Canadians are often proud that their political processes are not dominated by the vast amounts of money spent to influence voters in the United States. But Canadians would also be naive to think that money doesn’t influence performance here in Canada. So while our campaign finance laws limit the total money spent, it still plays a big role.

I will offer one example. Take a look at what was arguably the most competitive province in 2006 — British Columbia. Here is a comparison of the average money spent per riding and the average votes received per riding.

The Greens easily had the best bang for the buck spent — with each vote costing just $1.30. This differs considerably from the other three major parties, which ranged from about $2.98 for the NDP to $3.88 for the Conservatives. The Liberals were in the middle at $3.34 per vote.

Put another way — the Conservatives spent 21 times what the Greens did and received 7 times more votes. The NDP spent over 12 times more and the Liberals spent over 13 times more and both received about 5 times more votes.

It really begs the question: how well would the Greens do if they were as well funded as the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP?

Liberal leader Stephane Dion has agreed to explore for electoral reform going forward. It appears that Green Party leader Elizabeth May not only managed to convince Dion not to run a candidate against her in Central Nova, but she also extracted a promise to seriously look at electoral reform. Dion doesn’t favour pure list-PR, but not many electoral reformers in Canada do (most prefer adding a small element of proportionality to our existing system of locally-elected representatives — mixed-member proportional (MMP) is often suggested as the best alternative for Canada). In the past, Dion is on record as supporting MMP, which was recently recommended by the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly (and it is also the system being pursued in Quebec, New Brunswick and what was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada federally). In his interview with Jeff Jedras, Dion said:

What I dislike in (the current system) though is the over-exaggeration of regional concentrations of the vote. With 50 per cent of the vote in Ontario we have been able in the past to have almost 100 per cent of the seats, and with 1/3 of the votes in the West we were unable to have a significant number of seats. It gives the sense we’re a party for Ontario and a party unable to have support in the West, when it’s not really the case.

One day, assume that you have a government elected where it is Quebec that is out of the government because of this electoral system, with 25 per cent of the vote, and the government has no or few seats on Quebec, and you have a separatist leader trying to have a referendum at the same time. This would be very dangerous for the country.

Because of that, I’m open to consider (electoral reform), and to be frank with all of you I wrote a piece…that will be published soon advocating for consideration for a system that would be very close to the German one, that means you would have a threshold of five per cent to receive compensatory seats, and the compensatory seats would be given on a PR system. I don’t have time to explain it (all) today on the phone, but I’m open…to consider a change in the electoral system.

Keep an eye on what Dion says in the coming months, as the nation’s largest province enters a referendum campaign to decide whether to change to a mixed-member proportional electoral system (the referendum will be October 10, 2007).

Even with the Liberals not running a candidate in Central Nova, there are many who question whether Green Party leader Elizabeth May can defeat Conservative incumbent Peter MacKay. People typically look at previous results and see the Greens so far back that they discount the possibility that May could actually win. People would be wise to re-think that position. I, for one, think it’s certainly possible for the Greens to win.

Why? First, MacKay performed surprisingly poorly in 2006, winning by only 3,273 votes over NDP candidate Alexis MacDonald in a riding that should be a Conservative lock. Put another way, 60% of Central Novans voted for someone other than Peter MacKay.

Secondly, another thing to understand is that a party’s performance in a given riding depends on whether it is targeting that riding or not. And the more money spent, the more their message gets out. There is a reasonably strong correlation — though not linear to be sure — between how much is spent and how many votes a party receives. Look at what happened in 2006 in Central Nova:

Party	Candidate	Spent	% of Max.	Votes	$ per vote
	Peter MacKay	$56,051.90	74%	17,134 (40.7%)	$3.27
	Alexis MacDonald	$30,275.27	40%	13,861 (32.9%)	$2.18
	Dan Walsh	$42,271.56	56%	10,349 (24.6%)	$4.08
	David Orton	$901.04	1%	671 (1.6%)	$1.34

As you can see the Greens ran a candidate here but it was not a serious campaign, spending virtually nothing, while MacKay spent 3/4 of the maximum allowed (which was $75,650.95). I have no personal knowledge about what they will spend this time, but you can bet that this will be one of the few ridings that the Greens will target, so you might expect the Greens to spend close to the maximum here this time around. This will surely force Mackay to spend the maximum this time, but I think most people know the CPC message here and are of course very familiar with MacKay himself, so more CPC spending here will not likely raise their vote total to a great degree.

