Make history, Guelph voters
There’s been a rich premium in recent times for campaigners seen by the electorate to speak plainly and “tell it like it is.”
Unhappily, this has often resulted in a dumbing down of political discourse, an outpouring of vernacular, vulgarity and old-time bromides of scant relevance to the challenges of contemporary governance.
Too often, it has given rise to campaigners with little taste for nuance and complexity, and has sent the message that the less one actually knows about policy and details the shrewder one somehow is. Enter Mike Schreiner. Schreiner has been leader of the Green Party of Ontario since 2009. He is the second longest-serving party leader in the province, trailing the NDP’s Andrea Horwath by mere months.
Schreiner is nothing if not determined, committed and persistent.
This is his third election as leader of the Greens. To date, the party has won no seats. It has not gained, under his leadership, as much as 5 per cent of the vote.
“You know what? It’s hard to be an agent of change sometimes,” he acknowledged during a meeting this past week with the Star’s editorial board.
Yet by dint of Schreiner’s own optimistic personality, or perhaps the candour that comes from having nothing to lose, it is arguably the Green leader who has been the most forthright leader in the campaign for the June 7 Ontario election.
Schreiner frankly argues for the merits of a single publicly funded school system in Ontario and an end to separateschool funding for Catholic schools.
He is a small businessman and entrepreneur who supports social justice, proposing a basic income guarantee essential in “today’s economy with increasing levels of precarious work, temporary work, contract jobs.” He supports road pricing. “We are so far behind,” he said. “We can’t build the infrastructure we need to create world-class cities and to connect our communities across Ontario if we don’t have an honest conversation about how to pay for it.”
Schreiner wants to achieve the electoral reform and a system of proportional representation that Canadians were so attracted to in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s campaign in 2015, but which the federal Liberals promptly bailed on once elected.
Most bluntly, Schreiner says there is no going back for Ontarians to some golden age of the kind the auto industry once provided and that 21st century jobs will be green jobs found in “clean-tech.”
The choice for voters, Schreiner said, is whether they are willing to “leap into the future and embrace 21st century clean-economy learn jobs or do they want to cling to the past and try to hold on to old-economy jobs?”
He hopes his willingness to accommodate the expressed desire by voters for frankness will be rewarded.
“I’ve had so many people tell me, ‘We may not agree with you on that policy, but we admire you for telling it like it is and just being straight with people about the challenges we face and the actions you’re going to take to address those challenges.’ I think people are tired of politicians who are not going to be straight with them.”
Schreiner also believes that, however voters judge the Greens next month, the party is on the right side of history.
“If you want to see where Ontario might be in 10 years from now, look at the Green party’s platform,” he said.
Schreiner, who is running in the riding of Guelph vacated by former Liberal MPP Liz Sandals, cheerfully admits the Greens are running for a toehold, not for government.
Still, his party has a full slate of candidates, 52 per cent of whom are women, he said. And, as ever, he is optimistic.
“I think the fact that Greens are being elected across Canada is a game-changer.”
It would not be an unwelcome development at all if the electors of Guelph were to decide on June 7 to make a little Ontario history.