Why Can't Elizabeth May Just Be Honest With Canadians?

Elizabeth May caught red-tongued again

Yesterday, with polls predicting another Conservative minority government, Green party leader Elizabeth May made a pro-strategic voting sales pitch to left of centre Canadians.

"There's no question that there are some ridings where you might say to vote green you ought to vote NDP to stop a Conservative from winning, and in some ridings you might want to vote Liberal to stop a Conservative from winning," May said.

Moreover, May even knows where these ridings are. "It would be maybe 20 per cent of ridings in the country where that's even a factor, and mostly in Ontario," she added.

For her own part, Valerie Powell, the Green party candidate in Simcoe North, is not amused. "I think she's muddying the waters," she said. "I think she's the best prime minister, and we have to keep working hard as Greens to make sure we have as many MPs as possible."

"I love Valerie and I read her full quotes and they weren't harsh or unfair. She's right, life would be simpler if I acted like [NDP Leader] Jack Layton and didn't care if Stephen Harper formed government again," May retorted. "Life would be simpler if I were a complete hypocrite like Jack Layton and pretended I cared about the climate when all of his strategy makes his own personal success more important than survival of the climate and decent climate policy."

"I'm just not that person."

Which is true. Elizabeth May is the person who hatched a deal to allow Liberal leader Stephane Dion, the former Environment Minister whose job it was to implement Kyoto -- on behalf of the party that signed and ratified Kyoto -- but never got out of the blocks, to run unopposed by a Green party candidate in his riding.

She's that person.

Today, however, Elizabeth May is being dishonest with Canadians yet again, as she denies that she's never encouraged Green party supporters to vote for the NDP or Liberals in order to block a renewed Harper government.

Considering that her own comments and her deal hatched with Stephane Dion -- which would leave Green party supporters in St Laurent-Cartierville with no Green party candidate to vote for and the Green party-endorsed Liberal leader in their stead -- are rather contradictory, Elizabeth May has to have very little respect for the intelligence of Canadians in order to make this claim.

"Being honest with the voters, I acknowledge that there is concern over vote-splitting in a small number of ridings. But I am not going to say 'vote Liberal here, vote NDP there,'" May insisted later Sunday.

Which is actually being dishonest with voters. Certainly, May might not have come out and explicitly said to vote for those parties, but she has repeatedly urged strategic voting to defeat the Conservatives, which would entail voting for those two parties.

So Elizabeth May's tao of strategic voting seems to work one of two ways: either all voters -- Green party voters included -- should vote strategically in order to defeat the Conservative party, or only Liberal and NDP voters should.

The latter, of course, would make May every bit as hypocritical as she accuses Jack Layton of being -- putting her own party's success ahead of what she claims is the country's well-being.

May already is "that person" -- a foul hypocrite who keeps trying to twist the truth to her own ends, all the while expecting Canadians to simply not catch on to her protracted double-speak, and so unable to simply admit it that the most potent response she can offer to erstwhile ally's attempts to poach her voters is that she "strongly disagrees" with it.

Sadly, even Valerie Powell herself is peddling May's most recent dishonesty.

It's just another reason why Canada will be fortunate indeed when Peter MacKay defeats Elizabeth May tomorrow and sends her back to the dishonesty drawing board.