Let the Green Party Into the Debates...

...Or they'll sue

It seems that, after nearly endless bellyaching about wanting into the televised leaders' debates to be held during elections, the Green Party has finally come around to what is becoming a cardinal rule in Canada.

If they won't give you what they want, sue 'em.

At least that seems to be the message underlying a recent move by the Green party, in which they've hired a lawyer to help Elizabeth May secure a place in the leaders' debate.

"We do meet criteria that has allowed other parties to be included in the past, so we can't really see how it's possible to exclude us this time," announced party spokesperson Camille Labchuk.

Of course she's referring to the recent "defection" to the party by foermer Liberal MP Blair Wilson. The argument is that, now that the Greens finally have themselves an MP (after only 26 years of trying in vain), their leader should be permitted to participate in the debates.

As their test case seems to be the 1993 televised leaders' debate, in which the Reform party's Preston Manning and Bloc Quebecois' Lucien Bouchard were permitted to participate with only one MP apiece (Deborah Grey and Gilles Duceppe, respectively).

Unfortunately for May and the Greens, there still remains one major hump for them to climb before they can make this case: namely, actually electing an MP. When Blair Wilson was elected in 2006, he was elected as a Liberal, not as a member of the Green party.

The Liberal party has now nominated Ian Sutherland as their candidate in the riding, significantly lowering Wilson's chances of being reelected.

Not that this disperses the heavy air of probable collusion between Elizabeth May and Liberal leader Stephane Dion in a leadership debate. Given that Dion has agreed not to run a Liberal candidate against May in her bid to defeat Conservative deputy Prime Minster Peter MacKay, it's hard to expect anything less than a tag-team effort against Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a televised debate.

Of course, some argue that Harper and the Conservatives wouldn't have to worry about such an effort if the Conservative record regarding actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions wasn't so abysmal.

Which would be fair comment, if not for the fact that May is peparing to tag-team with a leader whose record on reducing such emissions is just as poor, and who performed so poorly under the very government that approved the Kyoto protocol in the first place.

Furthermore, the Conservative government has actually produced a plan on how they'll reduce such emissions. And while the Liberal party has since unveiled their vaunted Green Shift program, they've already downgraded that to "Green Shift lite".

And this is the leader May is so eager to team up with.

But all of this is actually immaterial. Until Elizabeth May's Green Party manages to actually elect an MP -- as opposed to attracting a rather convenient defector -- they will continue to suffer from a lack of credibility as a national party.

This lack of credibility should continue to deny them their coveted spot in the leaders' debate -- lawyer or no lawyer.

Transparent

And not in a good way, either

Green party supporters across Canada have likely spent the last two days feeling a little better about their party.

Not becuase they finally managed to elect an MP, or stands a chance of actually electing an MP in the upcoming election, but because of the suspicious agreement of a former Liberal MP to become the newest member of the party's federal caucus -- bringing the grand total of its members to one.

"Joining Elizabeth May and joining the Green Party feels a lot like coming home," announced Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Blair Wilson shortly after dawning his brand new Green Party button. "One-point-five million Canadians support the Green Party," he added. "They deserve a strong voice in the House of Commons and they deserve a strong voice in the leadership debate."

Of course, if 1.5 million Canadians supported the Green party as Wilson insists, 1.5 million people might have actually voted for the party the last time they had an opportunity to do so, as opposed to the 664,068 people who actually did.

But that aside, it's hard to see Wilson's "defection" to the Green party as anything but another convenient arrangement between Stephane Dion's Liberal party and the Green party -- one that would strengthen Elizabeth May's insistence that, despite having never elected a single MP, she should be included in the leader's debate.

Wilson's initial comments ironically suggest he felt some dissatisfaction with the Liberal party. And that may very well be so. But it isn't why he left the party caucus.

Rather, Wilson resigned from the Liberal caucus amidst allegations he failed to properly divulge campaign expenses.

In the end, Wilson was cleared of only 21 of 24 charges filed against him. Wilson was found to have not properly reported nearly $10,000 to Elections Canada.

When Wilson recently attempted to reclaim the Liberal party nomination for Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, he was informed that he was not eligible to be nominated.

But far from holding a grudge against the party, Wilson has insisted he would await an opportunity to rejoin the party.

"I await [Stephane Dion's] decision and the decision of the national caucus as to when, in fact, I can rejoin the fold and maintain this riding as a Liberal seat," Wilson announced at the time.

Now, Wilson has rejoined the party -- in a manner of speaking.

After all, the ties between the Liberal party and the Green party were already solid even before Wilson's "defection". In support of her bid to unseat deputy Prime Minister Peter MacKay, Stephane Dion has already agreed not to run a Liberal candidate against the Green party in Central Nova, imagining that all the Liberal party faithful in the riding will rush to vote for Elizabeth May.

Now, with a federal election call seemingly only days away, it's terribly convenient that Wilson has decided to don the Green Party label in Parliament. It will be interesting to see if the Liberal party nominates an opponent for Wilson. To date, no such candidate has been nominated.

In the meantime, it's impossible to see Wilson's convenient defection as anything other than another Liberal party attempt to prop up its proxy Elizabeth May and her Green party.

Unsuprisingly, Wilson has announced that his seeming new leader should be included in the leaders' debates. "Not only do I embrace the policies of my new party, I will feel that all my past difficulties are justified if, by my actions, I can make a real difference by ensuring Elizabeth May is included in the leaders' debates."

