Canada had nine registered political parties in
the 1993 federal election. Each one of these parties was trying to place their
candidates into Parliament as members. In this particular election there were
the usual dominating parties that ran, the Liberals and Conservatives. Also
vying for seats were seven minority parties which included the Green Party, the
Christian Heritage Party, the National Party of Canada, the Abolitionist Party,
the Commonwealth, The Canada Party, the Liberaltarian Party, the Marxist-Leninist
Party, and the Natural Law Party. Each
of these minority parties had then and still do have their own values, goals,
and political expectations.
Most
minority parties try to guide themselves along on the basis of these beliefs, especially around election time when
they work hardest to raise issues of policy alternatives trying to make a mark
on the political scene in Canada despite their limited support and
resources.
The Green Party of Canada is one particular
minority party that presented themselves to the political scene in Canada about
15 years ago, in the early 1980's (Darfler). The small group of individuals
belonging to the Green Party is an interesting bunch. They're all ages and come
from a wide variety of views and opinions. Even together as a party they vary
in their individual values and beliefs compared to other political parties in
Canada. The party faithful is unlike
most other parties in many ways, the most noticeable difference is having tried
to invert a system which is bottom-up, meaning that all the real power and
responsibility are held at the level of the local chapters. This is unique to
the Green Party because most political organizations operate on a top-down
basis, with a middle group within the party hierarchy that is in charge of
their own membership, income, policies and incentives (Darfler). They together as a united party hold their
own political sights for the future. The
Green Party members for the most part believe that it is time to take a more
sensible approach to running the affairs of the people and to do that we must
base our political and economic beliefs on fact. In Canada, the Green Party values such things
as ecological wisdom, social justice, grass roots democracy, non- violence,
decentralization, feminism, and future
focus/sustainability (htp.//www.green.ca).
If you agree that the government should focus its attention toward these
values, then you yourself are probably Green.
All of these values are joined by a common value system which is
determined by a set of underlying theories about the nature of reality and the
people placed in it. The Green Parties political thought will probably never
become entirely known as "Greenism," unless it is to be a real force
for change with majority support (http.//www.green.ca). Could the Green Parties position on the
Ideological map play a part in why they do not and probably never will have
majority support?
The planet Earth is a huge planet, a
matter of fact its mass is 5.98 x 10 metric tons (Cayne 95). Many people think that such a planet with
this vast size would be able to support just about anything, but how about 15
billion people. The Green Party values
the fact that the earth sustains all life forms and to maintain that belief,
the people must become educated about ecological wisdom. They believe sound ecological principles must
be the basis of economic activities. Also, in order to ensure a high quality of
life and preserve nature in all its diversity, they feel that we must live within
the physical limits of our planet and at sometime practice conservation.
Unfortunately, we are not living within the physical limits of the planet as
the Green Party suggests we should. They advise us that we should be
eliminating waste and learning to rely on those resources that are renewable or
can be recycled or a day will come when we will not be able to sustain
ourselves (Darfler). The trouble is that
to educate people to do this would take a substantial amount of money and the
present day government isn't willing to comply.
In this day and age the human population is exploding, with this
population boom we are using up large amounts of our finite resources. It has been evident for a long time that there is a problem and it is only going
to grow worse over time. It was best summed up by Sir Edmund Hillary,
"Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with
people as the cause, and end with people as victims." (Weston 1)
The Green Party of Canada wants to put all the
worrying of the environment to an end. They feel that we are consuming our
capital when we should be living off of the interest. The Green Party supporters want to eliminate
waste and learn to rely on those resources that are renewable or can be
recycled. Take the war in Iraq for example, this war was over a natural
resource which led to great environmental destruction, and this may only prove
to be the first in a long series of resource wars that are destructive.
Social Justice/ Responsibility is highly valued
by the Green Party of Canada. They
believe that nobody should be held back from reaching their full potential, as
well every person has the right to lead a self-determined life of purpose and
dignity. Each individual must accept
responsibility for not only the earth, but also the rights of everything living
on it. The relationship between the
people must reflect compassion, equality, mutual respect, justice, cooperation,
and non- coercion. These attitudes must
not only reflect but also guide our relations with others. The Greens believe this will lead people to a
much happier and productive life for everyone.
A Grass Roots Democracy is a system that the
Green Party of Canada would truly like to witness. This democracy would provide the citizens
with a chance to directly participate in the environmental, economic and
political decisions of their lives. The
ideal way of doing this would be to hold Referendums and Plebiscites to decide
on what is best for the citizens of a particular district, town, province or
even the country as a whole. This was
exemplified when connecting PEI to the rest of Canada was a hotly debated
topic, to decide whether or not to build the fixed link bridge, the government
of the province held a provincial plebiscite to decide whether or not to build
a bridge. The majority voted yes,
meaning that the bridge was to be built.
