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Revision of Who are the Greens? The Emergence of the Green Party of Canada as a Serious Political Entity from March 16, 2008 - 7:51pm
Submitted by M Hurley on March 15, 2008 - 11:36am.
tags:
My previous lack of knowledge regarding the Green Party of Canada (GPC) inspired me to conduct this major research paper in order to arrive at a comprehensive description of the party. Before reading, it is important to observe two realities that I was not able to include in the paper: 1) The paper analyzes the GPC for the purpose of the average Canadian voter who may or may not care about Green Party ideology. For this reason, the paper concludes that the GPC is a party of the left (relative to other parties and policies on the Canadian political spectrum). However, the difference between the GPC and the NDP is that Green Party members don't actually see themselves as being on the left. The reasons for this range from the GPC's electoral strategy to actual convictions regarding the party's ecological focus and opposition to perpetual growth i.e. its operation 'outside' of the political spectrum. 2) My conversations with GPC members at UWO (not included in the paper) indicate that there are very conservative elements within the party - basically certain members believe that the party is "more fiscally conservative than the Conservatives." This points to yet another reason why GPC members do not see themselves as being on the left, even though the party's policies suggest otherwise.
Abstract
Public opinion polls indicate that the Green Party of Canada (GPC) has surged in popular support among voters, and yet, very little is actually known about the party. For instance, whereas the GPC obtained 4.5 percent of the popular vote in the 2006 federal election, the party currently has the support of between eight to twelve percent of decided voters.[1] However, mainstream media pundits and certain political parties cannot determine whether the party is “very conservative”[2] or a “one-issue environmental party”[3] of marijuana users.[4] That the GPC is increasing its support amidst a lack of public knowledge regarding who and what it represents suggests that now is the time for Canadians to be asking, ‘who are the Greens?’
This paper will answer the above question by analyzing the history, leadership, membership, voter base, funding, and policy of the GPC. The purpose of the paper is to arrive at a cohesive description of the Party and to answer the questions that naturally arise from the paper’s larger question of ‘who are the Greens?’ Those questions include: who comprises the GPC? What are the ideological beliefs of the party and to what extent do the occupations, incomes, and backgrounds of its members influence those beliefs? Where does the GPC get its funding from and to what extent – if any – does this influence party policy? Lastly, based on the party’s platform, where does the GPC fall on the Canadian political spectrum?
It is hoped that by properly defining the Greens, the paper will provide readers with a better understanding of the party before it obtains any seats in the House of Commons and before it makes any substantial impact on Canadian federal elections, as several pundits predict it will.[5] The author argues that, contrary to the prevailing descriptions of the party, the GPC is a mass bureaucratic, ecological party of the left. Throughout the paper, the author will refer to the Green Party of Canada as “the Greens,” “the party,” “the Green Party,” and “the GPC.”
A Brief History of the GPC’s Inception, Philosophy, and Leadership
Demand for a Canadian ecological party first became apparent in the Atlantic Provinces where eleven candidates seeking radical environmental change ran under the banner of ‘Small Party’ in the 1980 federal election.[6] Three years later, the emergence of provincial ‘Green’ parties in B.C. and Ontario and calls from activists for an ‘ecological party option’ led to the formation of the Canadian Greens at a conference in Ottawa on November 6, 1983.[7]
The Greens were founded on the principle that normative parties of the left, centre, and right all uniformly embrace the “uncontested political super-ideology” of perpetual growth and consumption.[8] Changing their name to the Green Party of Canada to contest their first federal election in 1984, the Greens formed not only to oppose the ‘perpetual growth’ ideology but also to bring the ideas of the 1980s Green Movement into electoral politics.[9] Central to the Movement’s ideology was the concept of ‘participatory democracy,’ which holds that political institutions should be decentralized to enable citizens to control the political and ecological impacts on their lives.[10] Consequently the GPC adopts a radically democratic and decentralized structure that enfranchises its members with considerable sway over party policy. For example, the power of the party leader is limited since they are only mandated to serve as a ‘spokesperson’ of the members;[11] all party policies and decisions must be confirmed by the membership before being adopted;[12] and, through the party’s online ‘Living Platform,’ members can submit policies year-round to be voted on at annual party conventions.[13] As this essay will later demonstrate, the ‘limits-to-growth’ thesis, decentralization, and participatory democracy remain fundamental tenets of Green Party ideology and policy.
