{news} Fw: USGP-INT Green Party results in Canadian elections
Justine McCabe
justinemccabe at earthlink.net
Sat Mar 4 13:27:15 EST 2006
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Feinstein" <mfeinstein at feinstein.org>
To: <usgp-int at gp-us.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 2:56 AM
Subject: Re: USGP-INT Green Party results in Canadian elections
> this is from the gpc party leader jim harris
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: RE: Green Party results in Canadian elections
> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:40:14 -0500
> From: Jim Harris <Jim at STRATEGICADVANTAGE.com>
> To: <mfeinstein at feinstein.org>
> CC: Steve Kisby <skisby at web.net>, Raphael Thierrin
> <raphael.thierrin at partivert.ca>
>
> We had the most successful election ever in the Green Party of Canada's
> history. We made significant gains in winning 665,940 votes – an
> increase of 14.4% over 2004.
>
> * We won almost 100,000 more votes in this election than in 2004.
> * Almost three times as many candidates won more than 10% of the
> vote – the magic threshold to receive reimbursement for 50% of
> campaign expenses. In 2004 only three candidates broke 10% -- in
> 2006 eight did!
> * In Quebec we won almost 147,000 votes – an increase of 35% -- and
> roughly the same number of votes that the NDP won in 2004.
> * In Alberta
> * Our Albertan candidates won about as many votes as the party won
> in all of Canada in 2000.
> * Sean Maw in Wild Rose, Alberta placed second – ahead of the
> Liberal and NDP candidates; and Shane Jolley in Bruce Grey Owen
> Sound and Danielle Roberts in Calgary West both finished third.
> * More than 50,000 Canadians signed the petition to ensure the Green
> Party is included in the televised leaders debates. The TV
> broadcasters were proud that 10,000 Canadians emailed questions to
> ask the leaders of the old-line parties – but five times as many
> Canadians wanted to see us included in the debates.
> * During the 2004 election only one polling company prompted for the
> Green Party – today the most frequently cited polling companies in
> this election – Strategic Counsel used by The Globe and Mail, SES
> used by CPAC, EKOS used by the Toronto Star and Ipsos-Reid always
> now prompt for the Green Party.
> * With a fair electoral system we'd have at least 12 seats in
> Parliament today (see Fair Vote Canada site at
> www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/
> <http://www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/> ).
> * We have had a profound impact on Canadian politics already. On
> Saturday January 7, 2006 Prime Minster Martin announced a $1
> billion water clean up. If you look at the exact same announcement
> two years ago it was a $25 million announcement. The announcement
> during the election was 40 times greater. Now I am deeply
> concerned about water quality in Canada – but even I don't think
> that water quality has deteriorated 40 fold in just two years – it
> may be marginally worse but not 40 times worse. Could there be
> anything else that would motivated Martin to commit to water clean
> up? Well 18 months ago the Green Party presented 308 candidates
> and won almost 600,000 votes and we just ran another 308
> candidates and won more than 665,000 votes – so 616 candidates
> later and 1.25 million votes later the PM found new commitment to
> water quality. We are incredibly powerful and our dramatic rise is
> forcing every other party to adopt our issues.
>
>
>
> The biggest disappointment, of course, was not being included in the
> televised leaders debate. Had we been included we would have we would
> have doubled our vote and elected Greens, in my opinion. Remember that:
>
> * In 1993 the Bloc had never elected anyone under its' banner, was
> included and won 54 seats becoming the opposition.
> * The Reform party won 275,767 votes in 1988, and then in 1993 won
> 52 seats. The difference? Mr. Manning was included in the
> televised leaders debate.
> * Gordon Wilson, the leader of the Liberal Party in BC, had no seats
> but was included in the televised leaders debates in the 1991
> provincial election and won 17 seats becoming leader of the
> opposition.
> * The BC Green Party's vote jumped from 2% in 1996 to 12.4% in 2001.
> What accounts for the 640% jump? Adriane Carr's inclusion in the
> leaders' debate.
>
> Going forward getting included in the leaders debates in the next
> election will continue to be one of our top priorities.
