April 24, 2012
A representative of the media who does seek out the Green Party position on issues called me last week. He wanted my thoughts on the results of the by-elections in Port Moody-Coquitlam and Chilliwack-Hope. I was glad to give my observations on the NDP wins – congratulated them on running good campaigns. Was I surprised that they won both ridings – no, I expected the results.
He asked what I thought the results meant for the BC Liberals – a bit of a reprieve for Christy Clark and likely fewer calls for her to resign to save the Liberal brand. And it allows Clark to continue to fear monger about the Conservatives splitting the “free enterprise” vote and the evils of an NDPgovernment. (I put free enterprise in quotes because I don’t really know what means but that’s a topic for another blog.)
And, the BC Conservatives – not good news given that many expected them to come second in in Port Moody and possibly win in Chilliwack. Some thought good results for the Conservatives might mean the end to the BC Liberals and Clark’s leadership. The results for the Conservatives also mean the party will be getting more scrutiny and Wildrose comparisons may not be so apt.
We then moved on to talking about the BC Green Party’s preparation for the provincial election next year. The party made a strategic decision to not participate in the by-elections based on previous by-election results, the cost to the party in money and staff time that is needed to meet the elections act requirement for an audit and the desire to focus all of our relatively limited resources on next year’s provincial election.
I was asked if we are planning to run candidates throughout the province and specifically in Chilliwack-Hope. I proceeded to say we plan to run good candidates everywhere in BC but if a couple months before the election there are three or four ridings where we don’t have a candidate in place, we will shift our focus to running the campaign. There was another question about Chilliwack-Hope and I indicated we expect to have a candidate and have an active group looking for good candidates for the entire Fraser Valley.
It wasn’t till I was off the phone and on to other activities that I figured out what was the real question. What he wanted to know was whether we would not be running a candidate in Chilliwack-Hope so that the BC NDP might have a better chance of hanging onto the seat in the 2013 general election. After all, as Christy Clark emphasized, government rarely wins by-elections and her win last year was the first in 30 years to counter that trend.
And governments often regain their traditional seats in the subsequent general election. That happened in 2009. The NDP won both the 2008 by-elections in Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Burrard. They retained Vancouver-West End (the new riding that encompassed Burrard under redistricting) but lost Fairview.
My inability to get the real question comes from my constant and chronic surprise that people in the media, the general public and some in the NDP and even some Greens see some sort of alignment and commonality between the Green Party of BC and the BC NDP. Our policies and our priorities are so fundamentally different from theirs that I never do and never have seen how Greens can be seen as similar to the NDP. In my opinion, we offer the only real alternative to the traditional parties (NDP, Liberals and Conservatives). If British Columbians want transformational change to address the problems we face, we are, in fact, the only choice.
So the answer is no. The Green Party of BC will not be not running in Chilliwack-Hope to try to help the BC NDP hang onto that seat. Or, the answer is yes; we intend to run a candidate to offer people a Green choice.
And besides, the wrong person is asking. If the NDP wanted cooperation, they would be the ones to call. So far, they have rejected all of our overtures to discuss any mutually beneficial possibilities.
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