Historically the GPC has always been divided between ‘functionary’ members who believe in providing an ecological party ‘option’ to Canadian voters and ‘process’ members who seek broad-based institutional and societal changes.[14] The former believe in achieving change by participating in Canada’s dominant legislative and electoral processes while the latter believe in ‘leading by example’ by devolving powers to the party membership and ‘inspiring’ decentralization and participatory democracy at a larger scale.[15] Party leaders have traditionally sympathized with the functionary view and many of them believe that the process members’ preoccupation with internal party issues has consistently prevented the GPC from achieving greater electoral success. For instance, founding leader Trevor Hancock quit the party after the 1984 election because he felt that the Greens could not decide whether they were a political party or a protest movement.[16] He believed that a more traditional structure would have enabled the GPC to properly engage in the ‘game’ of politics.[17] Similarly, Joan Russow – who led the Party from 1997 to 2001 – found that she could not properly advocate Green Party policies without being labelled ‘dictatorial’ by her members.[18] She joined the New Democratic Party (NDP) citing overall dissatisfaction with the global Green movement. [19] Under Hancock and Russow, the Greens never managed to garner one percent of the popular vote.[20] Only when Jim Harris became leader in 2003 was the GPC able to improve its electoral fortunes, though internal divisions still lingered in the party.
The GPC experienced its ‘break through’ in the 2004 federal election when, for the first time, it fielded candidates in all 308 ridings across the country and received 582,000 votes nationwide.[21] The party substantially increased its popular support to 4.3 percent – up from 0.8 percent in 2000 – and successfully communicated its message to the Canadian public of its right to be included in the leaders’ debates.[22] As well, new election financing laws provided the Greens with $1.75 annually for each vote that they received in the election, which enabled the party to get its financial house in order and better prepare for the 2006 election campaign.[23]
Because the Greens quintupled their vote share in the 2004 election, the party expected to achieve similar results in 2006. The GPC’s 35-page We Can platform received much more media coverage than the 2004 platform and the party believed that if its support continued to rise it could realistically obtain seven percent of the popular vote and secure one million votes nationally.[24] The Greens also hoped to capture votes from Canadians who didn’t bother to vote in the previous election by presenting themselves as a “credible and fresh alternative” to the other parties.[25] Although the GPC was somewhat successful in achieving this latter goal, it merely held on to its prior support while increasing its vote share by 84,000 votes.[26] The Greens won 4.5 percent of the popular vote in only their second national campaign but were nonetheless disappointed with their performance.[27]
By the time he resigned as party leader in April 2006, Jim Harris had taken the Greens from obscurity to the national political scene. It was under his leadership that the GPC decided in 2004 to follow the British Green Party’s strategy of labelling itself as being ‘neither left nor right.’[28] The GPC determined that this strategy would enable the party to create a distinctive ‘Green image’ with enough mass appeal to attract supporters from all of the other parties.[29] The strategy also reflected the genuine belief of many GPC members that the party’s ecological objectives and rejection of perpetual growth placed it ‘outside’ the Canadian political spectrum.[30] Based on the surge in popular support that the GPC received following its adoption of the ‘neither left nor right’ label, the strategy seemed to work well for the party and it continues to adopt this label today.
But Mr. Harris was not without his critics. As soon as the GPC began claiming political neutrality, Harris – a former Progressive Conservative (PC) party member and corporate motivational speaker[31] – was accused of moving the Greens to the right. The vagueness of the party’s 2004 platform and its inclusion of corporate tax breaks and ‘voluntary’ compliance for industry on a host of environmental standards caused Russow to call it a “betrayal of Green principles.”[32] Worst of all, prominent environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace concluded that the NDP platform contained better environmental policies than the Green platform.[33] The GPC responded to these criticisms by incorporating the recommendations of the Sierra Club, the Pembina Institute, and the David Suzuki Foundation in its 2006 election platform.[34] However, allegations that Harris muzzled GPC members who opposed the party’s shift to the right,[35] combined with the Greens’ dissatisfaction with their performance in the 2006 election, led some members to conclude that the party lacked direction and needed new leadership.[36] Citing reasons of stress and a desire to spend more time with his family, Mr. Harris agreed to step aside as leader while staying on as a chief strategist for the party.[37]
Elizabeth May won the nomination for the Green Party leadership in August 2006. May is a long-time environmental activist and former head of the Sierra Club who received support from several political and environmental elites in her bid to become leader.[38] She claims that she was inspired to run because the traditional parties do not devote enough attention to the environment and issues of peace and that the Green Party can fill this void in the House of Commons.[39] While May says that she supports the GPC’s current decentralized structure, she feels that her role is to “actively exert influence over (media) coverage of issues” in order to make the party a “force for change.”[40] These assertions indicate that May, like most Green leaders before her, plans to take a functionary approach as party leader.
