscally conservative, which actually is a almost uniquely Canadian tradition.

Think about it — let’s imagine a Green Party that explicitly positions itself as Red Tory. Perhaps it could campaign around a half-dozen themes, such as:

(1) small business economy
(2) regional autonomy
(3) electoral reform
(4) balanced budgets
(5) social progressivism
(6) environmental protection

Whatever the specific big ideas, if successful, an explicitly Red Tory alternative could change Canadian political math in several key ways. First, it would draw from an existing base of Red Tory support, which is perhaps as much as 15% of voters (many of whom have stayed home in recent elections; although realistically a Red Tory Green party would only get a portion of them). You might lose a good chunk (maybe 1/3) of existing Green support, but the net result is probably a more regionally-concentrated base of about 10% versus a sparely distributed base of about 5%. That difference alone could win the Greens some seats. But just as importantly, it would chip away at the Conservative support in important places. And it would also lessen the vote split with the NDP and Liberals, allowing them to also gain seats. The big losers with this approach would of course be the Conservatives, but the Greens, Liberals and NDP would all benefit. Even without electoral reform, the net result is probably a much more balanced parliament that better approximates the will of the people.

So, what do you think, should the Greens become an explicitly “Red Tory” party?

It’s been a while since I commented on what’s happening in the Green Party. Not that I think people are holding their breath in anticipation, but here’s a recap of what’s happened over the last while:

[edit: some folks say I haven't "backed up" my claims below. Most of these are simply statements of fact, but I've provided some links to other references; see comments in red below for more details]

(1) the Executive Director quit and was replaced by the Tech guy; yup, the coax cable guy (his expression) now runs the Greens. [edit: just to be clear, I did not mean to criticize Craig, who is great and very capable person, I noted this because it shows how strange things are right now at the GPC; I send Craig an apology if he was offended]
[this is a statement of fact, the previous ED Maureen Murphy resigned, and Craig Cantin, the Tech Services Manager was appointed to that position. see GPC Federal Council minutes, members only]

(2) one Deputy Leader was replaced by another guy, who proceeded to quit within months, join the Bloc Quebecois, and now won’t return the Leader’s calls.
[statement of fact. see HERE]

(3) more layoffs and employee resignations too numerous to list (including most the organizers).
[statement of fact. most of the organizers were laid off: Drew Fenwick, Nicole Parker, etc. Many HQ staff left: David Lewis, Kelly Wyatt, etc]

(4) more high-profile candidates resigning (amazingly the top 3 Green candidates from 2008 are now gone, not including the leadership of course).
[statement of fact. the top 3 non-leadership candidates in 2008 were Dick Hibma (27.2%), Mike Nagy (21.2%), and Huguette Allen (17.3%), all of which are not re-running.]

(5) the leader’s campaign manager in Saanich-Gulf Islands quit, and was replaced by an underling from Nova Scotia.
[statement of fact. see HERE]

(6) a 20% decline in average party support from this time 2 yrs ago (i.e. 4 months before the last election).
[this one deserves a full explanation. see HERE]

(7) more EDAs de-registered by Elections Canada (bringing the total to 44 over the last few yrs — 3 times more than all other major parties combined).
[statement of fact. see HERE]

(8) …that means still no local organization in 1/4 of the country.
[234 ridings with EDAs, 74 ridings with no EDAs, hence 1/4 of country without a local organization]

(9) most Federal Council positions being acclaimed because of lack of interested candidates…
[7 contestants for 5 positions. see HERE]

(10) a precipitous 20% decline in the party’s membership in the last year — yes, you read that right, down 20% in one year!
[from about 10,500 members a year ago to about 8,500 today. Sorry, I can't disclose my source]

(11) a near 50%(!) decline in the # of donors from 2008, which is especially bad since…
[the GPC dropped from 17,308 in 2008 to 9,115 contributors. see HERE]

(12) it’s the only party in the red – $1.2 million in outstanding liabilities and negative working capital.
[from Elections Canada filings. see HERE]
…and so on… I’m sure there are other things, but this is what came to mind…

Needless to say, it’s a mess.

