01/08/06, Lawrence Martin, Greens battle for limelight
Post
The green issue, simmering for a mere three decades, has now reached critical mass. It's now everyone's issue. If Al Gore can write a bestseller on the environment and put out a film that hits more cinemas than back-alley barns featuring Fellini reruns, something is going on.
Until now, Canada's Greenies have been beset by the woes of Greens everywhere. They've been mocked as a marginal collection of cabbage-eaters, earnest folk overly sanctimonious with their tedious nostrums on sustainability. In election campaigns, they've criss-crossed the country, stirring up considerable apathy.
But their potentially big moment is now. They have the cause; there is hardly one bigger in this country. They also have a changing of the guard. The party elects a new leader in three weeks in Ottawa. The two leading candidates, Elizabeth May and David Chernushenko, are well capable of taking the party beyond minor-league status.
The NDP, while making some headway under Jack Layton, can't rid itself of its old-fashioned image. If the Greens can find a way of looking modern, the Dippers are vulnerable.
The outgoing Green leader, Jim Harris, didn't know his way around Power Town. The new leadership candidates, Ms. May in particular, don't have that handicap. A former long-time head of the Sierra Club of Canada, Ms. May is well-connected, quick thinking, tanked up with political experience and, shall we say, has energy to burn.
She isn't without weaknesses. She can be long-winded and overly ardent. Speaking last spring at an environment awards ceremony for Brian Mulroney, she looked — as John Simon once said of Diane Keaton — like she was having a nervous breakdown in slow motion. But her vitality could render big dividends for the party.
Mr. Chernushenko's name makes him sound like a descendant of Leon Trotsky's inner circle. But the 41-year-old Ottawa consultant and author is bilingual, thoughtful, erudite and sufficiently mainstream to have garnered the endorsement of the pointedly right-wing Ottawa Citizen in the past two election campaigns.
Ms. May is the favourite, but it's a tight race. (A third candidate is Ontario realtor Jim Fannon.) She's a new arrival in the party, a Lizzie come lately, while Shenk (as someone called him) is the definitive party guy. He's been deputy leader, has run in many elections, and was the best Green vote-getter nationally in the last campaign. He says Ms. May is running on her celebrity and is a one-note candidate. “I think it's critical our next leader shows how much more we are than just an environmental party.”
“What's he talking about?” Ms. May responded. “He's only worked basically on environmental issues himself.” In fact, they both have broader experience, principally in the area of foreign affairs.
Ms. May says she was driven to run by a “paralyzing sense of fear of Stephen Harper getting a majority.” His made-in-Canada plan for the environment, she says, “will be made in Houston.” She and Mr. Chernushenko agree on most issues, including the cost of the culture of consumption. They see Mr. Harper's seeming alignment with George Bush as disastrous.
Unlike the mainstream parties, the Greens believe Kyoto targets can still be attained. All that's lacking, says Mr. Harris, the outgoing leader, is the political will. The people have the will, he says, but the traditional politicians don't.
In the last election, the Greens scored 4.5 per cent of the vote, enough to bring in $1.2-million in base funding under new election laws. In two recent national polls, the party averaged 8 per cent support, a considerable jump. The Greenies have almost 9,000 members, up from 5,000 at the start of the leadership campaign. When Mr. Harris was elected leader three years ago, there was no media coverage and only 800 members.
A breakthrough, he enthuses, is on the way because the human cost of environmental degradation is now apparent. In times past, he says, one in 50 children developed asthma; now it's one in five, due in part to the air they breathe.
“Canadians,” Mr. Harris and the leadership contestants say, “are starting to make the connection.”
lawrencemartin9@yahoo.ca
Until now, Canada's Greenies have been beset by the woes of Greens everywhere. They've been mocked as a marginal collection of cabbage-eaters, earnest folk overly sanctimonious with their tedious nostrums on sustainability. In election campaigns, they've criss-crossed the country, stirring up considerable apathy.
But their potentially big moment is now. They have the cause; there is hardly one bigger in this country. They also have a changing of the guard. The party elects a new leader in three weeks in Ottawa. The two leading candidates, Elizabeth May and David Chernushenko, are well capable of taking the party beyond minor-league status.
The NDP, while making some headway under Jack Layton, can't rid itself of its old-fashioned image. If the Greens can find a way of looking modern, the Dippers are vulnerable.
The outgoing Green leader, Jim Harris, didn't know his way around Power Town. The new leadership candidates, Ms. May in particular, don't have that handicap. A former long-time head of the Sierra Club of Canada, Ms. May is well-connected, quick thinking, tanked up with political experience and, shall we say, has energy to burn.
She isn't without weaknesses. She can be long-winded and overly ardent. Speaking last spring at an environment awards ceremony for Brian Mulroney, she looked — as John Simon once said of Diane Keaton — like she was having a nervous breakdown in slow motion. But her vitality could render big dividends for the party.
Mr. Chernushenko's name makes him sound like a descendant of Leon Trotsky's inner circle. But the 41-year-old Ottawa consultant and author is bilingual, thoughtful, erudite and sufficiently mainstream to have garnered the endorsement of the pointedly right-wing Ottawa Citizen in the past two election campaigns.
Ms. May is the favourite, but it's a tight race. (A third candidate is Ontario realtor Jim Fannon.) She's a new arrival in the party, a Lizzie come lately, while Shenk (as someone called him) is the definitive party guy. He's been deputy leader, has run in many elections, and was the best Green vote-getter nationally in the last campaign. He says Ms. May is running on her celebrity and is a one-note candidate. “I think it's critical our next leader shows how much more we are than just an environmental party.”
“What's he talking about?” Ms. May responded. “He's only worked basically on environmental issues himself.” In fact, they both have broader experience, principally in the area of foreign affairs.
Ms. May says she was driven to run by a “paralyzing sense of fear of Stephen Harper getting a majority.” His made-in-Canada plan for the environment, she says, “will be made in Houston.” She and Mr. Chernushenko agree on most issues, including the cost of the culture of consumption. They see Mr. Harper's seeming alignment with George Bush as disastrous.
Unlike the mainstream parties, the Greens believe Kyoto targets can still be attained. All that's lacking, says Mr. Harris, the outgoing leader, is the political will. The people have the will, he says, but the traditional politicians don't.
In the last election, the Greens scored 4.5 per cent of the vote, enough to bring in $1.2-million in base funding under new election laws. In two recent national polls, the party averaged 8 per cent support, a considerable jump. The Greenies have almost 9,000 members, up from 5,000 at the start of the leadership campaign. When Mr. Harris was elected leader three years ago, there was no media coverage and only 800 members.
A breakthrough, he enthuses, is on the way because the human cost of environmental degradation is now apparent. In times past, he says, one in 50 children developed asthma; now it's one in five, due in part to the air they breathe.
“Canadians,” Mr. Harris and the leadership contestants say, “are starting to make the connection.”
lawrencemartin9@yahoo.ca
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