Green success comes in many shades

By Richard Foot
Canwest News Service

Green Party leader Elizabeth May addresses supporters during a campaign rally outside a train station in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her participation in the upcoming leaders' debate could be a make-or-break opportunity for the Green Party. (Andy Clark/Reuters)

For Elizabeth May, Oct. 2 is a day filled with prophecy and meaning.

On the very night the leader of the Green party takes her place before the TV cameras for the national leaders' debate, hundreds of people in her home province of Nova Scotia will be attending a gala ball to celebrate the 250th birthday of parliamentary democracy in Canada.     

On Oct. 2, 1758, the country's first elected legislative assembly met in Halifax, and for May it is a delicious coincidence that exactly 250 years later, another grassroots democratic impulse swept aside official efforts to exclude her from the debate, and propelled her onto a stage along with the prime minister and other political heavyweights.     

Thursday's debate (the French-language debate is the night before) is a make-or-break opportunity for May and the Greens - the biggest political arena in the party's history, and their best chance to convince Canadians to elect Green MPs to the House of Commons.     

She promises a performance like no other.

"I'm not going to have a lot of debate `prep' and I'm not going to be stagy and artificial like the other candidates," she said in an interview this week. "Previous debates have been disappointing for many of us because the leaders looked groomed and packaged and rehearsed, with formulaic answers. It all looks so phoney. I promise to be very real, and different."     

For three weeks, May has led a rather charmed campaign, garnering more ink, attention and air time than expected for a fifth-place party on the fringes of the political system.

The TV-debate "uprising" made her the media darling of the campaign's first week. Her novel, whistle-stop rail journey has attracted small but respectable crowds at train stations across Canada, and May has continually found ways to keep her name in the headlines, even suggesting that the Greens would enter formal coalitions with other parties in the House of Commons.     

But the debate will be her first chance to go head to head with the major party leaders, and to prove herself a serious player.     

"There's the risk of high expectations, and she may fall flat," particularly if May is forced to shout and scream to be heard on an already crowded stage, says Jim Bickerton, a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., part of the riding where May is seeking her own seat.     

"But she's unusually good in unscripted environments," he says, "and debates can be the downfall of politicians who are groomed to stay on script. May is good at thinking on her feet. People may like that."     

 Even if May shines in the debate, the odds of seeing Green candidates elected to Parliament this fall remain slim.

The Greens won only 4.5 per cent of the vote in the 2006 election. This year climate change and the party's key policy - a suite of carbon taxes - has not lit the electorate on fire.

And the party's only incumbent candidate, discredited MP Blair Wilson, who was expelled from the Liberal caucus because of spending irregularities during the last election, is not expected to retain his B.C. seat.     

In Central Nova - a sprawling rural constituency that includes dozens of small communities between the Atlantic coast and the Northumberland Strait, May faces the daunting task of trying to unseat Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who has held the riding since 1997.     

MacKay is vulnerable. The local economy is shaky. The provincial wing of the NDP has been steadily gaining ground in the area and now holds two of the riding's three provincial seats. In the last federal election, a young, charismatic NDP candidate named Alexis MacDonald came within about 3,000 votes of upsetting MacKay.

"Peter MacKay can be beaten," says MacDonald, who isn't running this year. "People should never assume a seat belongs to one party or one individual. People have made that mistake before and been proven wrong."     

But MacDonald also says May is wrong to assume she can duplicate or improve on what the NDP achieved last year in Central Nova - even after May convinced Liberal Leader Stephane Dion not to run a candidate there this year.     

For one thing, the NDP remains well organized and its candidate has been knocking on doors for more than a year. MacKay, aware of the threats he faces, has also campaigned almost exclusively on his home turf this fall instead of travelling the country to support other Conservatives, as he did in 2006.     

Steve Goodwin, a reporter for the Pictou Advocate, a local newspaper, says for May to win she must convince the 10,000 people who voted Liberal last time to park their votes with her, plus bleed votes from the Conservatives, and then "leapfrog past the NDP . . . I think that's a long shot," he says.     

So why didn't May choose an easier riding with a lower-profile opponent? Bickerton says May doesn't expect to win, and by losing against MacKay, no one can accuse her of failure.     

He suspects the overall Green strategy is not to win seats this year anyway, but to win votes, and the important federal subsidy of nearly $2 per vote that comes after every election.     

"The Greens don't have to elect any MPs on election night," says Bickerton. "But a million votes (up from the 660,000 won in 2006) would bring $2 million into their war chest. That's a lot of money for the Green party. With 10 per cent support and a million votes, they could feel quite good about the election, and they could use that money to build for next time."     

May dismisses such speculation. Publicly, she is setting her sights much higher, saying anything less than a victory in Central Nova and a total of 12 Green MPs - enough for official party status in the Commons - would disappoint her.

"I can win in Central Nova," she says. "I can't wait to get back there. Once the debates are over I'm not budging from the riding for the rest of the campaign.     

"It's going to be fun on election night. I promise you a great party."