Green Party gains considerable ground

Although Liberal Bob Rae came out on top in last month’s Toronto-Centre byelection, the Green Party made some considerable gains.

Candidate Chris Tindal finished in third, ahead of Conservative Party contender Don Meredith, and was nearly tied for second with New Democratic Party candidate El-Farouk Khaki.

With 3,199 votes, Tindal finished with 13.4 percent, while Khaki ended up only slightly ahead, with 13.9 percent or 3,312 votes.

That’s a difference of only 113 votes.

“I feel great about it,” Tindal said about the outcome. “If you look at the results just two of year ago, we came a distant fourth, so to increase our vote by 162 percent and come a virtual tie for second with the NDP is a fantastic result.”

In the 2006 general election, Green candidate Tindal trailed the NDP, Conservatives and Liberals, with only 5.2 percent of the vote. In 2004, the Greens faired even worse with only 4 percent.

This byelection gain is a measure of things to come, says Tindal.

“I think it signifies the Green Party has arrived as a serious political force in Canada,” he said. “We’ve been constantly raising the bar for four years now, and we’re just getting started.”

Tindal says he wants to see party leader Elizabeth May represented in televised leaders debates during the next general election period, and hopes a proportional representation voting system will be adopted federally which would give the Green Party a stronger voice.

The Greens were also helped by environmental priorities being more prominent for voters than in previous elections, says York University political professor Robert Drummond.

“I think people are becoming much more cognizant of the effects to the environment, global warming and the increasing use of fossil fuels and the impact they’re having,” he said.

“People are focusing more on the environment perhaps than they had been in the past, and I think that’s affecting the greens favourably, particularly in byelections were people feel like they can make a vote and not have an impact on who forms the government.”

Drummond says it was generally expected Rae would win, but what was unexpected was how well the Greens did, and how poorly the Conservatives did.

He suspects that may have had something to do with the Conservatives dropping candidate Mark Warner last fall.

Warner agrees, saying results would have been better for them had he remained the candidate.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “I thought some Conservatives would stay home, but that other civic minded individuals would go out and probably vote for Chris, and that’s what happened.”

In an upcoming general election, Drummond says the riding is likely to remain Liberal, and support for the Greens could go either way.

“They may not do as well, simply because people might feel they don’t have much of a chance of actually winning a seat,” he said. “But I could be wrong.

“It could be that people are turning away from the traditional parties increasingly and saying we have to make this a statement for the environment, and this is the way to do it.”