This is a great idea because a few politicians were not left to make a
decision that will affect everyone.
The Green Party of Canada views the act of
violence as a very unprofessional way of settling disputes. Solving disputes with the use of violence is
also very morally unacceptable and ultimately self defeating to the Green
Party. The main qualities that will
ensure The Green Parties ideal non-violence world are flexibility, cooperation,
respect, and fairness. We must fully
support all non-violent efforts to resolve conflicts around the world and work
to put an everlasting end to war. The vision of the Green Parties non-violent
world would include stiffer gun control than was imposed in 1995, a drastic
reduction in the military budget, a withdraw from the global arms race and
finally specific targeting of a Canada aid program to the poorest countries.
Unlike other political parties the Green Party
of Canada believes in a system of limited government that is
decentralized. They feel that the
government should be turned back over to the provinces. In this governing technique an overall
context of ecologically sound and socially just values and lifestyles would be
evident. If a decentralized government was in place, the decisions that effect
common people in communities would no longer be made by people in authority far
away, rather by the community legislature council.
According to the beliefs of the Green Party,
the community must provide within the natural limits of the earth rather than
people providing for the economy. The
Green Party also thinks that local self-reliance to the greatest practical
extent is the best way to achieve this goal. In our communities we need to
create values that are directed toward caring, personal enrichment, cultural
development and the appreciation of the natural world. The Greens recognize that the whole community
applies not only to people that live in one community, but can also mean those
people who share common interests.
A topic that has come a long way in the last
few years is that of feminism. The word
feminism defined means: the theory of the political, economic, and social
equality of the sexes (Websters 418) . The Greens would like to see a society
where the moral code of cooperation and understanding would replace the immoral
acts of domination and control. Everyone
would be equal, meaning people would share and help one another instead of
being told what to do and how to do it.
There would exist no difference between that of male and female. Females and males would be equally
represented in every aspect of society (political, business, ect...).
The Green Party of Canada would also like to
see a society where it is concerned about the next generations and not just the
present. The future focus and
sustainability issue would address the issues that unless the earth's
population doesn't do anything now the next generations will not have anything
to look forward to. Everyone has to take a stand and decide that they have to
preserve today for tomorrow. This is
contrary to the other political parties which think more short term thinking
and planning.
The preceding eight values are at the forefront
of the Green Party. They work and plan
their beliefs around them hoping the general population will listen to what
they value. Their main goal is not
necessarily to win a majority voice in the legislature but instead to have
voice so that they can educate the population.
They want to establish a system based on a more basic assumption, the
need for survival. A social order based
on the satisfaction of human needs rather than on wants, would be much
different from the world we live in today. They see us as creatures, and can see no basic
conflict between the needs of the planet and our real needs.
You may now be asking where do the Greens,
although not a political power, stand on the Ideological Map. Their exact position on this map may be best
illustrated by a Green Party slogan, "We are neither left or right- WE ARE
THE FUTURE."
The Green Parties values and goals are the best
way to illustrate where and why they are on the ideological map. On the left of the Conventional Left- Right Spectrum
is:
1.
The full government ownership of the means of production
2.
Extensive government regulation
3.
Extensive redistribution of income
While on the
right of the spectrum it contains:
1.
No government ownership of the means of production
2.
No government regulation
3.
No redistribution of income (Gibbons,
Youngman 12)
Also, over the
years the terms "Left" and "Right" have picked up
additional ideological baggage to expand considerably their application in
political discourse and debate. The Left
is now also associated with support for minority rights, womens' rights, gay
and lesbian rights, environmental protection and foreign aid, whereas the Right
is now also associated with military spending, neoconservatism and liberaltarism.
I feel that the Green Party of Canada is indeed
towards the Left of the ideological Map.
To prove where the Greens stand on the spectrum we must take into
account if and to what extent the party believes the above determing factors.
The Green Party, as indicated earlier, are very much in favour of extensive
government regulation. They feel that
the Government should put regulation on such things as nuclear power, the
forestry and fishing quotas and waste and most other environmental
concerns. Favouring such regulation
tends to place the Green Party to the Left of the Spectrum.
Another feature that places them to the left is
their belief in the redistribution of wealth.
The Green Party tends to view it as six children having ten cookies. One child has five of the cookies, leaving one
cookie for each of the five other children, that's assuming that the children
can share fairly amongst themselves.
