Path to modest growth lies in B.C
May will focus on home province, where party polled 18% recently
At least at the start of the marathon federal campaign, Canadians are looking at the prospect of the first true three-way race in some time. Against that backdrop, the question isn’t so much what Elizabeth May and the Green party needs to do to win power.
It’s how May and the Greens will maintain their historic pair of seats in the House of Commons, and look for modest growth.
For the Greens, the best path forward appears to be British Columbia. The party has consistently polled higher in B.C. than in any other province: it reached a high of 18 per cent at the end of 2014, according to averages compiled by ThreeHundredEight.com. Nationally, the Greens have not broken 10 per cent over the past year, wavering between a low of 2 per cent and a high of 9.9 per cent. Given those numbers, it’s perhaps unsurprising that party leader Elizabeth May, a strong presence in the House of Commons despite the party’s paltry two seats, has been spending most of 2015 shoring up support in the province.
May has held 68 public events in B.C. since the beginning of year, according to an the analysis conducted by the Star. A full 35 of those events have been in Saanich—Gulf Islands, which made May the first Green MP in the 2011. Unlike the leaders of the three other major parties, May has largely stayed out of the fight for the seat-rich GTA.
Despite nabbing a second seat when Green Deputy Leader Bruce Hyer defected from the NDP, May hasn’t spent much time in Ontario at all, other than her appearances in the House of Commons. And Hyer, like most floor-crossing MPs, will have a hard time retaining his northern Ontario seat in Thunder Bay.
But the Greens have pulled in some fairly attractive candidates in the lead-up to October’s election. Gord Miller, Ontario’s former environmental watchdog, will carry the party’s flag in Guelph. The party managed to capture 21 per cent of the vote in that riding in 2008, only 11 points behind Liberal MP Frank Valeriote.
Provincially, Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner had a similar showing in last year’s election, capturing 19 per cent of the vote.
In North Vancouver, the Greens are running charismatic former CBC meteorologist Claire Martin and well-known CBC radio host Jo-Ann Roberts in Victoria.
And although the Greens have a long way to nominate a full slate of 338 candidates across the country, they do have 60 candidates in Ontario, 29 and in B.C., and 24 in the Conservative stronghold of Alberta, according to the latest numbers compiled by website Pundits Guide.
A complication for the Greens is the anticipated extra-long election period crafted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.
Neither the NDP nor the Liberals can outspend the governing Conservatives, and the Greens can’t spend anything close to the three main parties.
May has also been excluded from at least one leaders’ debate, which she muscled her way into in the last election. That reduces her visibility and adds to the problem.
One way around those hurdles is for the Greens to focus their energies in the relatively small area of the lower mainland in B.C., and to limit the party to that modest growth.
It’s not a path to power, but it would be something.