It remains to be seen whether May will achieve her stated goals for the Greens. The GPC has yet to obtain a seat in Parliament because its limited support is dispersed throughout Canada and the country’s first-past-the-post electoral system rewards parties that possess a geographically-concentrated base of support.[41] But the party’s current outlook is one of optimism. As Herada (2006) explains, “the Greens…are on the edge of (becoming) a bigger (political) player. They are being considered more seriously by a good many voters and they’re being scrutinized more closely by journalists.”[42]
However, this author questions whether rising public interest in the Greens and increased media coverage of the party have contributed to greater public knowledge of the GPC’s political philosophy and policies. There are reasons to suggest that they have not: for example, a recent poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail shows that while the GPC has catapulted to twelve percent support among decided voters, only two percent of Canadians ‘trust’ the Greens to manage the country’s mission in Afghanistan, the economy, and the public health care system.[43] On managing the environment, though, the GPC is ‘trusted’ by thirty percent of Canadians – substantially more than any other party.[44] These findings demonstrate that voters either do not support or do not know the GPC position on issues other than the environment. Given the vastly different assessments of the party in the media,[45] this author assumes the latter is true. It is helpful, then, to analyze the GPC’s membership, voter base, funding, and platform in order to adequately understand the party and its policies.
The GPC: Membership, Voter Base, and Funding
Most GPC members are between the ages of 35 and 64 and comprise what Camcastle (2007) refers to as ‘the new middle class’: middle-aged citizens with education and technical expertise who generally work in the ‘humanistic intellectual’ fields of teaching, government, and professional services.[46] The primary reason why GPC members (91 percent) claim to have joined the party is because it reflects their beliefs.[47]
Of the five ‘major’ political parties in Canada – the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC), the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the GPC - the Green Party has the highest percentage of university-educated members.[48] Approximately 34 percent of GPC members have a university degree while only 6 percent have either ‘some high school’ or no education beyond high school.[49] Since higher levels of education correlate with greater environmental awareness,[50] it makes sense that the GPC is Canada’s ‘most educated’ party.
In terms of employment, most GPC members are self-employed (40 percent) and work in the private (34 percent) rather than public (27 percent) sector.[51] The GPC derives almost none of its support from those working in the trades and manufacturing sectors and is therefore neither a party of the industrial working class nor of the traditional labour movement.[52] Of the self-employed GPC members who work in green industries - roughly 18 percent of the ‘employer’ membership – one-third work in organic farming and one-quarter in advanced technologies such as renewable energy development.[53] As discussed in the Vision Green analysis section of this paper, the interests of organic farmers and those working in the renewable energy field are well represented in the GPC’s platform.
GPC member attitudes toward government regulation of the economy are divided along the sector that members work in and the nature of their employment. For instance, a majority of the self-employed and private sector GPC members believe government should provide subsidies and tax cuts to businesses while most GPC members who work in the public sector favour government regulation and management of the economy.[54] These statistics can perhaps further explain the party’s ‘neither left nor right’ label and its pseudo-interventionist ‘tax shifting’ policy described later in this paper.