Now let’s compare to what happened in the London North Centre by-election, which is a case where the Greens actually spent money. Let’s recap what happened in the January 2006 election:

Party	Candidate	Spent	% of Max.	Votes	$ per vote
	Joe Fontana	$63,536.06	77%	24,109 (40.1%)	$2.64
	John Mazzilli	$78,405.61	95%	17,968 (29.9%)	$4.36
	Stephen Maynard	$20,817.62	25%	14,271 (23.7%)	$1.46
	Stuart Smith	$2,442.17	3%	3,300 (5.5%)	$0.74

Fontana received about the same as MacKay did — around 40%. And again the Greens spent only a token amount. Now let’s see what happened in the November 2006 by-election:

Party	Candidate	Spent	% of Max.	Votes	$ per vote
	Glen Pearson	$77,463.47	88%	13,285 (34.86%)	$5.83
	Elizabeth May	$83,392.42	95%	9,845 (25.8%)	$8.47
	Dianne Haskett	$78,621.61	89%	9,327 (24.5%)	$8.39
	Megan Walker	*	*	5,365 (14.1%)	*

* It’s odd that the NDP has not reported its by-election finances (or at least it doesn’t appear in the Elections Canada reports). Note also that turnout at by-elections is much lower than during general elections (in LNC it was 42.2% in the 2006 by-election and 66.1% during the 2006 general election), which artificially inflates the $ per vote numbers. This also might deflate Liberal numbers, and of course, Pearson wasn’t an incumbent either.

With the Greens suddenly spending money and running their leader, they increased their vote total by almost 5 times. Some of that rapid rise might be attributed to it being a by-election, when the government is not on the line. But it does give us some sense of what might happen if the Greens spend the maximum in Central Nova. It appears that May is dedicated to spending at least half her time campaigning in the riding, an unusually high portion given her status as party leader. It will be interesting to see if MacKay has to follow suit (thus taking away one of the CPC’s best public figures for the campaign).

That Central Nova is a bastion of old Progressive Conservatism suggests that the Green Party’s platform of socially-progressivism and fiscal-responsibility has the potential to siphon some of MacKay’s votes, though I doubt we’ll see widespread movement away from MacKay (I would peg his minimum at about 35%). There have also been rumblings that some in Central Nova are concerned that Peter is too Central Canada focused these days, but how much that sentiment will impact voter choice is unclear.

So the Liberals are not running a candidate here. A warm relationship between Dion and May suggests that a good number of Liberals in Central Nova will probably be comfortable voting for May. Let’s say 3/4 do — that’s about 18% for May from Liberals, and let’s say another 4% for MacKay and another 2% for the NDP. If the Greens spend the maximum here vs virtually nothing (a 75-fold increase!) — we might expect their vote share to naturally increase from 2% to the 14% range (FYI, a 32-fold spending increase in London North Centre resulted in a 5-fold vote increase, so a 75-fold spending increase may result in a 7-fold vote increase). The Green vote is typically drawn from all three parties in roughly a 2 NDP:1 Liberal:1 CPC relationship. So that brings May to about 32%, MacKay at 40% and the NDP at about 28%. The NDP is currently running about 3% lower in the polls as compared to the 2006 election, while the Greens are running 3% higher. Factoring that in, we get Mackay 40%, May 35%, NDP 25%. But the NDP is not re-running Alexis MacDonald, who performed well last time. This suggests that we might expect a drop in the NDP vote. And since there is no Liberal candidate, we can expect most of that drop to benefit the Greens. So if the NDP drops another 5% because of a weaker candidate, then we have Mackay 40%, May 40%, NDP 20%.

What this suggests is that Central Nova will be a hard-fought close race.

Update: just to be clear. I am not saying May will win. I’m just saying that based on a rough analysis, it should be a close race and people who think otherwise might want to take a closer look.

More than 3/4 of Canadians (77.2%) want to see Elizabeth May in the next leaders’ debates. Moreover, less than 1 in 10 Canadians were against (9.6%). The Core Strategies poll (a Green Party pollster) of 1,500 Canadians between Jan 8 and 14 (margin of error of 2.6%) shows the following:

Strongly in favour — 27.3%
In favour — 49.9%
Neither in favour nor against — 13.2%
Against — 6.4%
Strongly against — 3.2%

Perhaps not surprisingly, Conservative Party supporters were the least supportive, but even a super majority — 66% — supported the Green Party’s inclusion. After Green Party supporters (97%), Bloc Quebecois supporters were most supportive at 84%. NDP and Liberals supporters were on par with the Canadian averages, at 81% and 77% respectively. More than half of Canadians (51.3%) thought May’s participation would improve the debates, while less than 1 in 20 (4.3%) thought it would make them worse.

The poll also found that health (25%) and the environment (24%) were the two most important issues facing Canadians. Canadians also believed that the environment (39%) would dominate the next election, well ahead of health which was second at 17%.

This is just one poll, but with such overwhelming support for including Elizabeth May in the leaders’ debates, how can the media consortium who controls the debates (CBC, CTV, Global and TVA) show such callous disregard for the wishes of Canadians and continue to exclude her?

Go to http://www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca and email the petition to the network boys (and yes, they are all boys).