Given the party’s documented decline, it’s no wonder the leader’s posse is desperately trying to change the rules, so she doesn’t have to face any kind of leadership vote or leadership review until what could be mid-2013, which could mean going 7 years(!) without any kind of performance review (i.e. within 6 months after the next election, which need not happen until fall 2012). Most expected a leadership race to culminate in a convention next month, but they postponed it so they can get the members to rubber-stamp changing the 4-year mandate to an indefinite one. With the leader using the party’s email list to advocate for her preferred motion (needless to say, advocates of competing motions have not been given the same courtesy), it appears to be a foregone conclusion that the change will be pushed through since the motions are so confusing, people will look for guidance.

Apart from the formalities of extending the leader’s term indefinitely just as its about to expire, the convention will largely be the usual forum for members to get their pet projects adopted as official policy, which is what happens since the threshold is so low (any 10 members can sponsor a motion). Better would be to hold regional caucuses first, to ensure policies have at least broad regional support before being considered by the entire membership. This would free up time at the convention for the most important (but largely overlooked) aspect of bringing people together: to learn. Shocking, I know, to think that the Greens should be spending most of their time at convention learning how to run campaigns, instead of trying to convince their colleagues that their pet project is important.

But as it is now, most of the motions could never form the basis for a platform, since they aren’t costed, are often contradictory (with themselves and other policies), and in many cases so obscure or unimportant to the vast majority of Canadians (the sponsors excluded of course) that they mostly serve to undermine the credibility of the party if the media actually paid attention to them (which they won’t). Certainly, they don’t add up to a cogent message or identity, which is what is needed to earn votes (the raison d’etre of political parties).

All of this sounds pretty negative, and well… it is. A genuine summer leadership race would have been good to raise the party’s profile and sagging membership/donor #s, but it’s too late for that now. Unless of course the constitution changes fail (unlikely), in which case, a sham race would happen in the fall — you know, the time that elections are most likely to happen in Canada … you can see how this fact is now being used to justify the change (to paraphrase: they said we can’t have a leadership race in the summer — when elections are least likely to occur — because, well… we might have an election… so in the fall, we’ll ask you to rubber-stamp the constitutional changes “we” want — “we” here given the full weight of “Federal Council” even though 40% of Councilors voted against it — and if you don’t rubber-stamp it, then we will have to have a leadership race which by the way will be at a time when most Canadians elections do occur, so you see, you can’t really reject what we want…).

Yup, it’s a mess, alright. But where do you begin to fix it?

Update 1: it appears that one person — Sylvie Lemieux — is throwing her hat into the leadership race.

Update 8: I should probably also mentioned another couple controversies, implied in the Huguette Allen quote above, to bring people up to speed. Members are currently voting on motions that would change the GPC constitution that would extend May’s term indefinitely. However, May recently used the GPC’s email list to lobby (some would say mislead) members into supporting her preferred motions. And her allies drafted a series of obviously biased comments, posted along with the motions themselves, that were labeled “party opinions” (some objected, so they were edited and re-labeled “considerations”). This has led many people to believe that May and her group are trying to manipulate the outcome of internal GPC elections.

3 Lessons
Last week, the Green Party of England & Wales made history by electing Caroline Lucas as their first MP to national office in Brighton Pavilion (BP). Lucas’s election illustrates three points that the Canadian Greens have ill understood: (1) the need to elect Greens to other levels of office as a stepping stone to national office, (2) the need to build strong regional bases of support and (3) the need to be more strategic in where they run star candidates and invest resources. Having already elected Lucas as an MEP, built a strong regional base in the South East, and ran in a riding without an incumbent, Lucas was in a strong position to win BP. Canadian Greens can learn from these lessons, but it will require change.