Today’s GPC members share views that are consistent with the party’s founding philosophy and the GPC can fairly be characterized as an ecological party because its members subscribe to the two principles of ecologism. The first principle posits that, because the Earth has finite resources and space, limits must be placed on economic growth and consumption so as to achieve a healthy and sustainable environment.[55] Roughly 95 percent of GPC members agree with this statement, otherwise known as the ‘limits-to-growth’ thesis.[56] Nearly the entire GPC membership (97 percent) believes in the second principle of ecologism, which holds that non-human beings have ‘intrinsic worth’ and that the earth is not a resource to be exploited by humankind.[57] Ideologically, GPC members’ belief in the ‘limits-to-growth’ and ‘intrinsic worth’ theses is what most differentiates them from members of other parties.[58]
GPC members also differ from Liberals, New Democrats, and Conservatives in that they favour a highly decentralized federal state that transfers federal and provincial powers and funding to municipal governments in order to create strong, autonomous, and responsive local governments.[59] Indeed, the Greens believe the devolution of powers and resources from the federal and provincial governments to municipalities is essential to achieving participatory democracy at the local level. This commitment to decentralization is apparent in some members’ views of public ownership: although a majority of GPC members agree that state power should be used to counterbalance concentrated corporate power, a significant minority (26 percent) feel there is “too much government ownership in the Canadian economy.”[60]
Decentralization forms the basis of many GPC members’ views of international trade. A solid majority of GPC members (67 percent) believe the federal government should focus on strengthening trade within Canada rather than with the U.S.[61] But whereas 50 percent of NDP members oppose trade with the U.S. because they believe it disenfranchises Canadians, GPC members want to encourage self-sufficient economies at the local level.[62] Hence the Greens’ preference for interprovincial and local – as opposed to international – trade.
On the issue of health care, 93 percent of GPC members believe the state should invest in preventative care as a cost-control measure and that government should support alternative medicine, such as the kind provided by accredited naturopaths.[63] The former is a reflection of the GPC’s oft-repeated claim and internalized belief that it is ‘fiscally responsible’;[64] though this paper later shows that the GPC platform seeks to expand many public services.
There is currently a lack of information regarding who exactly votes for the GPC (other than its members, of course). However, the very first statistics on these voters indicate that, in contrast to the predominantly middle-aged GPC membership, 79 percent of GPC voters are below the age of 55.[65] It is not known whether these voters support the Green Party to register protest with the other parties, to promote Green Party policy and ideology, or for other reasons.[66] Bruce Anderson, president of the polling firm Harris Decima, offers several ideas as to why the GPC now stands at 17 percent support among decided voters in suburban Toronto.[67] He says that suburbanites, “whether they are 50-something (or) 20-something,” are becoming increasingly aware of the negative environmental impacts of their lifestyles and are now turning to the political party that wants to do something about those impacts.[68] Anderson also thinks that the GPC is displacing the NDP as the third party of Toronto’s suburbs because affluent suburbanites perceive the NDP as being anti-rich and anti-corporation.[69] He cautions against the commonly-held view that Canadians are merely ‘parking’ their votes with the Greens,[70] noting that two-thirds of Canadians think the current double-digit support for the GPC will either ‘hold’ or ‘increase’ in the next federal action.[71] In other words, Anderson says, “voters think support for the Green Party is real (emphasis added).”[72]
Overall it can be said that, on the one hand, the GPC draws its support from middle-aged, educated, and predominantly self-employed Canadians who generally work in the private sector. Although these members would presumably have conservative values, GPC members share mixed views of government regulation of the economy and overwhelmingly support the ‘limits-to-growth’ and ‘intrinsic worth’ theses, decentralization particularly for the establishment of local economies and participatory democracy, and investment in health care services not currently covered by Canada’s public health care system. On the other hand, the party also draws its support from young voters who support the GPC for environmental and other as yet unknown reasons.
In 2006, the GPC received 9,642 ‘individual’ financial contributions – all from riding associations and (presumably) members of the party – and not one of these contributions came from a corporation, trade union, external association, or any other organization.[73] Since the GPC is entirely funded by its own members, it can rightly be characterized as a ‘grassroots’ party.
At this point it is fair to conclude that, due to its democratic and decentralized structure, member-based policy formation, grassroots financing, and existence outside of the Canadian Parliament, the GPC is what MacIvor (1996) refers to as a ‘mass bureaucratic party.’[74] Such parties usually adopt policies that are designed to reflect both the interests of their memberships and Canadians in general, rather than large organizations.[75] With regard to the GPC, this hypothesis is confirmed by the policy analysis of the party’s Vision Green platform below.
‘Vision Green’ and the GPC’s Place on the Canadian Political Spectrum
The GPC released its Vision Green platform in October 2007, shortly after Elizabeth May became leader of the party. According to the GPC website, the platform is a product of an extensive policy outreach conducted by the Greens, with input from the party’s 31-member Shadow Cabinet (comprised of GPC candidates) as well as “experts, activists, and members who participated in cross-Canada policy workshops.”[76] Vision Green was therefore developed through a participatory process with the goal of conveying “the kind of Canada (Greens) want in 2020 and how we get there from here.”[77] In its interpretation of the platform, and for the purpose of concision, this paper will focus on five of the ten issues deemed most important by Canadian voters in a poll conducted by Environics Research Group in the last federal election. The selected issues are health care (ranked number one among voters), the economy (number three), the environment (five), education (six), and social programs (eight).[78] These issues have been chosen not only because they are of utmost interest to Canadians but also because they provide valuable insights into the ideology of GPC members and the party’s place within the Canadian political spectrum.
