If the Greens Can't Stand for Election, Why Can't They Stand for Principle?

I'm not sure what keeps Green Party membership grounded.

Their party doesn't stand a chance electorally. Justin Trudeau put paid to that when he reneged on electoral reform, ensuring that Canada will continue to be ruled (not governed, ruled) by false majority administrations like his very own. Like the Conservatives before them they love telling the three out of five voters who don't support them what to do.

It's not clear to me that the Green Party is destined to survive. Unable to properly participate in Canada's political process by charlatans like Trudeau it faces a lingering, inglorious death. We'll have to settle for thin gruel alternatives like our current enviro-min, Dame Cathy "Do Little" McKenna.

That's not to say that Canadians won't come to appreciate the Green Party. They will but not before it's much too late to matter. Despite this government's shameless indifference, environmental catastrophe will carry the day and, as it does, we will be woefully unprepared for its impacts.

In my view the Green Party has misapprehended its duty to the country and its role in Parliament. It is pretentious for it to present itself as fit and ready to govern. It does not need a full spectrum platform that doesn't seem to have been updated since the darkest days of Harper.

Politics, we're told, is the art of the possible. That cuts both ways. It is not possible for the Greens to think themselves a contender to govern Canada (that goes for the NDP also). That's pretentious.

No one should know better than the Greens that time is not on their or Canada's side.  Climate change is already coming on strong from our far north to the 49th parallel from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific and it is going to get considerably stronger in the decade ahead. This is no time to be coy about exponential growth and a petro-economy. If the Greens won't speak truth to power, who will?

Stop playing footsie with the Liberals. Go after them as relentlessly as you would the Harper Tories. It's the Trudeau Liberals who are going to push that damned pipeline through. It's the Liberals who want to take Canada's petro-economy to an entirely new level.

Lose the fear of being seen as a single-issue party. Yes it's one issue but it is, by an enormous margin, the most important issue facing Canada, a truly existential threat. Own it. Nobody else wants to touch it, not really, not even the NDP. Own it. It's yours. You don't own any other issue so why spurn the most important issue?

Stand for principle. There's precious little of that on either side of the House of Commons today. Again, it's a vacant field. Occupy it. And, if that challenges your comfort level, well, you're in the wrong place and the wrong time.