>
> I am so proud to be a member of the Green Party. We ran the most
> effective campaign ever in the party's history:
>
> * The Green Party ran candidates in all 308 ridings – just 18 months
> after the last election – so we have run 616 candidates in under
> two years!
> * We moved from 308 candidates to having 308 campaigns –
> * The number of EDAs is at the highest level ever – and more
> continue to be registered every month. EDAs allow local Green
> Party members to fundraise between elections and prepare for the
> subsequent election.
> * Only the Green Party and the NDP ran a full slate of candidates in
> 2006 – both the Conservatives and Liberals disavowed one candidate.
> * A number of campaigns spent $25,000 or more – more than the Green
> Party of Canada historically used to spend for its' entire central
> party operations a year!
> * Many campaigns ensured that every household in their riding
> received a piece of Green Party literature.
> * BC broadcaster Rafe Mair, the most popular talk show radio host in
> Vancouver, endorsed the Green Party on the Tyee.
> * The Ottawa Citizen endorsed our Ottawa Centre candidate David
> Chernushenko for the second election in a row (David won 10.2%).
> * The Kingston Whig Standard endorsed our candidate Eric Walton over
> the former Liberal Speaker of the House, Peter Miliken.
> * The National Post published an article “Nunavut's Green Hope”
> talking about our candidate Feliks Kappi in Nunavut because
> climate change is affecting the Artic at twice the rate of any
> other region
> * Barbara Yaffe of The Vancouver Sun wrote that electing Greens
> would put the bees in the bonnet of Ottawa.
> * Newspapers across the country ran editorials arguing for our
> inclusion in the debates (see some of them at
> http://greenparty.ca/inthenews.html)
> * Our web site www.greenparty.ca <http://www.greenparty.ca/> took
> millions upon millions of hits a week as Canadians were hungry to
> learn more about the Green Party.
>
> Fun Facts
>
> * Sharon Labchuk ran in Malpeque PEI, and her daughter, Camille
> Labchuk ran in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe in New Brunswick.
> * Thanks to the fantastic media team, we generated more media
> coverage in this campaign than any other in our history!
> * Once again the stats available after the election will show that
> the Green Party is the most efficient political party in Canada.
> In 2004 we won a vote for every 86 cents that the central party
> spent. By contrast the NDP had to spend $5.66 to win each vote,
> the Conservatives $4.30; the Liberals $3.34 and the Bloc $2.86.
>
> Leaders' Debate
>
> The four leaders' debate were a huge disappointment: first because we
> were excluded, but more importantly critical issues were not discussed
> because our voice was excluded. I am proud of the unique positions we
> took in this election and was the only party talking about:
>
> * Enshrining in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the right of
> every Canadian to have access to clean air, clean water and
> uncontaminated soil;
> * Dramatic rise in childhood asthma from less than one in every 50
> just 30 years ago to more than one in five;
> * Predicted doubling of cancer cases in Canada over the next 30 years
> * Admitting to the use of Agent Orange on Canadian troops and
> military personnel and calling for immediate compensation for
> those suffering from dioxin based illnesses
> * Banning the commercial seal hunt
> * Health not just health care
> * Green Tax shift
>
> Democracy, however, will not be silenced, and we are profoundly grateful
> to more than 50,000 of Canadians who registered their protests with
> broadcasters over the unfairness of this decision. These protests make
> real a difference: the CBC Ombudsman in a normal year receives only
> 2,000 complaints. The French CBC ombudsman receives only 1,600
> complaints a year. Our exclusion from these four debates generated over
> 50,000 complaints – 14 times the normal annual volume in just 56 days.
>
> And we are not going to stop – we will keep running the petition. We
> will not stop till we are included in the next debate! So keep referring
> people to the web site to sign the petition.
>
> Democracy Reform
>
> We desperately need to reform our electoral system. Imagine five parties
> running in every riding and each getting 20% of the vote, but one party
> getting one more vote in all 308 ridings – that would give them 100% of
> the seats in Ottawa, with the same percentage of the popular vote as the
> other parties. Would you call that democratic? Meanwhile, the other four
> parties with 80% of the vote would not have a single seat. Would you
> call that democratic? Consider:
>
> * We won over 666,000 votes and received no seats. The Liberal Party
> won 475,000 votes in Atlantic Canada and received 22 seats.
