Green Party leader pretends to be a target
With the NDP already pledged to oppose legislation to grant additional Parliamentary seats to Canada's fastest-growing provinces -- namely, Alberta, BC and Ontario -- it was only a matter of time before the rest of the opposition found a way to justify opposing the bill as well.
Green Party leader Elizabeth May seems to have found her pretext: as with so many things, the self-absorbed May considers the bill to be an attack on her, directly.
Waving around a Conservative Party newsletter in which Saanich-Gulf Islands Tory Bruce Hallsor notes that the re-distrubtion may make it easier for them to beat May in the next election.
May seems to think the newsletter is incriminating, but all she's offered is what is currently just idle speculation.
Of course, the detail that the Globe and Mail's projections are not based on any proposed re-districting -- no such proposals exist until independent commissions have done their work -- but only on votes cast in the past election will almost certainly be ignored by May.
In the end, it's purely intuitive: the party with the largest share of the vote in each of these provinces will reap the biggest reward. The Tories dominate in Alberta, are strong in BC, and swept Ontario in the 2011 election.
When one considers where the additional ridings need to be added to account for population growth -- in Northern Alberta, central BC, and suburban GTA -- it's not at all surprising that the strength of the Conservative vote in these areas would yield victories for Conservatives.
It's the just the way things are right now. If the work of these independent commissions concludes that the boundaries of Saanich-Gulf Islands should be redrawn, it's just the way it will be. To tailor the process just to suit May would be a dereliction of the commission's responsibilities: namely, to produce a re-distribution that is fair to all constituents, not just to May.
If Elizabeth May and the Green Party don't like it, perhaps they should campaign harder in those areas, and propose policy that will appeal to, as opposed to repulse, those voters.
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