Greens to run in all Sask. ridings

The federal Green Party is just days away from having candidates named in all 14 Saskatchewan ridings. Five candidates were nominated this week and another two will be officially nominated when their paperwork is processed in the coming days.

“It’s a significant achievement,” said Mark Bigland-Pritchard, the Green Party candidate for Saskatoon-Grasswood.

The Green Party, which won its first seat in the 2011 election, has pledged to run candidates in all of the country’s 338 ridings — something it has aimed to do since 2004.

“Not all of our candidates are going to be particularly active. Some of them will, some of them won’t, but it’s important that that choice is there,” Bigland-Pritchard said.

The Green Party earned three per cent of votes in Saskatchewan in 2011, behind the Conservatives (56 per cent), NDP (32 per cent) and Liberals (nine per cent). Nationally, the Greens took slightly less than four per cent of the popular vote.

Quito Maggi, with the Mainstreet Research polling company, said it’s unlikely that number will increase much provincially or nationally because fourth parties like the Greens tend to get “squeezed out” by tight, three-way races.

A July poll by Mainstreet had the Greens holding six per cent of the vote in Saskatchewan and Manitoba behind the Conservatives (40 per cent), Liberals (19 per cent) and NDP (17 per cent). Nineteen per cent of those polled were undecided.

“I don’t believe that the support (for the Green Party in the Prairies) is concentrated enough in any one riding or group of ridings for them to legitimately have a chance of winning a seat,” Maggi said.

Charles Smith, a political-science professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s St. Thomas More College, said the Green Party has “a series of obstacles” to becoming a serious fourth party in Saskatchewan.

It needs a stronger fundraising machine and to develop a concentrated base, for example by allying itself with a movement or group, such as farmers, he said.

In addition, it’s tough for a party that supports a moratorium on uranium mining to get a foothold in a province that produces most of the country’s uranium.

“That’s a tough thing to talk about on the Prairies,” Smith said.

Bigland- Pritchard admitted campaigning will be a challenge.

“Obviously we don’t have the level of organization that the other parties have because we’re much newer. We don’t have the money the other parties have,” he said. This is especially problematic for the Greens given the unprecedented 11-week campaign period.

However, Bigland-Pritchard maintained the Greens could steal votes from other parties, particularly from younger, aboriginal and first-time voters.

In the northern Saskatchewan riding of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River — which has the highest aboriginal population in the province and had the lowest voter turnout in 2011 at just 50 per cent — Green Party candidate Warren Koch said he thinks he has a chance.

“The northern riding is the one riding in Saskatchewan that, if there was a riding to flip in Saskatchewan, it would be the northern riding, given the vast amounts of space and parks and natural lands, the great waters,” he said.

Smith, however, said Green support will likely be strongest in urban centres, where people are passionate about issues like bike lanes for active commuting. Whether those views translate into votes for the Greens remains to be seen.

“You might have green sympathies but not be willing to change your vote to the Green Party,” Smith said.

The federal election will be held Oct. 19.