Health Care
The GPC supports the public delivery of health care according to the provisions of the Canada Health Act (CHA).[79] The party opposes for-profit health care because it believes that if American care providers are allowed to set up for-profit facilities in Canada, these providers may jeopardize Canada’s single-payer health care system by challenging it under the rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[80] Thus, although the GPC’s support for government-regulated, publicly-delivered health care is shared by all of Canada’s major political parties, the GPC is distinct in its opposition to NAFTA and its belief that the Agreement poses a particular threat to Canada’s health care system.
Greens want to significantly expand public health care through increased government funding for prescription drug coverage, home care, and alternative therapies. The GPC believes that a ‘Universal PharmaCare’ program, accompanied by a bulk drug purchasing agency, would ensure that Canadians spend no more than three percent of their total after tax earnings on drugs.[81] As well, the GPC would provide funding to provinces to cover chiropractic and acupuncture services under provincial health insurance while extending home care services to seniors with chronic illnesses.[82]
In terms of preventative health care measures, the GPC wants to ban the sale of chemicals and products known to contain cancerous or carcinogenic ingredients.[83] Because Greens believe that inactivity and unhealthy eating are the root causes of many illnesses such as obesity, the party would invest in excess of $500 million over five years to promote physical activity in schools and healthy eating among the Canadian public.[84] These measures would make Canada’s health care system sustainable by reducing costs over the long-term;[85] a goal that is consistent with the party’s commitment to ‘fiscal responsibility.’
The Economy
GPC members’ belief in the ‘limits-to-growth’ thesis is reflected in the party’s ‘green tax shift’ policy, which is designed to discourage environmentally destructive production and consumption, promote sustainable purchasing and energy use, and alleviate poverty.[86] The policy would achieve these goals by introducing new ‘polluter pays’ taxes for ‘bads’ such as fossil fuels and environmentally harmful products and using the revenues from these taxes to subsidize ‘goods’ such as environmentally benign products and renewable energy production and use.[87] It would also use ‘bad’ tax revenues – as well as revenues from increased taxes for Canadians earning more than $150,000 annually - to eliminate income taxes for Canadians earning less than $17,200 per year and provide these ‘low-income’ citizens with tax rebates to deal with the costs of ‘bad’ taxes.[88] Additionally, the ‘green tax shift’ policy would eliminate corporate subsidies for major industrial polluters such as the oil, gas, and nuclear industries.[89] This means that, under a Green government, these industries would lose their existing federal subsidies while being subject to new ‘polluter pays’ taxes.
Similar to the NDP, the GPC opposes NAFTA on the grounds that it compromises the ability of the federal and provincial governments to enact labour, environmental, and human rights laws that protect the rights of citizens and the environment.[90] The GPC notes that, under the Agreement, such laws can be challenged by companies and struck down by the courts. However, unlike the other major political parties, the Greens primarily oppose NAFTA because they believe that free trade relies too heavily on fossil fuels and that governments should instead focus on developing local, sustainable, and participatory economies.[91] Consequently the GPC would withdraw Canada from NAFTA and negotiate a ‘fair trade’ agreement with the United States and Mexico that protects workers’ rights, recognizes the “limits to growth and resources,” and respects cultural diversity and ecosystems.[92] To strengthen local economies, this new agreement would be accompanied by a ‘Green Venture Capital Fund’ for local and environmentally-friendly business start-ups as well as a ‘Green Venture Capital Program’ that would provide matching federal funds for local businesses that attract venture capital.[93] Evidently the GPC’s anti-NAFTA, pro-fair trade, and pro-local business economic policies are in keeping with the party’s preference for decentralized, local economies.