Stepping Stones
Lucas’s election in BP did not happen overnight; it was the result of many years of hard work. The UK Greens have elected a large number of people (currently 120) to local office, including 2 of 25 in the London Assembly. They have built a solid base in 2 regions in particular — SE England and London, where they elected 2 MEPs to European Parliament (including Caroline Lucas in the SE). That Caroline Lucas was a South East MEP played a big part in why she was elected as a national MP.

Why so few Municipal Greens?
Canadian Greens of course don’t have the luxury of an EU overlay (elected by PR). But they can elect local Greens (not officially under a “Green” banner, since municipal politicians are usually without party affiliation). But unfortunately, Canadian Greens want instant gratification — they want to go directly to national office without building their influence locally. Despite a Green presence in Canada for 27 years and a purported advocacy for bottom-up change, there are only a handful of Greens that hold municipal office in Canada. If the Greens want to elect people federally or provincially, they first need to start electing people locally.

Leveraging Federal Resources
Federal campaigns should be used to build a candidate’s name locally, and these candidates should then, in turn, run for municipal office. Unfortunately, Canadian Greens have done a poor job of leveraging federal per-vote funds to elect Greens locally. People only have so much time for politics, but it’s curious why more Greens don’t run municipally (the vast majority don’t). I suspect the current GPC leader’s focus on top-down initiatives (for example, a global Kyoto-like commitment to cutting CO2 emissions, an economy-wide carbon tax, etc) has attracted a different breed of Green candidate than those who’ve traditionally advocated more bottom-up change. Whatever the reason, there is a paucity of Greens with municipal credentials.

Potential Future Success
There are a few examples of Greens who’ve been successful municipally, and these folks hold promise as future Green candidates provincially or federally. Local city councilor Bob Bell has been nominated in Guelph, which bodes well for the Greens next time (especially since it was the riding that came closest to winning for last time and Bell would be running against a first-time opposition MP in a party whose support appears to be falling). Angela Reid’s election to Kelowna city council should one day put her in a strong position should she again seek election to provincial or federal office as a Green candidate. Other Greens such as Whistler mayor Ken Melamed and city councilors in Victoria and Vancouver, for example, would one day make ideal Green candidates. But given the success of UK Greens in electing local politicians, it is clear there should be far, far more Greens in Canadian municipal politics.

Singular Focus on Elections
Unfortunately, since the vast majority of GPC electoral district associations (EDAs), where they exist at all, only come alive when there is a federal election, there is a tendency to see federal elections as quite distinct from local politics. Rather than see campaigns as singular electoral events, EDAs must run small local campaigns all the time — whether they be hosting events, membership drives, door knocking, issue-based campaigns, etc. That is, running a small campaign *is* organizing (versus the traditional GPC approach to organizing, which has been largely seen as simply getting a full slate of candidates, which clearly is only the first step). That means nominating a candidate *early* and getting that candidate out in the community. This would build the profile of local candidates, which would help their chances when running for local or higher levels of government. The problem is, most EDAs are tiny and lack the time or money to organize on-going campaigns.

Organizing Regionally
This is where the second lesson from the UK comes in — the need to build regional strength. A region does NOT mean an entire province, contrary to what many Greens believe; except for Atlantic Canada, provinces are comprised of more than one region. Provinces like Ontario and Quebec are simply far too large to organize as a unit. But more importantly, the different regions within each province have sometimes wildly different concerns (think of the differences between Toronto and Northern Ontario, for example). Even B.C. cannot be seen as a single region — the concerns of people in the Okanagan are not the same as in Vancouver. Likewise, a region does NOT mean a riding. In the vast majority of cases, ridings are smaller than regions. Thus a focus on a single riding is unlikely to build enough of a base to win seats.