This type of distribution is very typical, even within grossly wealthy
counties where the minority of the people holds the majority of the wealth,
leaving only little money for the large general population. The Green Party believes that it is in the
capitalist society that forces the poorest people to place their own short-
term interests above the long term interests of the Earths ecology. The Green Party feels that if the government
doesn't start to put regulations on the wealthy now then we are headed for
disaster.
I do not feel that the Greens are so radical to
say that the government should control all means of production, although I do
feel that the Greens think that the government should be in control of some
production. This would include the
production of such things as production facilities that are major polluters.
The last two things that support my theory that
the Green Party is on the left of the ideological map are the Green Parties
stances on environmental protection and foreign aid. Although most everyone is concerned about the
environment, why are they only concerned about the environment during their
life and not that of future
generations. The Greens biggest emphasis
is on the environment of not only today but also the future. They believe that we have to live in a
"Conserver society rather than Consumer society." Almost all the
Greens beliefs are tied in with the environment some how or another.
Finally, the Green Party faithful also
feel that large industrialized countries
such as Canada, should not spend foolishly on weapons, but rather give money to
the worst off countries in the world.
The arms build up diverts money and resources from the solution of so
many of humanity's problems and the increase of these sophisticated weapons
system has made security an ever receding mirage. I feel that this is evident enough to prove
my point that the Green Party of Canada is to the left of the ideological map.
There exists two reasons why the Green Party
has yet to achieve major status in Canada.
The first reason for not achieving major status is because the Green
Party of Canada is still relatively new.
The Green Party of Canada is still a teenager, being only about fifteen
years old. It is hard to educated the
people in a whole country in this short time.
The more people that you educate, the more people that will support your
party, which inturn helps you to fund the party to help educate even more
people. It is somewhat of a step program that relies heavily on the previous
step.
The second reason why the party has yet to
achieve major status in Canada is because the Greens vision is too 'perfect'
and the general population cannot bring themselves to vote for them. The population feels that although the 'Green
Vision' may be great it would take to long to ever reach their goals. A lot of
their goals cannot be solved with money rather they need to be solved the
attitudes of the people. I feel that my
two reasons why the Green Party are not able to reach major status in Canada
are very realistic, although it must be emphasised that the Green Party will
probably never become a ruling government.
To be the majority government is not the Green Parties main goal, above
all they only want to educate the people of their view. That is what we should be doing for not only
us, but also the environment.
The future of the Green Party cannot go down,
only up. As the twenty- first century
nears, I feel that the environment is becoming a bigger issue each and
everyday. The Green Party will benefit
greatly by remaining sensitive to the social conditions in which it is operating
(Gibbons, Youngman 169). No other party
attacks the issues of the environment like the Green Party does. Although, the Party maybe in some jeopardy if
the other political parties decide to take a radical change of direction and
narrow their scope so they focus much more on the environment. This is to say that the Liberal Party may
take all their support and start to focus on the problems of the
environment. This would attract many
people away from the Green Party since the Liberal Party has much more power
and influence over people. With a
greater influence over people it would inturn mean that they could change
peoples attitudes and progress on the environmental issues a lot more rapidly. I feel this radical change in a majority
party wouldn't happen, fearing that they would lose support for not attacking
such problems as economics.
The Green Party of Canada value many things, as
do other parties. The difference being
that the Greens values almost always has an aspect of the environment intertwined. These goals and values that have the
environment intertwined into them lead me to believe that the Green Party is on
the farther left than the centre of the ideological map. There exists two reasons why the Green Party
of Canada is not a major party in Canada.
Besides the fact that their goal is only to educate people, the reasons
why they are not a major party is because the party is still relatively young,
being only fifteen years old and the second being that they have a picture for
a perfect world that is narrow in scope.
Finally, I feel that the Green Parties future is not going to see less
support, but rather improve as the environment around us declines. This is unless one of the major parties in
Canada decides to make a radical change and focus much more on the environment,
drawing support away from the Green Party.
Works Cited
Cayne,
Bernard. The New Book of Popular
Science: Volume 1. Toronto: Grolier Incorporated, 1989
**Darfler,
Bill. Green Primer. London, Ontario:
Gibbons, Roger,
& Youngman, Loleen. Mindscapes:
Political Ideologies Towards The 21st Century.
Toronto: McGraw Hill Ryerson, 1996.
Webster's. Webster's New Collegiate Ditionary. Toronto: Thomas Allen & Son Limited, 1988.
Weston, J. Red And Green: The New Politics of the
Environment. New Hampshire: Pluto Press,
1986.
NOTE*** This was a republished article contained on
the web site (www.green.ca)
The Green Party
of Canada
Jarret MacDonald
Political Studies
102
G. Germain
March 31, 1997
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