[Section 15] Why I'm leaving the Greens for the Liberals, Part 1

I am leaving the Green Party and joining up with the Liberals.

There are many reasons for me to do this, but at the top of the list is to support former senior Green Party of Canada member Kate Holloway's efforts to become the Liberal MPP for Trinity-Spadina.

This does not mean that I am throwing away my green views. I am, instead, going to where they are most likely to quickly be put to good use.

Just after Dion's green scarves painted the Liberal leadership convention, Kate resigned from the Green Party of Canada's governing council, and left the Party. She called me up and asked me to follow her.

As Kate can be, she was very persuasive.

Dion had just won the leadership of the Liberals and there was hope that the Grits just might actually go green. Liberals have a history of pragmatically adopting policy to stay alive, and the public pressure to green our economy was (and still is) clearly growing. Adopting green policy would also further distinguish the Liberals from the green-regressive Conservatives. And although the GPC is doing better, it is still a generation away from forming a government, if ever. With so many issues looming large (energy shortages, ongoing environmental degradation from pollutants, the assault on biological diversity, the secret North American Union discussions, global warming causing climate change…) and the time to deal with these issues growing shorter every day, party loyalty arguably should take a backseat to green movement priorities.

I took a day to think about it.

The next day I told Kate I was concerned that she would just be gobbled up. I said that even if she was right, the green movement still needed a political organ through which to criticize the other parties, and to educate and advocate. If I could justify leaving, then so could the whole GPC, and then where would this much-needed movement be?

Kate had been fighting for a long time within the party to reform it. The GPC is a grassroots-based party, with constitutional requirements for participatory democracy and social justice, but it had very much strayed from these important principles, becoming an opaque, membership-disrespecting, highly centralized and autocratic body. Kate was at the center of the fight to bring the party back on course, and was viciously smeared by senior party members for it. With the election of Elizabeth May, which we had fought so hard for, and the injection of some new blood onto council, there was renewed hope that the party would remember its roots, and brings its members back into the fold.

I wasn't ready to leave yet. I stayed on, working in the Green Party of Ontario (GPO) as a voting member of its governing body, pushing for party growth and election preparedness. In the GPC, I sat and watched, looking for improvement.

Kate went on to build relationships within the federal and provincial Liberal parties. With her appointment by the Premier to run in Trinity-Spadina, I would say that she's been successful.

In the next few days, look for part 2: I fought for the Green Party, but all I got was this stupid lawsuit.

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Posted By Mark Francis to Section 15 at 8/16/2007 01:01:00 PM