party_name = Green Party of Canada| status = active | class = fed | party_wikicolourid = Green |
party_logo =
Gpclogo.gif
| leader = Jim Harris (until August 2006) | president = Steve Kisby (Interim)
Until 2003 the Party had little capacity to organize itself between elections, and as late as 2000 the party had no persistent infrastructure, and was based out of the same office as the Green Party of Ontario. It received substantial loans from Wayne Crookes, a BC businessman who had previously also made large donations to the Green Party of BC. Crookes' influence is one of the main dividing factors factions cite in their complaints about Harris and his allies, who were perceived often as doing his will.
The Green Party was the first Canadian political party on the Internet, with almost full party contacts across Canada for provincial and federal through e-mail and FidoNet back in the late 1980s.
While the organizing and election planning was centralized, policy development was to be decentralized. In February 2004, the Green Party of Canada Living Platform was initiated by the Party's former Head of Platform and Research, Michael Pilling, to open the party's participatory democracy to the public to help validate its policies against broad public input. It also made it easy for candidates to share their answers to public interest group questionnaires, find the best answers to policy questions, and for even rural and remote users, and Canadians abroad, to contribute to Party policy intelligence. Its innovative Rank a Plank system let net users "rank planks" in the 2004 platform, and this gathered some 60,000 online votes (on which planks were key) by election day.
These innovations were wholly abandoned on February 9, 2005, just after a harshly worded memo from Crookes in which he claimed that "dysfunctional" elements of the party were "driving out the talented". Living Platform went down for days and returned with every single web address changed. It never recovered, though it is still visible.
The direction of the 2004 platform, while retaining similar ecological themes as before, was perceived as shifting from a centre-left to a centrist stance or even centre-right position. An emphasis on a green tax shift which favoured partially reducing income and corporate taxes (while increasing taxes on polluters and energy consumers) created questions as to whether the Green Party was still on the left of the political spectrum, or was taking a more eco-capitalist approach by reducing progressive taxation in favour of regressive taxation. Green Party policy writers have challenged this interpretation by claiming that any unintended regressive tax consequences would be fully offset by changes in tax rates and categories as well as an 'eco-tax" refund for those who pay no tax. These adjustments are currently published 2006 policy and part of the Green Tax Shift concept.
As early as 2000, the party had published platform comparisons indicating the reasons why supporters of any of the five other Canadian federal political parties should consider voting Green. The Greens have always had right-wing, leftist and centrist factions that have been ascendant at different times in the party's history. Many Greens also claim that this traditional Left-Right political spectrum analysis does not accurately capture the pragmatic ecological orientation of an evolving Green Party.
The ecumenical approach (expressing affinities with all Canadian political tendencies and making cases to voters on all parts of the left-right spectrum) has been advocated by those who believe their success can be measured by the degree to which other parties adopt Green Party policies. It is however difficult to discern the degree to which this process has contributed to phenomena like the Liberal Party of Canada adopting several key items of the Green program, such as accelerated Capital Cost Allowance deductions restricted to sustainable technology only, and the adoption of the ecological and social indicators and green procurement rules Greens have long advocated. The relative degree of influence in developing these policies of Greens, non-partisan environmental groups and the party's own Green wing is difficult to discern.
Still, the party was somewhat embarrassed in 2004 to find Greenpeace and the Sierra Club of Canada ranking its environmental platform slightly below that of the NDP (a fact the NDP made much of in some closely-contested ridings in an attempt to encourage Greens and other environmentalists to vote for them strategically). The 2005/06 Green Party platform once again received the highest environmental marks of any federal party.
The August 2002 Convention adopted the Six Principles of the Charter of the Global Greens, as stated by the Global Greens Conference held in Canberra, Australia in 2001. These principles are the only ones included in the GPC constitution.
In 1998, the party adopted a rule that forbids membership in any other federal political party. This was intended to prevent the party from being taken over. This change to the constitution was discussed at a duly constituted GPC General Meeting and was passed by a very large majority. This rule does not apply to staffers or advisors.
In the past, some Green Party members have been comfortable openly working with members of other political parties. For instance, GPC members Peter Bevan-Baker and Mike Nickerson worked with Liberal MP Joe Jordan to develop the Canada Well-Being Measurement Act which calls upon the government to implement Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI). Key parts of this Act passed in the 37th Canadian Parliament in 2003, but astonishingly the Act disappeared from sight in the 2004 platform. This was another issue dividing factions, and was eventually attributed to the influence of Dermod Travis, another favourite of Crookes' and of Jim Harris.
A small number of Greens who advocate the more cooperative approach to legislation object to the new rule not to hold cross-memberships, a tool they occasionally employed.
Although the party did not win a seat in the 2004 election, 4.31% of the vote was a significant improvement. Starting in 2004, Canadian political parties who receive 2% of the vote in the last election are eligible for a subsidy ($1.75 per vote in 2004) from the federal government. The 2004 election results earned the Greens around $1 million CAD per year.
Based on the 2006 vote, the Greens will receive $1.2 million CAD in federal funding each year until the next federal election.
There will be an automatic leadership vote at the party's August 2006 convention. On April 24, 2006, Jim Harris announced his intention not to stand for re-election as party leader.[1]
Three candidates officially entered the leadership race before the close of nominations on May 31, 2006.
On March 30, 2006, David Chernushenko, who ran in both the 2004 and 2006 elections in Ottawa Centre and received the highest vote count of any Green Party candidate in 2006 with 6,765 votes, declared his intention to run. Mr. Chernushenko's candidacy was confirmed by the party on May 16, 2006.
On May 9, 2006, Elizabeth May, who only weeks earlier had resigned from her position as Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada after leading the organization for 13 years, became the second person to enter the race. Environmentalist David Suzuki had been encouraging May to enter the leadership contest.[2] Ms. May's candidacy was confirmed by the party on May 29, 2006.
In late May 2006, Jim Fannon, a three-time Green Party of Canada candidate and current Chief Financial Officer for the Green Party of Ontario's St. Catharines Constituency Association announced his intention to run. Mr. Fannon's candidacy was confirmed by the party on May 31, 2006.
