Why the Greens Aren't very
Green
Federal party is short on solid
policies and democracy.
By Murray Dobbin
December 16, 2005
TheTyee.ca
Voting Green? Not so much.
If the polls are accurate about 4 percent of Canadians, possibly
more, will vote for the Green Party in this election. (Last time
around it was 4.3 percent, a historic high). Exactly who votes Green
and for what reasons is still unclear as no one has done a publicly
available survey to answer the question. But the motivation is not
monolithic. There are protest voters, disgruntled NDP voters, Red
Tories appalled at Stephen Harper, and Liberals angry at Paul
Martin's policies but not willing to go to the NDP. And then there
are those who vote Green positively, because they assume that the
Green Party of Canada is more or less like the Greens of Europe:
democratic, socially and economically progressive and strong
defenders of the environment.
In fact, all these categories make the assumption that the Green
Party is at least, well, Green. They should take the time to be
sure. In the last election I wrote, based on the policy platform on
its web site, the party was right wing on social and fiscal policy
and also pointed out that both the Sierra Club and Green Peace rated
them below the NDP (and in most categories, below the Bloc) on
environmental policies. Unfortunately, little has changed. Some
things are actually worse.
Green Party leader Jim Harris, a former Tory and a motivational
speaker for large corporations, is again preoccupied with running as
many candidates as possible (he ran candidates in all 308 ridings in
2004). This is to ensure that there is a Green Party franchise in
every riding in the country so the party's government funding
remains intact. He knows that a certain percentage of voters will
vote Green no matter what - and each vote brings the party $1.75.
The party received over a million dollars under election financing
rules implemented for the first time in 2004. Yet, Harris has been
almost invisible since the last election, has done little
organizing, no membership drive, has managed to raise just over
$200,000 and has paid virtually no attention to policy development.
Obey your leader
But most disturbing to many inside the party, is Harris's
authoritarian style. Many people vote Green because they assume it
is more grass roots, more democratic, than the others. They would be
shocked to know that the party is the most top down of any of the
federal parties, and that Harris seems to simply ignore decisions
that he doesn't agree with. The situation is so bad that four of the
party's eleven officers, including the treasurer, have resigned from
the governing council in protest or been suspended in the past year.
Two positions remained unfilled for eight months and two are still
vacant. According to dissidents, Harris delayed filling the
positions because he was happy with the remaining officers who tend
to support him and he did not want to risk having more people turn
into troublesome dissidents. But in any case, leaving the positions
of fundraising chair and communications chair empty for most of the
year leading up to an election raises troubling questions.
At the 2004 AGM, members passed several constitutional amendments
which - constitutionally - were supposed to be ratified by a
party-wide vote within six months. Fifteen months later, it hasn't
happened and there are no plans to hold a vote. The 2004 AGM also
voted to have a policy convention this fall in anticipation of a
federal election. Harris simply declined to hold one, then
rescheduled it for February, 2006. Now that convention has been
postponed.
Recently, a party-wide binding vote was taken on the sensitive issue
of revenue sharing. Members voted overwhelmingly for an option that
would divide up party revenue equally between local riding
associations, the national party and its provincial branches.
It took a year for the party's council to respond to an 83 per cent
vote in favour of this option at the 2004 AGM. Harris
was strongly opposed to this formula, and after the vote the
national office announced that it considered it to be just a
guideline. Members of the revenue sharing committee were furious -
and one started a petition demanding the party comply. The party
headquarters eventually bowed to the pressure. None of this
kind of behaviour would be tolerated for a minute in any of
the other federal parties. And none would simply allow nearly half
the critical officer positions on the governing council to go
unfilled for months.
Hide and seek policies
The policy situation is scarcely any better. In fact, the party
seems to have no written policies. A diligent search of their
website reveals no platform at all. Last spring, there was a policy
document entitled Platform 2005, but it has been removed. Click on
"Policies" on their website and you get a statement saying
they will release policies as the election unfolds. There are also
some broad policy principles. But what happened to the policies the
party had last year? Have they been dumped and if so, on who's
authority?
Going to the 'Site Map' you can connect to "Living
Platform," an innovative approach to engaging members in policy
debate and development. The problem is that the man in charge of
that process was fired by the executive last winter. He claims
Harris helped push him out while Harris denies it. In any event, his
position was never filled again. Critics say that's because Harris
and his advisors (one of them an operative formerly with the
Alliance Party) thought the whole exercise a waste of time. As a
result, the 300 or so people engaged in the process were left with
no moderator. The page highlights "Planks in the works"
and lists twelve policy areas. But for ten of these policy areas,
the last updates were made as far back as January and no later than
June of this year. The page has no actual policies, just rudimentary
brainstorming.
There is a strong suspicion from some of those who resigned from the
council, that Harris simply removed reference to party policies from
the website because they caused him so much grief in the last
election. You can see why. Enhanced food banks to solve poverty,
more volunteerism instead of more money for social programs, reduced
taxes on corporate income and investment, rejection of strong
environmental laws and strong enforcement in favour of so-called
"voluntary compliance" by corporate polluters. These 2004
policies were ridiculed as badly thought out, not costed and clearly
contradictory of the Charter of the Global Greens which the party
has adopted as its guiding principles.
The party is now issuing a news release with a new policy almost
everyday. Some actually have a progressive tilt, but they are almost
universally vague, hastily formulated, and have no roots in any
party deliberations. And to make matters even more confusing, some
Green Party candidates in Saskatchewan are not even running on the
national party's policies but on their own locally developed
platform.
I expect that many people in BC
intend to vote Green for the same reason they did last time: the
Green Party brand implies a lot of very positive sentiment and
progressive history. Many others will make little distinction
between the Harris Green Party and the provincial Greens who had a
progressive platform in the last provincial election. Green voters
often think of themselves as amongst the most principled voters in
any election. If they are serious about this claim, they should be
wary of voting for Jim Harris - and what remains of the Green Party.
Murray Dobbin writes his 'State of the Nation' column twice a month
for The Tyee.
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