It’s encouraging to see the Green Party of Canada growing in the polls. According to the January 8th Environics poll, Elizabeth May’s party is tracking at 11% nationally. It seems fitting and right to see the lacklustre NDP slowly tumble while the GPC gains. Supposedly only 8% of Canadians are still undecided, so it will be interesting to see how many of those votes will go to the greens — and whether they will take even a single seat in the next election. May’s seat ought to be a shoe-in, but Canada’s a funny place (even more so during elections). Let’s hope Harper doesn’t call the election during the NHL playoffs.
Anyhow, the fact that support for the GPC has essentially doubled since last June is extremely encouraging. If Canada is in line for another minority government, we need a handful of Greens at the table to negotiate a substantive climate change policy.
One aspect of the Greens that should (but probably won’t) work in their favour is their habit of releasing technical policy and strategic planning documents. Take the recent "Investing in Biodiversity", plan for example. which calls for the completion of Canada’s national parks system, the protection of sensitive marine and land habitats and for the reinstatement of Canadian wildlife researchers. As far as I know terms such as "nutrient cycling" and "taxonomic research" simply don’t occur in your average Liberal or PC policy paper.
We need a party that understands and invests in the eco sciences, a party that will steer our economic system in a direction that is in sync with the carrying capacity of the land. Let’s hope we are Green enough after the next election.
