The New Kid in Town

The first post in this series is here.

The Green Party is where I intend to invest my time and my vote. We are still poorly understood, so I'll explain how we are different than the other parties.

Although environmentalism has a long history, its political arm (the Global Greens network) was slow to develop. Most environmentalists are individualistic, nonconfrontational, well-rounded, and middle-class, whereas electoral politics favours those who are hierarchical, aggressive, single-minded, and rich. However, we know urgent political change is needed, so we overcame our reluctance and entered the political arena.

Traditional political parties came from economic divisions--Conservatism from landowners, Liberalism from merchants, Socialism from workers--but the Green Party started as a philosophy, so it cuts across class divisions*. Its fundamental principles are ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, nonviolence, sustainability, and respect for diversity. Among global Green Parties, Canada's is considered more capitalist, eg. by proposing tax and subsidy changes rather than deeper systemic changes. Still, compared to Canada's other major parties it is very radical.

The major difference with other parties is that Green Party policy is based on concrete facts and proposals, not horsetrading and piecemeal election promises. Canada has a variety of short- and long-term problems, and to address them all, the solutions need to be holistic and comprehensive. It is important to us to have a detailed plan because we intend to plan ahead several decades, not simply until the next election. We also want to encourage genuine debate in hopes of improving it further.
Until the mid-90's, the federal Green Party was essentially a protest vote, a way for local activists to raise awareness of environmental issues. In 1997, the first comprehensive policy was released, 20 pages long. This was expanded and improved to the 120-page Vision Green released 18 months ago.

Incidentally, the Green Shift promised by the Liberals is the same tax shift the Green Party proposed three months ago, including slogans like "taxing bads not goods" and "neither Right nor Left." It's a good idea, and I hope they adopt more of our platform; but I still don't trust them, and I don't intend to vote for them.

(The central idea is to tax things we don't want, like pollution, and reduce taxes on things we do want, like income and trade. That way, society discourages pollution and not benign commercial transactions. There are exemptions so people like farmers don't go bankrupt from the new tax.)

The Green Party isn't perfect, but it's the best we've got right now. In subsequent entries, I'll address more specific issues of this election.


*Political activity in general is highly class-based: the poor almost never get involved because they have the least time and money to spare, whereas the rich are always involved because they have the most to lose.