> * We won almost half of the Bloc's 1.55 million votes. The Bloc won
> 51 seats and we got none. If we had seats proportional to the
> Bloc's, we'd have 22 MPs.
> * If the government had adopted a mixed members system as
> recommended by the Law Commission of Canada (LCC)
> (www.lcc.gc.ca/en/themes/gr/er/er_report/er_report_toc.asp
> <http://www.lcc.gc.ca/en/themes/gr/er/er_report/er_report_toc.asp>),
> we would have 12 MPs today. The LCC proposes that two-thirds of
> candidates be elected using our current system with larger ridings
> and one-third from regional lists.
> * We are the only party in this election to have advocated a system
> of proportional representation that would double the number of
> women in parliament.
>
> Strategic or negative voting was something advocated by the Liberal and
> NDP in this election. Let's look at the concept: First identify the
> party you most loathe and then work to figure out who has the best
> chance of beating them. You may not like this party at all – you may
> loathe them too – but you loathe them less. You then hold your nose and
> vote. But when you vote for bad government to avoid the worst
> government, the bad news is that you're left with the bad government.
>
> Voters want positive change, and until we change the system we can't
> expect any better. For an excellent critique of the current electoral
> system go to Fair Vote Canada's web site www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/
> <http://www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/>
>
> Benchmarking Our Success
>
> Two parties saw their vote fall (Liberals & Bloc); and three saw their
> vote increase (Conservative, NDP & Green Party):
>
> Party 2004 Vote 2006 Vote Difference Change
>
> Liberal
>
>
>
> 4,982,220
>
>
>
> 4,477,217
>
>
>
> -505,003
>
>
>
> -10.1%
>
> Conservative
>
>
>
> 4,019,499
>
>
>
> 5,370,903
>
>
>
> +1,351,404
>
>
>
> +33.6%
>
> NDP
>
>
>
> 2,127,403
>
>
>
> 2,590,808
>
>
>
> 463,405
>
>
>
> +21.8%
>
> Bloc
>
>
>
> 1,680,109
>
>
>
> 1,552,043
>
>
>
> -128,066
>
>
>
> -7.6%
>
> Green Party
>
>
>
> 582,247
>
>
>
> 665,940
>
>
>
> +83,693
>
>
>
> +14.4%
>
> *Preliminary results from Elections Canada web site
>
> While the Green Party’s vote fell marginally in Atlantic Canada and in
> BC,– the party’s 14.4% gain in votes is impressive. So while we did not
> grow as fast as all of us might have liked we had the best election ever.
>
> Each Election we are Gaining on the Liberal Party
>
> I'd like to compare a short history of the Green Party with the Liberal
> Party. In the 2000 election the Green Party won less than 2% of the vote
> that the Liberals did. In 2004 we jumped to 11.7% and this election it
> is 15%. We continue to gain on the party that has governed for roughly
> 70 out of the last 100 years.
>
>
>
>
>
> 2000 Vote
>
>
>
> 2004 Vote
>
>
>
> 2006 Vote
>
>
>
> Change
>
> Green Party of Canada
>
>
>
> 104,402
>
>
>
> 582,247
>
>
>
> 664,940
>
>
>
> +538%
>
> Liberal Party of Canada
>
>
>
> 5,252,031
>
>
>
> 4,982,220
>
>
>
> 4,477,217
>
>
>
> -15%
>
> GPC as % LPC
>
>
>
> >2%
>
>
>
> 11.7%
>
>
>
> 14.9%
>
>
>
>
>
> Let's Rest & Then Build for the Future
>
> We are proud of our efforts in this election, and thankful to the more
> than 665,000 Canadians who responded to our message of hope.
>
> We will continue to build the party – and be prepared for the next
> election.
>
> Thank you again for your support! It has made all the difference in the
> world in helping us change Canadian politics forever.
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> Jim Harris
> Leader
> Green Party of Canada
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