Garth Turner has the rare opportunity to turn a negative into a positive. With his removal from the Conservative Party caucus (ostensibly because he was too vocal), Turner now has the opportunity to invigorate Canadian democracy with the same kind of openness and democratic populism that he has demonstrated on his own website, the Turner Report. As I share Turner’s view that an MP should be loyal first and foremost to his or her constituents (and secondly to his or her party), I believe the Conservative Party made a critical error in judgment in removing Turner. MPs like Turner are the future of Canadian democracy — open and engaging, using technology to connect with constituents. Sadly, the Conservative Party doesn’t see it that way — they see only someone who couldn’t be bent to their discipline. Effectively, Turner’s Ontario caucus colleagues trumped the will of people in Halton — both Conservative Party members who democratically nominated Turner as their candidate, and the wider electorate who elected him. Turner today reports that, contrary to what the Conservatives said yesterday, the vote in Ontario caucus was not unanimous and there was no national caucus vote whatsoever. The plot thickens…

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In a move that is sure to shake up the Canadian political landscape, the Green Party of Canada has elected Elizabeth May as its new leader. May, 52, is one of Canada’s most renowned and respected leaders of the environmental movement. Known for her clear and passionate speaking, May’s experience and strong political connections give the Greens instant credibility. May garnered the support of 65.6% of Green members on the first ballot (2,145 votes), easily winning the leadership over David Chernushenko (1,096 votes or 33.5%). Jim Fannon had 29 votes (0.9%). May becomes the only woman leader among the Canada’s five major political parties.

While its strong environmental policies come as no surprise, many Canadians have yet to realize that the Green Party represents a full-service political party, with innovative policies on the economy, trade, health care, education, foreign affairs, and defense. While sustainability has been a keyword applied to the environment for some time, the Greens are pushing for sustainability in social and economic policies as well, combining fiscal responsibility (including balanced budgets) with results-oriented progressive social programs (including health care and education). Also unique among Canada’s political parties, the Greens platform and priorities are set, not through a top-down policy process among a select few insiders, but rather through a bottom-up, grassroots process that engages Canadians at the local level.

For Canadians looking for a progressive, grassroots, populist option, the Green Party lead by Elizabeth May are surely a force to be reckoned with going forward.

Want to have a say in who becomes the Green Party Leader? Even if you are not a Green member, you can vote right now at http://www.greenparty.ca; out-going leader Jim Harris will cast his ballot for the candidate who leads the internet balloting by tomorrow’s vote at the Green Party Convention. Go on over and send in your vote.

Elizabeth May is Best Choice for Green Party Leader
By Gregory D. Morrow

The Green Party of Canada is quickly becoming an important player in Canadian politics. For example, in the last election, 25% of Ontario’s ridings were decided by margins that were smaller than the Green Party’s share. So, with so many close ridings, how Green Party supporters vote will often determine the outcome of an election. And the Greens are growing quickly — from 104,402 votes in 2000 to 664,068 in 2006 — a more than six-fold increase. With the environment now the second most important issue to Canadians after health care, there is good reason to believe that the Greens are well-positioned to once again increase their vote in the next election. And with efforts to tweak how we translate votes into seats, it is clear that we will see Green MPs in the near future.

This growing support makes the Green Party’s current leadership contest all the more important. Who the Greens choose will ultimately impact how much media attention they receive but also put pressure on the other parties to make sustainability central to Canadian politics. Three candidates are vying for the leadership: long-time St Catharines Green candidate Jim Fannon, Ottawa candidate and former deputy party leader David Chernushenko, and one of the country’s best-known environmental activists, Elizabeth May. The race is between Chernushenko and May, and they offer the Greens two very different options.

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The Other Leadership Race: the Green Party of Canada
By Gregory D. Morrow

There’s been a lot of to-do about the Liberal leadership race heating up. But nary a word about the other leadership race — for the Green Party of Canada. The Greens hold a leadership race every two years, not matter what. Two years seems a little short (four seems better to me), but the idea of a regular election process for party leadership is a great idea. That way, leaders can’t stay on well past their expiry date (yes, Ralph Klein we are talking about you!). The Green Party could play an important role in Canadian politics if we ever get serious about electoral reform, to ensure a better match between vote and seat share. It would be great to see the 14 Green MPs that they would have elected if we had a purely proportional system [although I don’t endorse a purely proportional system; I prefer a mixed-member parliament; see Making Every Vote Count (756kb PDF); still, the Greens would have around 12 MPs under a mixed-member system]. In contrast the $50,000 entry fee and $3.4 million spending limit for the Liberal leadership, the Greens have a much more reasonalbe $2,000 entry fee and $50,000 spending limit. Feel free to check out the growing list of Green bloggers.
There has been little said about the Green leadership race, but here are some of the declared or rumored candidates.

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