Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (seen here in a photo from last week) spent the day campaigning in Vancouver but was handed a major setback when a Federal Court judge refused to make an emergency ruling on her request that she be allowed to take part in next Tuesday's televised leaders' debate. The consortium of broadcasters holding the debate said last week she would be excluded because the Greens have never had a seat in Parliament. Justice Marc Nadon said Tuesday there was not enough time before the debate for the court “to perform its duty in a satisfactory manner.” Ms. May responded by calling on her fellow party leaders to boycott the debate. “I want the other leaders to step up and demonstrate that they believe in the principles and the practice of a healthy democracy by telling the consortium that there will be no debate without me," she said.DON MACKINNON/AFP / Getty Images
As the second week of the federal election campaign unfolds, the Green Party - which has no elected politicians and has been excluded from next week's televised leaders' debates - feels "a bit sidelined," Leader Elizabeth May told The Globe and Mail's editorial board Thursday. She was in Toronto to release the party's election platform. Dubbed "Vision Green," the 130-page plan calls for funding for a national solar roof program and energy retrofits of public buildings, as well as income-splitting for families.
"We are advocating things that other parties aren't, but we are happy to see shades and echoes of our ideas in all of the other parties platforms," Ms. May told the editorial board, before fielding questions from Globe readers through Twitter, Facebook and e-mail.
Health care is the No. 1 priority for Canadians. What would the Green Party do about the health-care issues that face Canadians today and in the future?
We must maintain a not-for-profit, public, universal health-care system. It has suffered and is still suffering from the impacts of deficit cutting in the '90s. We need to rebuild capacity. The single biggest new initiative we've announced is our pharmacare program. It will create a federal Crown corporation to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical industry to bring down the price per unit of pharmaceutical drugs. We also want to make sure we are much more robust on our evidence-based assessment of new drugs. Drugs are entering the market that are causing more damage than they do good.
Preventative health care really matters and so does a concerted effort to expand a mental-health strategy. I am desperately concerned that we are failing our young people. We have far too many young people on antidepressants. We have far too many young people that can't get age-specific assistance if they are dealing with addiction. The facilities simply aren't there to help those kids.
How would you feel if the Green vote tipped the balance in the election and gave the Conservatives a majority by splitting the non-Conservative vote?
The significant risk in Canada is not vote splitting, it is vote abandoning. If you look at 2008, Stephen Harper won more seats than in 2006, but the Conservatives had fewer votes than in 2006. The Conservatives had fewer votes and the NDP had fewer votes. So the Green Party wasn't taking away from other parties. We were attracting a vote that went up at a time when voter turnout was going down because we were offering people something positive.
The single largest voting block in 2008 was the people who didn't vote: 41 per cent staying home. So what's going on in Canadian democracy right now that is a threat? It sure isn't the Green Party. The Conservatives under Stephen Harper have adopted Republican U.S.-style strategies, including what the Republicans called "voter suppression." They know their base doesn't grow, so they are deliberately trying to encourage Canadians to stay home through things like attack ads, that have the effect of making people feel so disgusted that they don't want to vote at all.
How do you get Canadians to support a "toxic tax" during a recession, when the environment and the economy are often seen at odds with each other?
If you look at the advice from the OECD, the International Energy Agency and IMF, Canada's economy will do better once we have brought in carbon pricing. Right now we are making ourselves uncompetitive. Sir Nicholas Stern, former senior economist of the World Bank, told me in Mexico: "If Canada stays dirty, you will have sacrificed future employment, you will have sacrificed competitiveness. It will cost you more and ultimately you will be paying in trade sanctions from other countries that take steps to reduce emissions when we don't." And we are losing competitiveness. We are now falling behind China, India and Brazil.
It is actually healthier for the economy to rebalance away from the sole focus on the rapid expansion of the oil sands. We are not going to shut down the oil sands, but at this point we are saying no further development until you reduce some of the use of water per barrel of oil, and energy per barrel of oil, and the pollution that takes place. We have allowed oil sands exports to drive up the Canadian dollar to such an extent that other parts of the country have become non-competitive.
The questions and responses have been edited.