There was a federal election in Canada on January 23, 2006. I ran for the
Green Party of Canada
in the riding of Central Nova, which is located in northeastern
Nova Scotia.
Backgrounder
Central Nova is a mainly rural riding with a strong very Scottish heritage.
There is an industrial area
around New Glasgow, its largest city, and a university in Antigonish, St.
Francis Xavier, with a strong
Catholic tradition. The population numbers over 73,000. Peter MacKay, the
deputy leader of the
Conservative Party, is the incumbent. The New Democratic Party (NDP) had
a woman candidate,
Alexis MacDonald, who had also run in the last election and had come in
second. There were also
a Liberal candidate, Dan Walsh, and a candidate for the Marxist Leninist
Party, Alan Bezanson.
Across the country the overall Green Party vote seems to have increased
by over 83,000 in this
election, as shown below:
Liberals
-10.1%
Conservatives +33.6%
NDP
+21.8%
Bloc Quebecois -7.6%
Green Party
+14.4%
The voter turn-out in our Central Nova riding was approximately 73 percent
of the electorate, as
compared to 61.7 percent in 2004. Every party's vote increased, except
the Greens. (The ML Party
did not previously run.) We polled 671 votes - 1.6% of the total votes
in our riding. This was 344
votes less than that gained
by the previous candidate, who received 1015 votes in 2004. That
candidate led a very low key campaign, whereas I believe our small group
was very active. Also,
I have lived in this area for over 20 years, and have been very involved
in several environmental
struggles.
So how to explain the low vote in our riding?
Our campaign
We (there were three of us) ran a deep green campaign aimed at capturing
consciousness, not votes,
under the campaign slogan "Make
Peace With Nature - Vote Green". I raised the values and ideas
which we believe a deep green party should embody, plus what I saw as crucial
ecological issues in
Central Nova. Where in public discussions I disagreed with a GP Platform
position, e.g. on carbon
emissions trading, or did not believe that the Platform went far enough,
e.g. the energy policy, I made
the different positions clear.
There were two central themes to the material we put out and in the talks
and interviews I gave.
These themes were:
- I stated the necessity to move away from looking at Nature in a
human-centered manner, so that
other species of animals and plants are not just seen as "resources" for
industrial consumption. I identified
this non-human centered way of looking at Nature, as the philosophy of
deep ecology. I said it was the
key element, necessary to live sustainably on our planet. This means all
of us have to come into a new
relationship with the natural world. We need to see our personal identities
as including the natural world.
At the present time, when we make a living economically, we destroy the
natural world in the process, as
in industrial forestry, industrial fishery and industrial agriculture.
- I discussed how our industrial capitalist economy, based on never ending
growth and increasing
consumerism, is not ecologically sustainable, and that we live in a finite
world, which we must respect
for long term survival. We are running out of oil and natural gas -- there
is the issue whether we may
already have reached "peak oil" and "peak gas" levels. Canada's so-called
energy policy is basically
geared to supplying the US market. (This accounts for two thirds of current
oil and gas extraction.)
We are locked into this through our NAFTA membership. Our ecological footprint
is too large --
the industrial lifestyle sought by the six and a half billion people living
on this planet is not achievable
for all, even if we disregard the interests of other forms of life. The
huge growth in population has been
based on the fossil fuel economy, fed by industrial agriculture, and is
not sustainable in the long term.
As the global fossil fuel-based economy is coming to an end, we will have
to develop a more local
economy. Climate change is now underway, and there is no serious attempt
to try and halt, let alone
reverse, the process. These are matters of life and death, not only for
the human species but for all
the other species which should be able to share this planet with us on
a basis of equality.
I believe that, because of the election, these basic ideas are being more
widely discussed in Central
Nova.
We issued seven press releases, which were reported on fairly well by two
out of the three main
newspapers in our riding and by the local radio stations. These releases
covered:
(1) Introducing myself;
(2) Opposing industrial forestry and spraying;
(3) A call for marine protected areas and a ban on inshore seismic testing;
(4) A call to change Canada' s energy policy and to oppose LNG terminals
in the Maritimes;
(5) Public health should be seen as a component of ecosystem health;
(6) Some differences between the Green Party and the NDP and why one should
vote Green; and
(7) The necessity for free Earth-centered, socially aware education.
