May appeals for financial help to build up party profile

By Richard Foot
Canwest News Service

Green Leader Elizabeth May issued a blatant plea on Wedensday for money to help prepare the party for the next election. (Paul Darrow/Reuters)

NEW GLASGOW, N.S. - The day after she and her party failed to win a seat in the House of Commons, Green Leader Elizabeth May issued a blatant plea for money to help prepare the party for the next election.

"I'm opportunistically asking Canadians to just get out there and give us the money," she said Wednesday.

"Go to our website and make a donation... please help me out here folks."

May said the Greens spent $4 million on the campaign, half of which was borrowed money. She hopes to pay at least $1 million of that back before Christmas.

The party will receive roughly $1.8 million in federal funding for the more than 940,000 votes it obtained in the election - nearly double the subsidy the Greens received after the 2006 vote.

But May said she wants to use the subsidy not to repay the Greens' debt but to build the party's profile and advance its issues between now and the next election.

She will be hobbled in that effort by not having a seat in Parliament, but May said Canadians can still expect her to have a presence there in the coming years, watching the debate unfold from the public galleries of the House of Commons.

On election night May lost her bid to unseat Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay in his longtime Nova Scotia riding. She also lost her party's only sitting MP, former Liberal Blair Wilson, who was defeated in British Columbia.

"I'll unfortunately be taking up my position in the front row of the diplomatic gallery instead of on the (Commons) floor," she said.

"A political leader has to assume the responsibilities of leadership, and that means being on the Hill, watching the dismal spectacle below, and trying as best as possible to put forward an alternative view."

She reiterated her vow on Tuesday to seek a Commons seat in the first possible byelection, but also to run again against MacKay in the next general election.

In the coming months May will also be debuting her new book, Global Warming for Dummies, which she hopes will keep climate change on the public agenda.

May also had kind words for Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, whose own leadership is now in question, but whom May supported during the campaign as her favoured choice for prime minister.

And she lashed out at the CTV network for broadcasting Dion's infamous stumbling over questions posed by the network in the final week of the campaign.

"Decency in politics is a rare thing," she said. "There are few people I've ever met in political life I admire as much as Stephane Dion. He's been treated shabbily. I think replaying re-asked questions in a second language over the national media is despicable.

"Mr. Dion reminds me very much of Robert Stanfield and I think we may well decide in the future to describe him as the best prime minister we never had."