Federal / Provincial Green Co-operation

Green members are passionate about seeing public policy change for a more just and sustainable society.  When society has an obsession with more and more growth of material throughput, we feel strongly that this heading down the wrong path.   Public policy that shapes our life is just as critical, or moreso, at the provincial level as it is at the federal level.  

I believe that a key component to our next stage of development is to have good, regular and cooperative relations with the provincial Green Parties.  In Australia, The Greens maintain permanent offices that handle state elections, the state component of federal elections and local elections in a cooperative fashion out of the same office.  They don’t wait for elections to be active on the political front. There is a continuity and union of purpose towards sustainability.  Jurisdictional lines are to be respected but are more for the lawyers and political scientists.  The desire for change towards sustainability is the common thread amongst the three levels of government and the common thread for active members.

I started counting the times that provincial jurisdiction is mentioned in Vision Green and I stopped counting after 50.  We need to open the discussion with provincial parties on how deeper cooperation will be for mutual benefit of all concerned.
With so much for the party to do just to stay functional, I realize that it is potentially a monumental task to ask that the federal party look for some ways to coordinate in various fashions with the provincial Green Parties.  Many of them are themselves barely functional.  On the surface, this would appear to add an additional burden on an already overworked staff.  But this should be a party driven mostly by members, i.e. volunteers.  Surely we can find enough volunteers to pull together a council to recommend ways that provincial parties can cooperate with the federal party, both from a policy standpoint and from an organizational standpoint.

One of the reasons that there has been hesitation to cooperate is that there is a limited amount of donors available to Green Parties.  It is somewhat of a challenge to fundraise for one or the other when people think that they already donated to your campaign when in fact they donated to the party at the other level.

 One of the important discussions to have very soon is how and when the four different bodies that need funding – GPC, Provincial Parties, and local federal and provincial associations can be properly funded.  It is time to address this frankly so that all parties can work collectively towards what makes sense to further our policies and to achieve a deeper penetration into the psyche of the electorate with our values.  

If we are to end up with a solid group of electable candidates in good ridings in the next federal election, it will most likely be contingent on solid results in corresponding provincial elections.  There are many examples across the country where good candidates at both levels feed off of each other to greater results for both.  The teams working in these ridings make virtually no distinction about which level is more important.

The human resources that were corralled for SGI, both to call in and to canvass on the street, is a situation that can be repeated during provincial elections and the right by-elections (which can be anywhere in the country).  In my view, this will be a must in order to maximize our chances in the next federal election.  Done properly, it will be invigorating.   

This could be on the agenda for a federal/provincial cooperation council.  My preference would be for all ridings in a particular province to have an equal chance to be featured with human resources from across the country.  Financing of course must all be done within the laws of that province.  Some allow for donations from outside of borders and others do not.  But anybody with a national long distance flat rate plan can call into a riding for free.  

Many of us have done this for Elizabeth in London North Centre and SGI but we should now be using this excellent system that we have to push for better electoral results provincially.  Targeting at least three ridings in each provincial election might be a good number for starters.  Any riding that believes that they should be targeted can prepare a proposal.  There are many ways to do this democratically and to fairly evaluate the proposals by some process at the provincial level.

It probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway; certainly any provincial laws with respect to electioneering from across the country must be followed to the letter of the law.

For this cooperation to happen, it would be a good start if all provincial leaders could attend the next Biannual General Meeting of the GPC.  Work can be done beforehand to begin the process of effective cooperation.  A demonstration of unity in the form of a press release, in my opinion, would be a tremendous step forward for us in our quest to take a more prominent role in society towards shaping public policy.  If elected President, I would be pleased to work with the rest of Federal Council to seek out those that would like to take this project on.