Corporatism versus Unionism. That's Why I Vote Green, for Environmentalism

I expect Christy Clark will remain Canada's most corrupt premier when the ballots are counted tomorrow. She and her Liberal government have a 16-year record to prove they're rotten to the core. Still they're revered even by some outspoken federal Liberals who are willing to overlook all the corruption and the fact that B.C. Liberals are really right wing conservatives.

I went to the advanced polls and I voted for my party. I voted Green. It's the sort of thing that sets the Dippers howling for they alone lay claim to every non-Liberal vote. In my opinion they can take their harangue and pound it up where it belongs. If they can't defeat Clark's Liberals on their own, that's on them, not the Green Party or its supporters.

Writing in The Georgia Straight, Mark Leiren-Young strips the eco-hypocrisy off the Dippers' hides and truly flays their cheap sanctimony.



As nervous NDPers ask why any “progressive” would trust the Greens, I can’t help wondering why any environmentalist would trust the NDP?
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It wasn’t the Socreds or Liberals who declared environmentalists “enemies of British Columbia,” it was the NDP’s Glen Clark.

Carole James cynically campaigned on a campaign to axe BC’s globally admired carbon tax—torching her party’s environmental platform to kick off her bid to run the province.

B.C.’s former future Premier, Adrian Dix, was so committed to the NDP’s environmental stance that he called an audible on Kinder Morgan mid-campaign.
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Jolly John Horgan was initially undecided on Kinder Morgan, then he read the tea leaves—and the polls showing the Green Party wasn’t going away—and found religion on pipelines. As someone who is voting on the issue of #stopkm in the hopes of saving our Southern Resident orcas I’m thrilled by Horgan’s change of heart. And smart people I trust like Tzeporah Berman believe Horgan’s Come to Suzuki moment on KM is genuine. Like Fox Mulder I desperately want to believe. But I’m not sold. Neither, apparently, is David Suzuki.
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In federal elections NDP partisans are adamant that you should vote with your conscience and damn the polls, even when that meant a likelihood of electing Steve Harper. But in B.C. NDPers are arguing that they deserve every anti-Liberal vote by divine right and polls showing the Greens in third place should be taken as gospel.
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Yes, Weaver supported the first two Liberal budgets—which is cited as proof of his Liberal leanings except when I asked his office about this I was told when Weaver was campaigning he promised to support the first budget of whichever party was elected because they were the government the province had voted for. He felt the second budget worked for his Oak Bay constituents. Make of those answers what you will, but he has not supported a Liberal budget since taking over as leader of the Greens—which certainly isn’t how this accusation is presented—and since landing top job he has almost always either voted with the NDP or against both the Liberals and the NDP.
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Weaver campaigned to defeat Carole James in her riding after she fought to dismantle the carbon tax he’d helped design and replace it with hot air? Shocking!
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The NDP has never won in B.C. without a third party drawing from the province’s right-wing champions du jour. Harcourt landed in the premier’s seat with 41 percent of the vote. Glen Clark ran the province with a whopping 39 percent. So with the B.C. Tories gone, the Greens are the only place the "anybody but NDP" vote can go other than staying with Corporate Christy. And regardless of who was running the right wing party du jour there has always been a sizeable “anybody but NDP” vote in B.C.

In a two-party race the NDP has historically been DOA, so even if the BC Liberals helped pump the Greens tires to split the Not So Liberal vote, with the Tories out of the game the B.C. NDP desperately needs Weaver in play to provide a home for voters who would rather be dead than orange. Why does nothing rhyme with orange? If you took the Greens off the ballot tomorrow, Clark could likely take million-dollar bribes on live TV, kick a dog or three, and still cruise to victory.

And that’d be why the NDP brain trust has always done everything in their power to paint the Greens as Liberal-lite.

And maybe they are—but not on the environmental file. The file the Suzuki Foundation and other eco-groups gave the Greens top marks for.

And that’s the issue everyone should be voting on in the 21st century.