Long battle ahead for Manitoba Greens

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/08/2015 (4038 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Green party candidate Andrew Park has a campaign strategy in what’s arguably the most cutthroat riding in the province. He aims to get non-voters to the polls.

The University of Winnipeg forest ecology professor laments low voter turnout across Canada and in key parts of Winnipeg South Centre, especially in lower-income pockets and in the apartment buildings that populate Osborne Village. There, the turnout-rate often hovers around 35 per cent, meaning those non-voters — students, the poor, new Canadians — see their issues trumped by those of middle-class homeowners.

“I’m not just being a politician,” said Park, the Green’s environment critic. “I really believe it’s important for the country to get that number up.”

Park is waging his party’s most mature and well-organized campaign in Manitoba, one that’s been underway for more than a year. Park said he’s been grinding away raising money, collecting a cadre of volunteers, getting his name out and canvassing. He’s got an experienced campaign manager in Drew Fenwick, former regional Green organizer and assistant to former River Heights councillor Donald Benham, and lawn signs up already in the area. Park said he decided early on he would run to win and not to be a paper candidate.

“You can say, ‘Oh, come on Andy, you’re a long-shot,’ but strange things happen in elections,” he said.

But the Green party’s strength in Manitoba is a mixed bag. The party has nearly doubled its Manitoba war chest over the last three years, allowing it to wage more active campaigns and open a regional office on Rosser Avenue in downtown Brandon for area candidate David Neufeld. In rural Manitoba, the Greens tend to do better, in polls and general election results, than in Winnipeg, and they’ve got a few experienced candidates outside the Perimeter, including Neufeld and Kate Storey in Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa.

But, the party actually got fewer votes, Manitoba-wide, in 2011 than it did in the two previous federal elections. And, the Greens are still short five candidates in the province.

Nationally, the party has two seats in the House of Commons and three seats in provincial legislatures — one in New Brunswick, one in P.E.I and the other in British Columbia, where the national party is focusing its efforts this election.

Leader Elizabeth May’s confident and quick-witted performance at last week’s Maclean’s debate was widely praised, but she’s been left out of at least two upcoming debates on the economy and foreign policy.

Her strategy has been to simply get noticed, influence the debate and pick up enough seats, perhaps a half-dozen, to hold the balance of power in what could be a minority government after Oct. 19. She has said her two conditions for a partnership with any other party leader is electoral reform and real action on climate change.

Some have wondered why the Greens didn’t target Winnipeg Centre this election, where the party once earned a respectable 11 per cent of the vote.

But James Beddome, the leader of the provincial Greens and a key volunteer on Park’s campaign, said it’s not true the Greens can only win one type of riding — a left-leaning, Wolseley-ish urban constituency. He notes that, of the five Greens elected to federal and provincial legislatures, two won ridings previously held by Conservatives.

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Now that the campaign is underway, Park said he plans to spend time door-knocking in lower-turnout areas, trying to understand what the local issues are. He said the Green party tends to be a home for voters who don’t feel represented by the Big Three parties.

But each of those Big Three parties are waging aggressive campaigns in South Centre, where the Liberals and now even the NDP are looking to oust Conservative MP Joyce Bateman. It’s a riding where the Greens usually fail to crack the five per cent mark, and it’s one where the spectre of strategic voting and vote-splitting already looms large.

Beddome rejected the notion a strong Green campaign risks further fracturing the anybody-but-Harper vote in South Centre, and noted the Greens are the only party that won’t whip MPs, allowing them to vote for what’s best for their ridings.

“This is not a horse race where we should be trying to call the winner,” said Beddome. “I tell people they should vote for who will be the best representative for Winnipeg South Centre.”

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca