Dreams of Wardrobe

Elizabeth May confrims why she shouldn't have been allowed in the debate

In what should be treated as cause for second thought for those Canadians who support Elizabeth May taking part in the televised leaders' debate, Green party leader Elizabeth May told CTV's Question Period today that she's going to help Stephane Dion explain his Green Shift plan to the Canadian people.

Moreover, she actually wants to take credit for the entire policy.

"Since it's our plan, the 'Green Shift' plan, I can explain it fully," May insisted.

This could certainly put an amusing twist on Stephen Harper's insistence that "Elizabeth May is not an opponent of Stephane Dion. She is his candidate in Central Nova, and I think it would be fundamentally unfair to have two candidates who are essentially running on the same platform in the debate."

Apparently, Stephane Dion may in fact be Elizabeth May's candidate in St Laurent-Cartierville. After all, she's formally taking credit for his policies.

To her partial credit, May has voiced some disagreement with Dion on some issues.

"Where I agree with him, I'll agree with him," she insisted. "And where I disagree with him -- on issues like NAFTA, nuclear power, some of the economic policies that the Liberals have traditionally espoused -- I will be taking him on in a respectful way, as I will the other leaders."

Yet on the fundamental issue on which Dion wants to contest this election -- "his" (apparently actually Elizabeth May's) Green plan -- May has already formally pledged herself to help him during the debates.

All of this, even as she and Dion decline to field candidates against one another, and as Blair Wilson -- conveniently, a former Liberal -- conveniently defects to her party. And May still claims there's no backroom deal.

"I think the notion of a backroom pact is such nonsense," she told Question Period.

At least one thing's for certain: if May and Dion haven't made themselves utterly transparent -- and their backroom deal obvious -- by this point, May will do so for the both of them the instant she utters "What Stephane is trying to say" during the course of the debate.

If further evidence that May's inclusion of the debates is actually needed, one can rest assured that May will provide it in time. If not on Oct 1 & 2, then sooner.

Green party admission to leaders' debates has brought Canada's other political crazies out of the woodworks

With Green party leader Elizabeth May set to participate in the televised leaders' debates -- despite her party having never elected a single, solitary MP -- many of Canada's other political crazies want a spot in the big show, too.

"The parties that are in the House are treating it like a private fiefdom, they're trying to pull up the drawbridge behind them and exclude other parties and new ideas," said Christian Heritage party leader Ron Gray.

"A democracy requires an informed electorate," he added. "To preempt the voter's decision by excluding one important voice is anti-democratic."

But in the 2005/06 federal election, only 28,152 voters voted for the anti-abortion, anti-gay social conservative Christian Heritage party. That's good for a 0.19% of the popular vote.

Is the Christian Heritage party really an "important voice"? Not bloody likely.

Marijuana party leader Blair Longley also thinks that, gosh-darn it, it's all just not fair.

"It's so unfair it goes off the scale," Longley sniffed. "We've been complaining forever and ever. Marijuana Party candidates are routinely excluded from debates, all over the place, all the time."

"If you're below the two-per-cent (threshold), you're nothing," Longley noted.

And for good reason, too. It's one thing for the debates to have to moderate a leaders' debate amongst four (now five) different leaders. Add a burnout douchebag who's probably stoned to the mix?

Not a pretty picture.

In the 2005/06 election 9,171 voters cast their ballot in favour of the Marijuana party. One presumes that a good deal of their constituency must have had an epiphany on election day: "if the only political issue I care about is the legalization of marijuana, I am clearly too fucking stupid to vote."

Of course, there is one fringe party in Canada that could actually make a somewhat legitimate claim to a spot in the leaders' debate: the Communist party, who elected Fred Rose in 1943, when the party ran candidates as the Labour Progressive party.

Unfortunately for the Communist party (and fortunately for the rest of us), however, the Communist party will still have to field candidates against the Marxist-Leninist party, splitting what is quite literally the pinko-commie vote.

Of course, neither party would stand a chance of electing an MP anywhere. There are three reasons for this: Communist. Marxist. Leninist.

Commanding a potential 10% of the popular vote, the Green party has certainly grown in status far beyond the meager dreams of these other fringe upstarts. But with the party finally claiming a place at the televised debate -- even with a leader acting as nothing more than a proxy for the Liberal party -- one has to wonder how long it may be before the network consortium relents and lets all these other crazies in, too.

Then again, Parliament (on a good day) already resembles an unruly kindergarten classroom. Why shouldn't the leaders' debate follow suit?

Green leader has interesting definition of "endorsement"

Elizabeth May didn't endorse Stephane Dion. Elizabeth May won't endorse Stephane Dion. Elizabeth May would never endorse Stephane Dion.

At least, that's reality according to Elizabeth May.

But those Canadians who follow politics -- and are blessed with a long-term memory exceeding that of a gnat -- know very differently. Elizabeth May did endorse Stephane Dion.

"I haven't endorsed Mr. Dion. I've consistently said that I am my first choice for prime minister," May recently insisted.

Of course, the truth is very different.

May's endorsement of Dion started shortly after striking her non-aggression pact with the Liberal leader.

"We recognize that a government in which Stephane Dion served as Prime Minister could work well with a Green caucus of MPs, led by Elizabeth May, committed to action on climate change," she said.

"Yes, Stephane Dion would like to see me in the House of Commons and I think that he should be Prime Minister," May said during a later interview, then adding her qualifier: "Of course, I'm my first choice for prime minister but he'd be very good as second choice."

But here's the thing: Elizabeth May isn't going to be Prime Minister. In fact, her party would be lucky to actually elect a single MP.

In her heart of hearts, Elizabeth May knows this. At the very least, she knows she won't be PM.

May's reasoning in this particular matter is nothing short of pervasively specious. Her "non-endorsement" of Stephane Dion is based on a qualifier that isn't even a remote possibility.

So, with May set to participate in the televised leaders' debate despite her realistically having no business being there, the question on the minds of Canadian voters has to be this:

Why can't Elizabeth May just be honest with Canadian voters?

As previously noted, May's justification for her non-aggression pact with Stephane Dion -- "leader's courtesy" -- was fundamentally dishonest, with no historical precedent applicable to a general election, nor to a riding which her party doesn't currently represent. Nor was the so-called "leader's courtesy" offered or extended to any other party leader.

When May insists she would never act as a proxy for Stephane Dion in the televised debate, how does she honestly expect Canadians to believe her considering the already-established record of electoral collusion between the two parties?

At least now the pressure will be on May to actually demonstrate her -- and her party's -- independence from Dion and the Liberals by not acting as such during the debate.

In this video, released by the Green party, Elizabeth May answers some questions about the decision to exclude her from the televised leaders' debates, and about her non-aggression pact with Stephane Dion.

Unfortunately, in the course of the latter, she insults the intelligence of Canadians.

"One must remember that when Stephen Harper first ran for his riding, he was unopposed by a Liberal candidate. I don't think at the time that anyone made the mistake of thinking he was the Liberal candidate because he was unopposed.

There is a tradition in this country of called 'leader's courtesy'. Mr Dion and I agreed to this measure in respect of each other as leaders of different political parties to not challenge each other in each other's ridings."

Unfortunately for May and her party, this insistence is just as intellectually dishonest as her insistence that Blair Wilson joining her party entitled her to a spot in the televised leaders' debate.

May certainly is correct in pointing out that there is a "leader's courtesy" tradition in Canada. However, it generally applies to newly-selected party leaders who don't possess a seat in the House of Commons.

When this happens, one of the party's MPs usually resigns their seat so the leader may take their place. When the by-election occurs, the other parties agree not to contest the seat. They do this for two reasons:

First off, because the party in question already has possession of that Parliamentary seat.

Secondly, because they expect the other parties to return that courtesy in the event that they elect a leader without a Parliamentary seat.

In order for May's theorem to hold water under the principle of "leader's courtesy", two very important conditions would have to be present: first, we would have to be talking about a by-election as opposed to a general election. Secondly, the Green Party would already have to possess Central Nova.

Neither condition is present, making her reasoning flagrantly fallacious. It would actually have to be a good deal more sound to actually qualify as "specious".

