It's not easy being Green
With last night marking the beginning of the second round of "leadership" debates as we approach election day, I decided I couldn't stay quiet any longer.
Some of the networks refer to the debates as the Prime Ministerial debates. If that's the case, why the hell does Gilles Duceppe get so much air time? He can never be the Prime Minister of Canada, for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which are that (a) the Bloc doesn't run enough candidates in enough ridings to form even a minority government and (b) he's a separatists who, on principle, should reject being given leadership of the country from which he's so desperate to distance himself.
Other networks refer to the debates as the Leadership Debates, which begs the question: Where the hell is the leader of the Green Party? In the 2004 election, the Green Party ran candidates in every single riding across Canada, won support in the form of almost 600 000 votes and 4.3% of the popular vote, but didn't win a single riding. (By contrast, the Bloc won 54 seats with less than three times the number of votes. So much for proportional representation.)
You may ask yourself who it is that decides who is invited to participate in the televised debates. Surely, it must be some elected official? A bureacrat? A senator perhaps? Of course not. The decision rests in the hands of a consortium of five Canadian broadcasters. Five network executives with no direct accountability to the democratic process in this country. Five partisan mortals.
Perhaps if the Green Party of Canada wasn't relegated to the political kiddy table during the debates, they could translate popular support into a riding or two? I mean, would urban agriculture and food-share initiatives really be such a bad thing?
Comments