By Kate Heartfield
At least one result in the federal election differed widely from expectations — the Green Party vote.
The Green Party doubled its 1997 vote countrywide, taking 104,260 votes compared with 55,583 in 1997.
Many ridings in British Columbia and Quebec saw the Greens take over six per cent of the vote, but most of these ridings had a high Green vote in 1997 as well. More surprising were successes in Ontario: five per cent for the Greens in Kingston and the Thousand Islands, and three per cent in Ottawa Centre and Ottawa-Vanier.
In Ottawa Centre, the share of the vote that went to the Green Party tripled from one per cent in 1997. The raw votes increased 75 per cent, from 855 to 1,475.
Ontario Green leader Frank de Jong says the successes in Ontario were the result of better party organization and a more-promising slate of candidates. He says the Greens benefited from the high profile of environmental issues in the last year, such as the Walkerton tragedy, contamination and pesticide issues, and the Toronto garbage debate.
“Political issues are green issues,” he says. “It’s becoming a battle between the green and the grey rather than the right and the left.”
Randal Marlin, a philosophy professor at Carleton University, voted for the Green Party in Ottawa Centre. He hasn’t voted for the Green Party in the past, and says he might have voted NDP had he not been impressed with the common sense of the Green platform and the Ottawa Centre candidate.
“It’s the same phenomenon as Ralph Nader in the United States. People are saying never mind the question of Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” says Marlin. “Let’s vote for something we really believe in.”
Jon Pammett, a political science professor at Carleton University and a former elections analyst, says measuring the success of any party is subjective.
“I think they would measure their success in shifting the agenda towards ecological issues, and I don’t think, as yet, they’ve been able to do that to any degree,” he says. “But they did get over 100,000 votes. So in the context of parties that really can’t hope to elect people in the current parliamentary system, they’ve been successful.”
Ottawa Centre Green candidate Chris Bradshaw attributes his success to his high profile as owner of a car-sharing enterprise and environmental activist. He took to the streets in an earth-friendly tricycle, which he says brought him to the attention of the community.
But Bradshaw says he could have taken 1,000 more votes if circumstances had been better. Ottawa Centre saw a tight race between NDP candidate Heather-jane Robertson and Liberal candidate Mac Harb.
Many votes that might have gone to the Greens, Bradshaw says, went to the NDP instead.
In other ridings, a strategic left-wing vote may have gone to the Liberals.
“We have, numerous times, been told by people they wanted to vote for us, but they didn’t want the (Canadian) Alliance to get in, so they voted for the Liberals,” Bradshaw says.
De Jong says opportunities for the Green Party varied according to how safe the Liberal candidate was in each riding. Ridings where a Liberal win was a sure thing tended to have a higher Green vote. Ridings where the race was close saw fewer Green votes.