Not Green, For Now

I had to resign my membership in the Green Party to do it, but now I'm a Liberal Supporter.   I didn't join the Liberal Party and I won't unless something radical happens but I registered as a Liberal Supporter in order to vote for Joyce Murray as party leader.

Murray is the only candidate who is remotely progressive.  She's the only one who isn't a bitumen booster.  She's the only candidate who has garnered the support of two people I truly respect - Lloyd Axworthy and David Suzuki.  She's a fellow British Columbian.

That said, I expect Trudeau will win and carry on the Liberals' moribund politics that saw the party go from Sussex Drive to Stornoway to Motel 6 out on the Gloucester Highway.   That's not to say that he won't be able to take down an already weakened Harper in 2015.  He might, but that wouldn't hold much promise for Canada.

Of the rest, the Space Cadet is probably my second choice with the Pipeline Queen, Hall Findlay, dead last.  The Sad Sacks in between?  Nah, I don't think so.

So, I'll keep my fingers crossed for Joyce Murray.   Stranger things have happened.

A Sensible Liberal When the Party Most Needs One

The Liberals are lucky.   They have a leadership candidate that could actually help them and the country.    No, it's not Trudeau and it's not Hall-Findlay or Garneau.  It's Joyce Murray of Vancouver.

Murray, unlike her rivals, wants to restore progressivism to the Liberal Party, something that has been consigned to obscurity since Ignatieff opened shop.   Unfortunately the wanna-be Latter Day Ignatieffs that fill the leadership ranks remain decidedly centre-right.

Here's a Murray idea that deserves consideration.   The Libs could join forces with those of us from the Green Party.   Our leader, Elizabeth May, is for it.

Had Liberals and Greens united behind a single candidate in last November's byelection in Calgary Centre, Murray says they could have prevented Tory Joan Crockatt from eking out a narrow victory with just under 37 per cent of the vote.

The Green Party actually has a robust policy platform that Liberals and uncommitted voters alike could embrace.   They're actually the very sorts of things you might have heard from Liberals of twenty or thirty years ago.  If the Libs insist on hitching their wagon to sub-prime fossil fuels and what even Allison Redford calls the "bitumen bubble" they're heading down a dead end road.  It's time for them to wake up, do themselves and the country a favour, and go Green.