Excluded from debate, Greens are still on verge of making history

Green party leader Mike Schreiner was unfairly excluded from the leaders’ debates in this election.

But that hasn’t stopped him from being on the verge of making history.

AMainstreet Research poll shows Schreiner in first place in his riding of Guelph. If the support holds into next week, he could become Ontario’s first Green MPP.

Apoll of the riding conducted late last week by Mainstreet Research shows Schreiner’s Greens with 31.7 per cent support there, followed by the New Democratic Party with 28 per cent.

The poll has a sample size of 668, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.77 per cent.

“The momentum we’re feeling on the ground is just incredible,” Schreiner told me Monday.

“People are starting to believe we can win.”

Schreiner said his own support is coming from people who are dissatisfied with the governing Liberals, but who “just can’t vote for Doug Ford.”

The fact that popular longtime Liberal MPP Liz Sandals announced she’s retiring from politics, leaves room for Guelph voters to turn to the Greens.

But it was a steeper hill for him to climb because he couldn’t participate in the televised debate Sunday night.

It’s “a slap in the face to the people of Ontario,” said Schreiner, who says he wants to be held accountable as much as any other party leader.

The Green party may be small, but it’s serious about Ontario. It has run a candidate in every riding since 2003.

It has a detailed, thought-out platform.

That places the Greens far higher, in my estimation, than the Progressive Conservatives, whose leader appears to be winging it, and who do not yet have a costed platform even though advance polls have already opened and people are already starting to vote.

Schreiner said he was told he was excluded from the debate because the Green Party doesn’t have a seat in the legislature.

“It’s like telling someone you can’t play in the Stanley Cup playoffs because you never won the Stanley Cup championship,” he said.

“You’ve got to get on the ice before you can win.”

Not to be pushed down for long, Schreiner offered his own commentary on Twitter as the debate was going on. You can still follow him there, at @MikeSchreiner or the hashtag #MikeAtTheMic.

Here are some of the comments he made.

“Let’s be honest about what is really raising electricity costs — pouring money into old, expensive nuclear.

“I wouldn’t use milk past its best-before date. Why are we wasting money to keep Pickering

(nuclear plant) open past its expiration date?”

Instead, Schreiner would buy cheap hydroelectric power from neighbouring Quebec.

The Green party platform plans to move to a clean economy by supporting jobs in clean technology (Schreiner thinks our local technology sector, is well placed for this).

It would spend billions in mental health supports and energy conservation support, offers a basic minimum income to the poor, and commits to 100-per-cent renewable energy by 2050.

Under the Green plan, the carbon tax would be immediately returned to Ontarians as a dividend, and thus would be truly revenue-neutral. After that, “the more you reduce your pollution, the more money you make.”

His comments were a welcome contrast to the other leaders in the debate, who wasted time interrupting and criticizing one another.

You wouldn’t even know, listening to them, that climate change is the most important problem we have to deal with.

If we can no longer live on planet Earth because it’s uninhabitable, child-care subsidies and deficits won’t matter at all.