Run, Elizabeth, Run

Promotional photo of Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My heart is more interested in social justice issues than environmental ones.

In recent years however, my head has been telling me that things like justice and equality aren't going to matter much if we continue down the path to ecological destruction.

So when Elizabeth May, leader of Canada's Green Party came to Pelham a while back I was  interested enough to go and hear what she had to say.

I was impressed.

By the woman as much as by what she had to say.

I decided to see if there was a place for me in the Green Party.

I was pleased to find out that Social Justice is one of its main tenets.

And so I became a party member.

In the past few years my admiration for Elizabeth May has grown exponentially.

For the Green Party not so much.

I haven't renewed my membership yet.

I have been playing around with the idea that perhaps my Federal vote would be best placed with the Liberals.

Yawn.

"If only Elizabeth May was leader of the Federal Liberals," I thought to myself.

I googled 'Elizabeth May as leader of the Liberal Party' and found out I wasn't the only person who imagined mixing oil and water. 

(Bad analogy, but you know what I mean.)

Not gonna happen, I know. 


Too many egos in both parties to make the necessary compromises


but jeesh


if she brought the Greens with her



that would be one kickass political party.

***

Related articles

• How Canada's Green Party Leader Elizabeth May's Social Media Engagement is Paying Off

  ---

Little Girls, Candy and Political Subsidies

When I was about eight years old, I belonged to a church group called 'Explorers'.

And before you ask - no, I never knew a Dora who was an Explorer.

One year the Explorers were fundraising for something, converting the heathens in Japan I think, judging by the number of missionaries who turned up in the church showing off  kimonos.

Anyway, the plan was that one Tuesday night the church would unleash thirty or forty chocolate bar selling little girls into the community .

The more 60 cent chocolate bars that we Explorers sold, the more souls in Japan would be saved.

My best friend Jane and I were pumped!

God's warriors!

I actually think we sold a few before we ate one.

The succumbing to temptation presented several problems because things were quite different in those days.  

First, although It was considered perfectly safe for a little girl to knock on a stranger's door it would have been very unusual for her to have any money in her pocket.

And we didn't have a penny between us.

Second was the moral problem - and I must tell you that what happened next haunts me to this very day. 

We had to sell twelve more chocolate bars, each for an extra nickel.

Oh, the guilt!


 I still expect that one day someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and say, "About that chocolate bar you sold me in 1957 ..."

I mention this so that you understand that I am not without fundraising experience and understand something of its perils and pain.

 And I believe that qualifies me to make a statement about the Federal Conservative Party phasing out  of the $2 per-vote subsidy.

Did you realize that every vote you cast in past elections sent $2.04 of your tax dollars to the political party of your choice? 

That subsidy funded much of our political system.

Now the parties will need to fund raise for everything. 

Fine for the powerful Conservative Party with their majority government that so few of us actually voted for, not so fine for everyone else.

My thought is that what goes around comes around and someday the voters will get tired of all of this mean spiritedness and the Tories will be gone.

By then the other parties will have learned to survive without the subsidy.

In the meantime be nice to that old lady in the Green Party t-shirt selling candy bars at your door.

It might be me.

Related articles

• Don’t letup in fundraising, senator warns Conservative faithful (theglobeandmail.com)
• Tories Spent $21 Million To Secure Election Win (huffingtonpost.ca)
• Why are Tories so successful? They say it's all about the technology (thestar.com)

Deconstructing Connie

This appeared in the Toronto Sun on Sunday.


What can I say except:


JEESH! 

Green Garage Sale Blues

Do not take this woman's financial advice.

I arrived all bright eyed and bushy tailed at the Green Party Garage sale just before 8 a.m. on Saturday. I off-loaded a few things from the spy car and presented myself to my betters.

"Here to help!" I announced, proud to be finally contributing some of my time.

"Good, you can stand over there," She motioned in the general direction of a table that was piled high with a collection of medieval torture devices.

"Wow!" I thought as I slid behind the table. "Here's the actual instrument the Inquisition used to rip fingernails off the Satan worshippers." I looked at the small metal contraption with interest.

Luckily before I could stick one of my own fingers into the thing to see if it still worked I was distracted by a pair of garage sale shoppers.

One lady picked up a brown mug that came with two plates and a bowl.

"How much?" she asked.

We both spotted the $12 price tag at the same time.

Now I don't know about you, but when I think garage sale I don't think dollars, I think cents. I actually thought that was the whole point.

"Oh ignore that price!" I said reassuringly to the rather shabbily clad woman. I'll sell it to you for a quarter.

"And the plates and bowl?"

I ignored those price tags too. "Oh give me a dollar for the whole bunch."  I was beginning to feel just like Mother Theresa - doing good among the leprous poor of Beamsville.

Her pal picked up a solitary blue mug.

"You can have that for a dime," I said happily, peeling off the original price tag. I was really getting into this garage sale thing.

As a matter of fact I was so into it I didn't notice the two Green Party Members who descended on me the way the RCMP Swat team descended on the nudists at the 'Naked People Against BP' protest march in Toronto last week.

Turned out the prices were real and the ladies I thought were homeless bag ladies knew exactly what they were doing.

I made it to the end of the sale but as I pulled away in the spy car I think I saw them taking up a collection to bribe the NDP to take me back.

And that Medieval torture device? I remembered to ask before I left.

Pasta maker.

Jeesh!  I gotta get out more.

Dangerous Gas Emissions in Niagara

During the recent Niagara - Glanbrook Green Party Garage Sale, a faithful party worker was spotted during his break learning everything he could about dangerous gas emissions.