Dysfunctional Structure
Unfortunately, the GP’s organizing structure (to the extent it exists at all) and dysfunctional and overly bureaucratic administrative structure does not recognize or encourage building regional bases. Some regions — Toronto, Ottawa, Southern Alberta — are beginning to recognize the importance of regional organizing on their own and pooling together. But these efforts are taking place of their own initiative and certainly not at the encouragement of the GPC leadership and central office. A more sensible approach would be to completely re-think the organizational structure of the party, in particular to align the organizing, administrative, governance structures (what I call OAG) into a single regional model. I’ll have more on this in a separate post later.

Strategic Targeting
The third lesson Canadian Greens could learn from the UK Greens is about where to put limited resources. It is appropriate for the Greens to target a few specific seats, although that should not be to the exclusion of the first two lessons (electing Greens locally as a stepping stone and building regional bases of support). Moreover, target-to-win should be reserved only for cases where the Greens can truly compete to win. There are very few seats in Canada where the Greens are even remotely competitive — Guelph, Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, Vancouver Center, Saanich-Gulf Islands (mostly due to the large investment there). And only a couple of these are realistic since, as Brighton Pavilion demonstrated, you need a 4-way split of votes (i.e. low threshold to win, Lucas won with 31%) as well as weak opposition (there was no incumbent in BP). Unfortunately, Elizabeth May’s decision to run not once but twice against a sitting cabinet minister, rather than against low-hanging fruit (where there is no incumbent or a weak, first-time opposition MP) has seriously undermined her chances.

Recap
The Greens can learn 3 lessons from the UK Green’s election of Caroline Lucas: (1) the need to elect Greens to other levels of office as a stepping stone to national office, (2) the need to build strong regional bases of support and (3) the need to be more strategic in where they run star candidates and invest resources. To apply these lessons will require changes to the GPC structure, which will be the subject of another post.

Trouble has been brewing for a while behind the scenes in the Green Party; today it boiled over in David Akin’s National Post piece, which highlighted the upheaval over May’s leadership in the wake of a mass exodus of senior party officials. The exodus included the firing of Political Campaign Director Catharine Johannson, the resignation of Executive Director Maureen Murphy, and the resignation of the party’s Federal Council Donna Dillman — all in addition to the recent firing of 4 of the party’s 7 organizers and 3 other staff resignations, including its long-awaited and just-hired Quebec Press Secretary. Rumors are that the Greens are facing dire financial consequences, which has no doubt prompted widespread cutbacks.

With the release of Akin’s article, some May supporters are now calling for the removal from the party of the “traitor” who forwarded the “private” emails referred to by Akin (“The traitor should be found. They should be removed from the federal council and then their membership should be revoked… and elsewhere…”I’d like to remind everyone that the 9th circle of hell is reserved for the traitors”). The only problem is that the emails were not private — they were sent to public email listservs that are accessible to all GPC members, so quite literally any GPC member could be the “traitor” — that might make for a long witch-hunt.

Given the turmoil over May’s leadership and attempts to weed out dissidents, it is perhaps not surprising that some are attempting to postpone or cancel the constitutionally-mandated leadership vote to avoid May having to face the leadership when her 4-year term expires in August.

Interestingly, as the GPC turmoil was unfolding this weekend, May was rightfully chastising Stephen Harper for proroguing Parliament. But the parallel to attempts to postpone the GPC leadership vote are hard to miss. In fact, you can easily substitute “postpone” for “prorogue”, “Prime Minister” for “GPC leader”, and “Greens” for “Liberals” in May’s weekend comments and you have a description of what’s unfolding within the GPC…

“To postpone or not to postpone, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the minds to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Greens or simply to avoid that sea of troubles and, by postponing, end them.”

In one of last remaining media platforms she has (Jane Taber’s blog), May deflects criticism by declaring that “somewhere around 90 per cent of our membership (my guess!) is totally supportive all of the time.” There’s no need to guess, this support can be confirmed by simply proceeding with the mandated leadership vote in August. I have no doubt that May would prevail, although 90% support might be an exaggeration.