What makes it doubly unsurprising is that only one other party favours allowing May to participate in the debate -- Stephane Dion's Liberal party.

The Liberal party and the Green party's intentions vis a vis Blair Wilson are utterly transparent. Almost any Canadian with an ounce of sense should be able to see through it.

"Conservative Adscam" A Dead-End Issue

More philosophy at heart of "in and out" scandal than actual malfeasance

In today's National Post, Don Ivison comments on the political dead end that is the Liberal party's recent reliance on the so-called "in and out" scandal in which the Conservative party is accused of violating spending limits by dressing down national advertising spending as regional advertising.

"Just Stephane Dion's luck. The Liberal leader picked the Conservatives' alleged "in and out" election spending scandal as his signature issue to attack the government. The public gave a collective yawn, apparently unconvinced Stephen Harper had "bilked taxpayers for millions of dollars," as the Liberals claim."

This particular scandal -- referred to by many Liberal partisans as "Conservative adscam" -- has, despite the Liberal party's best efforts, failed to take on the spectre of the sponsorship scandal in the public eye.

There is a reason for this, as Ivison alludes to:

"Since Parliament returned this month, the Liberals have been using Question Period to attack Conservative accounting practises during the 2006 election. It's an eye-glazingly complicated tale that has failed to gain any traction in the national media, but which boils down to the allegation that the Tories exceeded election spending limits by more than a million dollars.

A Liberal party brought low by Adscam would dearly love to uncover a Conservative corruption scandal, but this ain't it. The allegations centre on the Tories passing off national advertising costs as regional ads for local candidates. It is being looked at by the Elections Commissioner but even a cursory reading of the Elections Act suggests the line between "national" and "local" is cloaked in hodden grey."

Ivison goes on to address the recent allegations made against West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast MP Blair Wilson. We'll part at this particular fork in the road, and look at the "in and out" scandal itself.

In the end, much of the complaint regarding this particular issue seems to boil down to a differing in political philosophy, one that raises the question of whether or not the local candidates, in particular, benefited from this particular advertising.

While the Liberals would certainly insist that it didn't, the truth is that they know better.

Canadians are currently living in an era of a Consumerist democracy, wherein image often trumps substance, and branding serves as a key political tactic in virtually every campaign. To put it simply, each political party has developed a brand, much like the consumer products found on the typical store shelf. Each one espouses a core package of values, ideology, and promises that they invite consumers -- in this case, voters -- to purchase (in this case with their vote).

Each local candidate for each party benefits from the promotion of his or her party's brand, much like each individual McDonald's franchisee benefits from the larger corporation's advertising. Thus how the Conservative party, seizing on a legal loophole that defines local advertising, in rather nebulous phrasing, is that which benefits the local candidate, can insist that they're well within the straight and narrow. In the age of consumer democracy, national advertising does benefit the local candidate, particularly in a political age where -- for good or ill -- many Canadians tend to vote for parties above candidates.

Of course, the Conservative party knows it's exploiting a loophole. This portion of Elections law was clearly written with yesterday's political climate in mind, one where (in theory, at least), voters voted for individual candidates over parties.

At the same time, the Liberal party has to know full well how branding can affect the fortunes of their candidates. In Canada, they pioneered it, when they embraced John F Kennedy's image-based campaign model and applied it to Lester Pearson, and (more successfully) Pierre Trudeau.

Dion himself has attempted to benefit from image-based branding, donning Green scarves throughout his leadership campaign to underscore his overrated reputation as an environmentalist.

In this particular case, it's obvious that the letter of the law doesn't reflect the intent of the law. That's an issue that will clearly have to be resolved in Parliament.

In the meantime, Ivison offers astute insight as to why this particular tactic is proving disastrous for the Liberals:

"Mr. Dion must take the heat for this fixation of the "in and out" scam. It was raised in the House again yesterday, to the great glee of Government House Leader Peter Van Loan, who rose to answer in the Prime Minister's absence.

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings said Mr. Wilson had done the right thing by stepping aside and called for a number of ministers "implicated" in the election saga to do likewise. Hardly able to contain himself, Mr. Van Loan pointed out that the "Blairwitch" project had been well-known to the Liberal party, who only forced Mr. Wilson to resign when it became front-page news.

He then proceeded to read all the allegations into the public record, pointing out that their stark nature was a far cry from the confusing muddle of accusations levelled against various Conservatives. By this point, it was all over for Liberals, who were forced to defend the position of their leader and their member.

The whole thing makes a mockery of the parliamentary process. I know it's Question Period, not Answer Period, but surely it's not too much to expect that it is the Opposition that thrusts and the government that parries.

At the moment, the Liberals are behaving like the crack suicide squad from Monty Python's Life of Brian, who attack by impaling themselves on their own swords."

Unfortunately for Stephane Dion, not only is the "in and out" scandal not the scandal he and his party want to make it out to be, but much more serious violations have not only sunk the Liberal party's fortunes recently. Worse yet, more of the same may (or, in all fairness, may not) be yet to come.

The Liberals need to make a tactical shift. With Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton currently duelling over who can usurp him as at least the spiritual leader of the opposition, Dion is running out of thime.

But they won't find any extra time by running head-long into a dead-end... or by impaling themselves on their own swords.