The Environment
Since the environment is one of the issues on which the GPC was founded, it is not surprising that the party’s environmental platform is approximately thirty pages. But the party maintains that its ‘green tax shift’ policy, explained above, would be the primary vehicle for reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under a Green government.[94] This is because the policy would use a ‘carbon tax’ designed to discourage fossil fuel consumption and encourage renewable energy use. The tax would be accompanied by a ‘cap and trade’ system that would allow industries to purchase and sell emissions credits while requiring them to reduce their emissions over the long-term.[95] Such an arrangement would drastically reduce Canada’s GHG emissions because the country’s large industries account for fifty percent of these emissions. For instance, the party predicts that a carbon tax of $50 to $100 per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would reduce current industry emissions levels by 85 percent by the year 2040, which would enable Canada to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.[96] The Greens would reduce income taxes for lower- and middle-income Canadians to help deal with the increased costs of gasoline and other fossil fuel-based products and would allow for their proposed cap and trade system to be operated either by the Montreal Stock Exchange or a publicly managed Canada Carbon Bank.[97]
To promote renewable energy production and consumption, the GPC would outlaw the establishment of new oil, gas, or coal-fired power plants unless such plants used “long-term underground carbon capture and sequestration” – a technology the party acknowledges is not yet fully developed.[98] The GPC platform states that the party would “work with” renewable energy industries to completely replace the country’s current fossil fuel-intensive power mix with hydro, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and biomass power sources by 2040.[99] For consumers, the party would subsidize wind energy use at a rate of two cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) while making substantial investments in research and development for other ‘renewables.’[100] It is possible that the GPC’s strong endorsement of renewable energy technologies despite the immaturity of such technologies is not merely a reflection of its environmental convictions: perhaps it is also due to the input of its members who work in the renewable energy field.
The interests of the GPC’s prominent organic farmer membership, its belief in the ‘limits-to-growth’ and ‘intrinsic worth’ theses, and its commitment to radical environmental change are all reflected in the Party’s ‘National Agricultural and Food Policy.’ In contrast to the other political parties, the GPC is opposed to the entire practice of industrial farming because it believes that the industry’s use of factory farms, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) threatens the well-being of animals, the environment, and human health, respectively.[101] The Greens also contend that industrial farming has consolidated control over food production in the hands of multinational corporations to the detriment of family farmers. As a result the Party supports a “rapid transition to organic agriculture…as the dominant model of (food) production (in Canada),” with family owned and operated farms at the heart of this system.[102] The GPC would achieve this by enabling municipalities to develop their own food regulations; by shifting government funding away from biotechnology (GMO) research to organic food production; by promoting “adequate shelf space” for local and organic food products in grocery stores; and by making farm support payments ‘farm-based’ instead of ‘production-based.’[103] The Party would provide financial incentives and technical assistance to help farmers switch from industrial to organic methods of food production and in order to meet organic certification standards. Such a policy, the Greens claim, would reduce GHG emissions and create jobs in Canada’s agricultural sector, since small-scale organic farming is less fossil-fuel intensive and requires more labourers per unit of land than the industrial sort.[104] In this way, the GPC’s ‘Agricultural and Food policy’ is similar to its ‘green tax shift’ policy in that the party views both policies as central to achieving its economic and environmental goals simultaneously.
Education
The GPC posits that access to “affordable” post-secondary education is a “basic human right” integral to fighting poverty.[105] Accordingly the party would forgive fifty percent of a student’s loan when they complete a degree or certificate program. It would index the sum that provinces receive in federal transfer payments for post-secondary education to the amount that provinces reduce tuition fees.[106] The Party also wants to expand job training and apprentice programs for the trades, restore the federal government’s student summer job program, and provide additional funding to post-secondary institutions to create more tenured teaching positions.[107] Because the GPC feels that research and development will be essential to identifying and dealing with the effects of climate change, it would allocate “targeted research grants” to post-secondary institutions interested in developing new technologies for energy conservation, renewable energy production, and ‘smart growth’ models of urban development.[108] Therefore, just as the GPC seeks to expand Canada’s existing health care system, it equally wants to increase funding for education, research, and job training programs.
