James O'Grady
I am the founder of Unpublished Media Inc., a company I started in 2012. I am also a communications professional and community activist, living in Nepean, Ontario. And, I am a hockey goaltender, political hack and most importantly, an advocate for grassroots, participatory democracy at all levels of government.
Contributor's
Unpublished Opinions
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Comments by James O'Grady
Yes, that’s too extreme and leaves out the fact that the issues at the federal level are different than those at the provincial level because of jurisdiction. You’re right though that they should stay true to themselves. But it’s hard to do because there are many different shades of Green inside the party.
Traditionally, Green Parties are centre, cente-right on the political spectrum because their balanced budget, zero waste and small-footprint policies ensure a Green government will make the most of what they have to work with.
I joined the Green Party because they are the closest thing to a “Pay as you go” political party that exists. Or existed. Elizabeth May has definitely moved the Green Party to the left and hurt it in the process. I made this argument on behalf of David Chernushenko who ran against her in the 2006 leadership campaign.
Former Green Party leader Jim Harris was a businessman and as a result, he was able to make gains at the expense of the Conservative Party. Many Red Tories joined the Green Party when Stephen Harper became leader. But they left a short while later when Elizabeth May became the Green leader.
Elizabeth is very knowledgeable and has raised the Green Party’s profile, but unfortunately for her, the media knows of the many questionable things she’s done to snuff out any opposition internally, even if they don’t write about it. Which is why you don’t see anyone internally able to replace her or many articles about the GPC any more.
The answer lies in building a stronger ground game. The party is far too weak on the ground in almost every riding. Their focus on individual ridings has also hurt them considerably. This was Elizabeth’s strategy. In the 2011 federal election when she was elected, she sucked all the money out of the party to do so. This practice has continued ever since. If you want to win as a Green Party candidate, you need to do it yourself. The party won’t/can’t help you.
This is the same for the Ontario Greens. For Mike Schreiner to get elected, the party used all/most of the money raised in 2018 for his campaign. His promise of ads in areas outside the GTA and 519 belt never materialized because they decided to keep the money for themselves. It’s quite sad really, because it goes against the basic fundamentals of marketing and sales, which is exactly what election campaigns are all about. As I commented on your earlier piece, voters need to be talking about the Green Party in every corner of the country or province if their best candidates are going to be elected. They don’t seem to understand why this is so, unfortunately. Cutting off their nose despite their face in the process.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
Interesting. I’m not a fan of nuclear as I don’t consider it clean energy. No Greens do. Hydro electric does a great deal of damage to the environment during construction.
I agree we need more energy sources, especially clean energy so I’d prefer a national green energy plan. Or a combination of the two. Diversification is always the best option.
Personally, I think electricity grids are too vulnerable to attack, an act of terrorism or even the wrath of Mother Nature as we saw in Ottawa and Montreal during the Ice storm in 1998. If every house and building had solar panels on the roof, we would need less energy overall because they would all be self sufficient.
There’s a lot of money in electricity, which as we know often leads to corruption. As it has in Ontario.
Decentralized and diversified are my preferred options.
Great question. The answer from my perspective, as a former Green, is the following:
1. Strategic Voting: Every election in a first past the post electoral system when voters vote against who they don't want rather than who they do want, the result is that the Greens lose upwards of 50% of their voter support on election day. Fear being the main driver.
2. A very weak ground game. For reasons I don't want to get into in public, the Green Party is very weak on the ground in almost every riding. When I ran the 2007 Ontario GPO campaign where we tripled our vote, we supported all the candidates in the province providing them with the very basics to succeed. This isn't the case any longer. Even though the party has 10x the amount of money, they concentrate it in a few ridings to try and win them. They've used this failed strategy for close to 20 years now without much success as you point out. My strategy worked better because I believe that in order for the best Green Party candidates to get elected, voters need to be talking about Green Party policy and ideas in every corner of the province or country.
3. Environmental and climate change issues fall to the wayside during tough economic times. This is especially true when climate change deniers, like Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre spend all their time and a whole lot of money spreading misinformation about it and a carbon tax.
4. One of my 2007 election campaign slogans was: "There is only one Green Party if you want real change." The idea behind it was to separate the Green Party from the other progressive parties on environmental issues. Of course they never continued with it and fail every election to prove the obvious: If the other parties were real green parties they would call themselves the Green Party. They had the chance, they never did. Why? Because they are not environmental parties. They do not understand sustainability and what the steps are to achieve it without causing the economy serious problems.
A revenue neutral carbon tax is a Green Party policy the LIberals stole. But, like usual, they failed to implement properly or to even explain the benefits to Canadians. Because they don't know. They don't have a real plan. It's all posturing. If you want Canada to become sustainable, the Green Party is the only choice because they are the only party that spends all day and all night, every single day of the year, forever, thinking about this problem. No one spends as much time or energy into solving the sustainability challenge.
5. Fundraising > The Greens suffer from an inability to raise adequate funds to take on the bigger parties. They just don't have enough money to reach every voter once, let alone multiple times.
6. Too many political neophytes > Too often complete novices become candidates. People who have not spent the requisite amount of time to learn how political campaigns are run. Even the volunteers have little idea what they are doing.
7. Unlike the other parties, the Green Party does not use a Geopolitical data tool to analyze daily campaign activity. While they start strong, they are unable to adjust the way the other parties do half way through a campaign. Which is one of the reasons they drop back in the final two weeks of almost every campaign.
I agree completely. Great piece—Thanks for sharing!