I attended the four all-candidates debates. One was at a local regional
high school in New Glasgow,
Pictou County, with about three hundred grade twelve students. Three were
community based meetings -
one in Pictou County (Stellarton) with several hundred people; one
at the university in the riding
(Antigonish) with over 400 people; and a smaller meeting with under a hundred
people in a community
on the Eastern Shore (Moser River). There were a number of interviews by
radio and print media, and
quite a few internet queries which came out of our electoral work.
The Green Party leaflet "Yep. We're a one-issue party" and
the printed version of the 2006
Election Platform only came towards the end of the campaign and much
too late. We decided the
leaflet was so pathetic and dumbed down, that we did not want to distribute
it. (What a waste of
money sending such a leaflet out to all the ridings!) We rushed to produce
our own leaflet
"Make Peace With Nature - Vote Green", based on the press
releases we issued. We had
3,000 printed, and distributed 2,500 through the post office at communities
we targeted. The
rest we gave out mainly at two of the all-candidates meetings.
Two further topics I discussed, were on the military and on seals. I raised
the issue of the growing
militarization of Canadian society and its integration into the orbit of
the US military, and that I felt the
Green Party should be calling for the withdrawal of Canadian soldiers from
Afghanistan and
disengagement from Haiti. I used a quote from the Canadian red Tory philosopher
George Grant,
which I felt was specially appropriate against the neo-conservative incumbent
Peter MacKay. In his
wonderful book Lament For A Nation,
Grant wrote: "Of
all the aspects of our society,
the
military is the most directly an errand boy for the Americans."
I also brought up my opposition to the killing of grey and harbour seals
in the Maritimes by those
connected to the fishing industry, and to the annual commercial slaughter
of harp and hooded seals.
In two different newspapers, in response to a question as to what I would
do first, if I could pass
one bill in the House of Commons, I said it would be to end the annual
so-called seal hunt. I have
always believed that seal issues show in Greens, environmentalists, and
others, a crucial test of the
ecocentric depth of environmental consciousness. Conflicts over seal issues
are fundamental conflicts
over basic value systems, in how we are going to relate to the natural
world. (See for background,
Green Web bulletin #74 "Deep Ecology and Animals".
It is a paper given at the "Representing
Animals" conference, at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario,
in November of 2003. It
outlines the deep ecology approach to animals and contrasts this with an
animal liberation perspective.
The paper covers an outline of deep ecology, seals, aboriginal hunting
in parks and protected areas,
Earth spirituality, and activism.)
What happened in the Central Nova riding for the green vote to fall? I
believe one reason was
strategic voting, because the NDP seemed to believe they could defeat the
Conservative candidate
and win the seat. Quite a number of people told us their heart was with
the Green Party, but that
they would vote NDP because they believed they could win. In other words,
the Left-Right
distinction was more important for them than the Nature first (deep ecology)
distinction. It seems
that even for many Green Party supporters the Left-Right distinction, in
a conflict situation,
overrode their deep ecology sentiment. This points to the need to strengthen
deep ecology
consciousness (not mentioned in the 2006
Election Platform) among Green Party members
and supporters. Given the NDP-Conservative polarizing nature of the local
campaign, hopefully
those who did vote for the Green Party, grasped at a deeper level the two
themes which we
pursued, and gave them their support.
I found this campaign to be intellectually and emotionally stimulating.
I would like to thank
my campaign manager (Mark) and my official agent (Helga) for their support,
which made
possible the theoretical work I was able to carry out. The press
releases we issued are
available on our web site at
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Election_Campaign_Press_Releases.html
For the Earth,
David Orton
2006 Green Party candidate in Central Nova
January 29, 2006
P.S. There were two spin-offs from our electoral work. The New Glasgow
Public Library is
organizing an evening discussion "Green Movement Information Session"
on
February 8th.
Their web site states "David Orton, national spokesperson for Deep Ecology
for the Green
Party of Canada, will lead an introductory discussion on the Green Movement
and the
tenets of the Deep Ecology movement." They are doing print and radio
publicity for this.
The event will be covered by the community TV station. This came about,
apparently, because
one of the librarians liked what she heard at one of the all-candidates
meetings.
Also, the student "Green Council" at Saint Francis Xavier University has
invited me to give an
evening public lecture on "Deep ecology and the green movement" on March
9th.
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