Of course, postponing the leadership vote seems to be moot now that May appears to have acquiesced to holding the vote — as she told Akin: “I’m happy to subject myself to anything.” Hopefully, this puts to rest the postponement drama, because it is becoming increasingly clear that the GPC has much bigger tofu to fry.

Update: I guess when it rains, it pours.

(apologies, this is longer than usual)

For the last couple months, the Green Party of Canada (GPC) has been plagued by an internal debate about whether to proceed with their constitutionally mandated leadership contest in Aug 2010 (i.e. 4 years after Elizabeth May’s Aug 2006 election) or do a last-minute constitutional (by-law) amendment at their August biannual general meeting (BGM) so May doesn’t have to face the membership before she has a chance to contest Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI) in a general election.

Two competing motions have been put before GPC Federal Council by two at-large Councilors: (1) by David Coon of New Brunswick, to postpone the leadership race until the fall, after members have decided whether they want to change the constitution or not, or (2) by Dan Murray of Ontario, to proceed with the leadership race as constitutionally-mandated, but with no explicit provision to put the by-law change before members at the August BGM. But there is a solution that best meets the expectations of both sides: (1) proceed with a summer leadership race as mandated, culminating in an August vote *and* (2) propose the by-law change at the Aug BGM, so that the term limit change, if adopted, applies to the next mandate. That is, while it is perfectly acceptable to have Elizabeth May’s next term not be limited to 4 years if members so choose, it is wrong to postpone the leadership race so you can retroactively change the current term just as it is set to expire.

The case against postponing the GPC leadership race can be argued on at least 3 grounds: (1) the underlying strategic premise is flawed, (2) it has practical (negative) implications on the GPC’s finances, and perhaps most importantly, (3) it raises serious questions about democratic principle and unnecessarily sows division within the party.

Firstly, on the question of democratic principle, in her latest book, Losing Confidence: Power, Politics, and the Crisis of Canadian Democracy, Elizabeth May writes:

“A full, free and functioning democracy is not something we should lose without a fight. We must not be driven by fear or seduced by creature comforts into allowing democracy to slip between our fingers.”

Indeed, we must not. I applaud May for her leadership in calling out Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament for what it was: sacrificing democracy for personal convenience. But the situation with the Green leadership race is eerily similar. GPC Federal Council must ask itself whether it is justifiable to sacrifice the democratic principles established by the GPC constitution in the name of convenience — the inconvenience that there might not be a general election before May’s first term is up in August (which wouldn’t allow them to test their strategy of getting Elizabeth May elected in Saanich-Gulf Islands).

It should be noted that the 4-year term limit was established only in 2006 (it was previously 2-years) — the same BGM when May was elected — and following both the Martin (2004) and Harper (2006) minority governments, so it’s not like the 4-year term limit is a relic of the past, nor was it passed in an era of majority governments. I would assume members knew what they were doing when they instituted the 4-year term limit (I’m guessing but it could be rationalized that since the GPC has no elected caucus to check the power of the leader, unlike other major parties, asking the leader to seek a renewed mandate every 4 years allows for some level of accountability).

This debate would end tomorrow if May simply applied the same democratic standard to which she holds Harper and agreed to seek a renewed mandate. She would be on solid ground asking for the confidence of the membership to build upon the accomplishments of her first term; after all, she led the GPC to an all-time high in votes last time. And I have no doubt whatsoever she would be re-elected easily (if she is contested at all; after all, I assume there would be a reasonable entry fee to ensure only truly serious candidates come forward). In fact, I suspect she could win without stepping foot outside of Saanich and without spending a dime. I’m puzzled by the fears that are driving these attempts to circumvent the constitution. These same fears were brought up when Stuart Hertzog contested May for the SGI nomination and yet it was a complete non-event; May won easily and the party came out looking more principled for allowing the contest. You can’t just say you do politics differently, you actually have to do it differently.