Moreover, the Liberal party certainly hasn't declined to run a candidate against Stephen Harper out of respect for "leader's courtesy" -- Marlene Lamontaigne is running for the party in Calgary-Southwest. The Green party isn't respecting "leader's courtesy" there either -- they're fielding Kelly Christie as a candidate.

Nor are the Liberals and Greens showing any "leader's courtesy" to NDP leader Jack Layton. The Greens are running Charles Battershill and the Liberals are running Andrew Lang in Toronto-Danforth.

So, one question that could still be raised is this: did the Liberals and Greens even bother to contact Jack Layton and Stephen Harper to offer them "leader's courtesy" in their ridings?

There's no indication that they ever did. And even if they did, it's hard to treat a request that Stephen Harper cancel the nomination of his own Deputy Prime Minister as anything other than untenable.

Of course May is, in principle, right to object to Stephen Harper's potrayal of her as the Liberal candidate in Central Nova:

"I am no more the Liberal candidate in Central Nova than Mr Dion is a Green Party candidate anywhere.

We are separate political parties. Our views on most issues are quite different."

Yet if, indeed, Elizabeth May is predisposed toward disagreeing with Stephane Dion on any policy topic, Canadians would be hard-pressed to determine precisely which topics those are -- she has not yet, to date, voiced a disagreement with Stephane Dion on record.

She hasn't even voiced disagreement with Dion over his party's performance on the climate change portfolio -- especially given that the Liberals were the ones who ratified the Kyoto protocol in the first place.

Which is, of course, only another little bit of intellectual dishonesty by Elizabeth May and the Greens.

If Canadians need another reason to reject the Green party, this is as good as any other.

Green party chief denied spot in televized debates

When Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe meet to debate the direction the country should take on October 1 & 2, they will do it in the absence of Green party leader Elizabeth May.

Today the network consortium that organizes the televised debates handed down their decision.

"The [network] consortium approached the parties to explore the possibility of including the Green party in all or part of the leaders' debates," said spokesman Jason MacDonald. "However, three parties opposed its inclusion and it became clear that if the Green party were included, there would be no leaders' debates. In the interest of Canadians, the consortium has determined that it is better to broadcast the debates with the four major party leaders, rather than not at all."

Now Canadians will get an opportunity to witness first-hand the character of May and the party she leads: she can accept that, never having elected a Member of Parliament, she has no business taking part in the leaders' debates, or make good on a a previous threat to sue.

Of course, there is no law in the land that can force Canada's television networks to put Elizabeth May on television alongside leaders of actual official political parties.

It's unsurprising that Canada's television networks have declined to give in to the Greens' bluff.

One can only hope that maybe -- just maybe -- Elections Canada will allow May and the Greens to claim their legal bills as an election expense. Heh.

Anti-Israel Green candidate will stay on ballot

In the immediate aftermath of Green party leader Elizabeth May's decision to allow the candidacy of Qais Ghanem to stand, one question remains on the mind of those observing the Green party during this 2008 federal election:

Why, exactly, was John Shavluk's nomination scrubbed?

We've heard the official explanation: Shavluk's apparently anti-semitic remarks were "not consistent with Green party philosophy".

Meanwhile, Ghanem -- a physicist and immigrant from Yemen -- who along with Sylvie Lemieux, Paul Maillet and Akbar Manoussi (collectively, they are known as the "Ottawa group of four"), to sponsor a resolution entitled simply "Palestine". The resolution "calls upon Israel to end its forty-year occupation of all Arab lands without preconditions."

Ghanem has caught flack within the Green party for using a Green party message board to post messages that were "one-sidedly anti-Israel".

For his own part, Ghanem insists that I do not have to record the opposite point of view to every quotation I dig up, for the sake of so-called 'balance,'. The Israeli point of view is voiced non-stop by the North American media which is controlled by a small oligarchy."

Of course, it would be hard to pretend that when Ghanem refers to a "small oligarchy", he isn't referring to media owners such as the Asper family, who own and control Canwest Global.

So long as he doesn't refer to "a small Jewish oligarchy", it would seem, he's treading on safe territory.