Social Programs
In an attempt to paint poverty as an unnecessary economic cost rather than a concern for romantics, the GPC’s Vision Green platform states that eliminating poverty would reduce health care costs because poverty is the number one determinant of poor health.[109] To achieve this goal, the Party would introduce a Guaranteed Liveable Income (GLI) that would provide all Canadians with a regular annual salary, though this income would be “taxed back in whole” for middle- to high-income earners.[110] The GLI would be set above regional levels of poverty - thus it would differ in each province according to the cost of living – but would be set at a bare subsistence level to encourage its benefactors to find employment. While the GPC insists the GLI would not be ‘needs-based,’ the party makes the bold assertion that the income’s comprehensiveness would ensure “various…programmes of welfare, disability pensions, seniors benefits, (and) unemployment insurance would be collapsed within one…single payment system, administered through taxes.”[111] This consolidation of various social programs into a single guaranteed income may constitute a naïve attempt by the Greens to appear ‘fiscally responsible,’ but the party’s pledge to eliminate poverty through such an income is arguably more progressive than any of the polices offered by the other political parties.
Lastly, the Greens advocate the establishment of a federally funded child care program administered by the provinces. The GPC would introduce a child care program similar to the one agreed upon by the provinces, territories, and Paul Martin’s Liberal government in 2005, with an emphasis on the creation of workplace child care spaces and a direct tax credit for employers of $1,500 per child per year to achieve this end.[112] Unlike the NDP, however, the GPC platform does not specify whether its program would require the creation of federally regulated, not-for-profit child care spaces. Again, GPC members’ belief in a decentralized federal state and the party’s mixed views on government intervention in the economy may explain this position (or lack thereof).
Based on the Greens’ opposition to perpetual growth; adherence to ecologism and alignment with environmental movements; desire to expand Canada’s public health care and education systems; proposal to raise taxes on large polluters and high-income earners; opposition to NAFTA and bias toward local businesses; support for a carbon tax, the Kyoto Protocol, renewable energy development, and organic farming; commitment to eliminate poverty; and advocacy of a universal child care program, this author concludes that the GPC is a party of the left. Even when one examines GPC policies not discussed in this paper, it is clear that the party is on the left. For example, the GPC is pro-labour,[113] pro-gay rights,[114] pro-gun control,[115] anti-war (bordering on pacifist),[116] and in favour of the legalization of marijuana.[117] Moreover, despite the fact that GPC members are sceptical of public ownership in the economy and favour a decentralized state that exercises ‘fiscal responsibility,’ the reasoning behind these views is fundamentally progressive: to achieve participatory democracy at local level; to establish environmentally benign, local economies; and to better utilize public funds to eliminate taxes on the poor and allocate a guaranteed liveable income to all.
The above findings refute the argument of Camcastle (2007) that the GPC is an “ecological party of the centre.”[118] The reality in Canadian politics is that ‘the centre’ is occupied by what The Globe and Mail refers to as the “only two entities with a chance of forming government”: the “reformed” Conservatives and the “perennial default choice” Liberals.[119] Both parties subscribe to ‘embedded liberalism’ - a rigidly centrist worldview held by a majority of Canadians that embraces trade liberalization and the signing of free trade agreements so long as these initiatives do not threaten “the welfare objectives of the administrative state” and Canadians’ “social values.”[120] Given the GPC’s staunch opposition to free trade and its radical proposal to streamline several social programs into a single guaranteed income, it is simply inaccurate for scholars to place the party in the centre of the Canadian political spectrum.
Conclusions
In sum, this paper has demonstrated that the GPC formed to advocate the principles of ‘limits-to-growth,’ the ‘intrinsic worth’ of non-human beings, decentralization, and participatory democracy – principles that it continues to champion today. The party is primarily comprised of educated, middle-aged, and self-employed members, the majority of whom work in the private sector. These members claim to have joined the party because it reflects their beliefs, and, accordingly, their interests are represented within the GPC’s Vision Green platform. However, the party also draws its support from young and suburban voters who gravitate toward the GPC’s environmental policies. The GPC relies solely on the funding of its own members and is consequently a grassroots party. In answering the question, ‘who are the Greens?’ the author has shown that previous descriptions of the GPC as a ‘very conservative’ or ‘centre’ party are inaccurate. Instead, the author argues that the GPC is a mass bureaucratic, ecological party of the left. This is evidenced by – among other factors - the GPC’s decentralized and democratic structure; its ecological principles and policies; and its desire to expand state programs, impose new taxes, and abolish free trade. The author hopes that, amidst the GPC’s apparent rise in popularity, this paper will contribute to greater public knowledge of the party before it obtains a seat in the House of Commons.
[120] Quoted in: Robert Wolfe and Matthew Mendelsohn, “Values and Interests in Attitudes toward Trade and Globalization: The Continuing Compromise of Embedded Liberalism,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 38, 1, 2005, 54-55.
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