And going to questionable lengths to change the rules at the 11th hour is surely going to sow divisions within the party, and will no doubt lead to questions about the legitimacy of May’s extended tenure. It’s just not worth the damage it would do internally. Canadian political history is pretty clear that party leaders who unify their parties are far more successful than those who sow divisions.

Secondly, beyond questions of democratic principle, the underlying premise for postponing the leadership contest is flawed. The GPC has apparently concluded a leadership contest would be so damaging to May that they are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid her facing the membership. Why? I would argue the opposite: a summer leadership contest would bring renewed energy (more media exposure, new members, more contributions, etc) to a party that has largely fallen off the face of the Canadian political map. Far from hurting May in Saanich, it would help her.

And postponing risks a potential fall leadership race. A summer leadership contest is far more preferable than the fall for 2 reasons: (1) there would be a significant lost opportunity cost since the fall is the best time to organize, fundraise, knock on doors, etc — you don’t want GPC members working on a leadership campaign instead of building support for the next election, and (2) there is a far greater likelihood of a fall general election (the most common time for a Canadian election) than an August one (which has only happened once in Canadian history). And if the raison d’être of postponement is to avoid a potential conflict between leadership race and general election, it is clear that a summer race is the more prudent choice, since the chance of overlap is virtually non-existent.

Also, if the race is postponed and a fall election is called, it means going into an election with a leader whose term has expired — i.e. a lame-duck leader — which would be devastating (if not embarrassing), and almost certainly would preclude an invitation to the leaders’ debates. It just makes no strategic sense whatsoever and puts the GPC in an unnecessarily risky position. And for what? So May doesn’t have to seek a renewed mandate — a new mandate that she is virtually guaranteed to receive?

Thirdly, there are also practical financial considerations. Postponing also means less significant BGM in Toronto – a missed opportunity to grab the media spotlight (since August is a slow month for political news). And it will also cost the party more to hold separate BGM and leadership races (assuming the leadership race allows for both remote voting and in-person, as it did last time) — that means a second general meeting. That doubles the risk of running into a general election. But more importantly, given the precarious state of party finances, it would be imprudent to unnecessarily add to the party’s already significant debt. Two general meetings is a significant cost. Planning for the Toronto BGM is already well under way and the costs to-date are running at almost $250,000. Registration fees start at $200 and run up to $400. Assuming $250 on average, to break even at $250,000 requires at least 1,000 members to attend — over 4 times as many as attended the last BGM in Pictou, NS. Holding a second general meeting means going further into debt and it means another fee to members (unless the GPC plans on bearing the full cost of the in-person leadership component). Not only will that discourage attendance to the in-person leadership component but it also limits the amount of money members can donate to the GPC, since both registration fees would be included in the $1,100 Elections Canada yearly maximum. So it should be clear that postponing the leadership race has significant financial consequences for the GPC.

I’ve outlined why postponing the leadership race is unwise for at least 3 reasons: (1) democratic reasons, (2) strategic reasons, and (3) financial reasons. There is a much better solution: (1) proceed with a summer leadership race as mandated, culminating in an August vote *and* (2) propose the by-law change at the Aug BGM, so that the term limit change, if adopted, applies to the next mandate.

Council must weigh the odds of 2 events: (1) the odds of May being defeated for re-election, and (2) the odds that members will reject the by-law change to remove the 4-year term limit. The odds of May not being re-elected are slim at best, but the by-law change could go either way. It’s a very risky gamble to take and not at all the prudent course of action. Moreover, it is also likely that proponents of the by-law change will use the fear of adverse consequences to cow members into accepting the by-law change. Blackmailing and fearing members into accepting a preferred change that would have significant long-term consequences based on exceedingly short-term considerations is wrong. A party lead by one of the most vocal critics of such strong-arm tactics by Stephen Harper would be ridiculed for its hypocrisy. GPC Federal Council would be wise to step back and look at the bigger picture here. I have every confidence it will do the right thing: not postpone the leadership contest *and* ask members in August whether they would like the subsequent leadership terms to be limited to 4 years or not.