Apparently, Ghanem can counter-factually claim that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that refuses to allow its nuclear facilities to be inspected despite the fact that Iran has barred nuclear inspectors from its facilities.

So long as Ghanem restrains himself from posting bizarre references to Jewish bankers online, it seems, he's safe, even if such sentiments in his comments seem only thinly veiled.

There is, of course, one other element in play: Ghanem didn't mention 9/11 in the course of his comments.

Of course, he has voiced some rather remarkable views regarding 9/11 on his campaign website:

"2001-Sept-11 The Big Event!

Hijackers were Saudis with box cutters, NONE were Afghans or Iraqis.
2001-Sept-12: (ONE day later) Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz declared that Iraq should be attacked!

Here is a list of questions that need answers:
Why was the FBI investigation of hijackers shut down?
Why were military response stand down orders issued?
Why were distracting war games set up on 9/11 of all days?
Why did building 7, not attacked at all, collapse like controlled demolition?"

This is in the course of a post entitled "What are we doing in Afghanistan?"

(Interestingly, he can't quite seem to come to grips with the Taliban's harbouring of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan.)

Meanwhile, Kevin Potvin wrote an editorial wherein he cheered Bin Laden's escape ("Go Osama go!"), and encouraged Vancouver-area 9/11 "truth"ers to meet with him to discuss the matter. His nomination was rejected.

John Shavluk posted a comment implicating the Americans in a terrorist attack on their own soil upon "[their] shoddily built world bank headquarters", and his nomination was turfed as well.

Meanwhile, Qais Ghanem writes a blog post endorsing the 9/11 "truth" movement and advances resolutions that deny Israel's right to exist, and somehow he's still "within [Green] party policy."

While there's clearly a strong 9/11 "truth" movement within the Green party, it may seem that Elizabeth May really isn't trying to excise that particular demon at all.

From any mainstream party, this would be shocking. Fortunately, this is the Green party we're talking about here. One thing about being a fringe party is that eventually you have to embrace fringe politics, in one way or another.

It's official -- federal election set for Oct 14

"Between now and Oct. 14, Canadians will choose a government to look out for their interests at a time of global economic trouble," Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today, shortly after asking Governor General Michaelle Jean to dissolve parliament.

The move came amidst questions over whether or not such an election call would be illegal according to Harper's own fixed date election law.

In calling this election, Harper has pulled the trigger on what he's predicted will be a "nasty" election.

"To be really honest, I anticipate a very nasty, kind of personal-attack campaign," Harper mused. "That's just what I'm anticipating; that's what the opposition's done in the past. I think that whether Canadians agree with what we're doing or not, I don't think they're going to believe the kind of personal attacks and scare tactics that we've seen in the past."

For his own part, Liberal leader Stephane Dion has already started the partisan ideological wrangling typical of his party at election time.

"Stephen Harper formed the most conservative government in our history," Dion insisted.

Which, unfortunately for Dion, is historically untrue. In terms of conservatism, Harper's government could never hold a candle to the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King, among others.

Certainly, Harper's government has been the most Conservative seen in more than fifty years, but that's really only in contrast to what many would consider the runaway statism of previous governments -- including previous Conservative (Progressive Conservative) governments.

Jack Layton, fresh off his visit to the Democratic National Convention, has taken a page out of Barack Obama's playbook and promised to be the candidate for change.

"I'll act on the priorities of your kitchen table not just the boardroom table," he promised.

Last (and least) Elizabeth May portrayed her party as an alternative to the three national parties that have actually managed to -- you know -- actually elect Members of Parliament.

Her race against Deputy Prime Minister Peter MacKay will be one of the key battlegrounds in the election. Ironically, she'll be depending on heavy support from partians of one of the mainstream parties, as the Liberals will not run a candidate against her.

Many Canadians likely find themselves somewhere between disappointed and angry to be facing an election right now.

However, there is one bright side to this election. Not only will Canadians elect their leaders before the Presidential race is settled, one can safely assume that Michael Moore will be keeping his mouth busy with American politics for the duration of the Canadian election.

Thank god for small favours, one supposes.