Hello list members:
Well here it is, the summing up of our electoral campaign. Please
feel free to post it further should anyone so desire. The article
below, all our press releases put out during the federal election and
our brochure, are now on our web site.
Best, David
*****
Running for Office or to Change Consciousness?
There was a federal election in Canada on January 23, 2006. I ran
for the Green Party of Canada in the riding of Central Nova, which
is located in northeastern Nova Scotia.
Backgrounder
Central Nova is a mainly rural riding with a strong very Scottish
heritage. There is an industrial area around New Glasgow, its
largest city, and a university in Antigonish, St. Francis Xavier,
with a strong Catholic tradition. The population numbers over
73,000. Peter MacKay, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party,
is the incumbent. The New Democratic Party (NDP) had a woman
candidate, Alexis MacDonald, who had also run in the last election
and had come in second. There were also a Liberal candidate, Dan
Walsh, and a candidate for the Marxist Leninist Party, Alan
Bezanson.
Across the country the overall Green Party vote seems to have
increased by over 83,000 in this election, as shown below:
Liberals -10.1%
Conservatives +33.6%
NDP +21.8%
Bloc Quebecois -7.6%
Green Party +14.4%
The voter turn-out in our Central Nova riding was approximately
73 percent of the electorate, as compared to 61.7 percent in 2004.
Every party's vote increased, except the Greens. (The ML Party
did not previously run.) We polled 671 votes - 1.6% of the total
votes in our riding. This was 344 votes less than that gained by
the previous candidate, who received 1015 votes in 2004. That
candidate led a very low key campaign, whereas I believe our small
group was very active. Also, I have lived in this area for over
20 years, and have been very involved in several environmental
struggles.
So how to explain the low vote in our riding?
Our campaign
We (there were three of us) ran a deep green campaign aimed at
capturing consciousness, not votes, under the campaign slogan
"Make Peace With Nature - Vote Green". I raised the values and
ideas which we believe a deep green party should embody, plus
what I saw as crucial ecological issues in Central Nova. Where
in public discussions I disagreed with a GP Platform position,
e.g. on carbon emissions trading, or did not believe that the
Platform went far enough, e.g. the energy policy, I made the
different positions clear.
There were two central themes to the material we put out and
in the talks and interviews I gave. These themes were:
- I stated the necessity to move away from looking at Nature
in a human-centered manner, so that other species of animals
and plants are not just seen as "resources" for industrial
consumption. I identified this non-human centered way of
looking at Nature, as the philosophy of deep ecology. I
said it was the key element, necessary to live sustainably
on our planet. This means all of us have to come into a new
relationship with the natural world. We need to see our
personal identities as including the natural world. At the
present time, when we make a living economically, we destroy
the natural world in the process, as in industrial forestry,
industrial fishery and industrial agriculture.
- I discussed how our industrial capitalist economy, based
on never ending growth and increasing consumerism, is not
ecologically sustainable, and that we live in a finite world,
which we must respect for long term survival. We are running
out of oil and natural gas -- there is the issue whether we
may already have reached "peak oil" and "peak gas" levels.
Canada's so-called energy policy is basically geared to
supplying the US market. (This accounts for two thirds of
current oil and gas extraction.) We are locked into this
through our NAFTA membership. Our ecological footprint is
too large -- the industrial lifestyle sought by the six
and a half billion people living on this planet is not
achievable for all, even if we disregard the interests of
other forms of life. The huge growth in population has
been based on the fossil fuel economy, fed by industrial
agriculture, and is not sustainable in the long term.
As the global fossil fuel-based economy is coming to an
end, we will have to develop a more local economy. Climate
change is now underway, and there is no serious attempt to
try and halt, let alone reverse, the process. These are
matters of life and death, not only for the human species
but for all the other species which should be able to share
this planet with us on a basis of equality.
I believe that, because of the election, these basic ideas
are being more widely discussed in Central Nova.
We issued seven press releases, which were reported on
fairly well by two out of the three main newspapers in our
riding and by the local radio stations. These releases
covered:
(1) Introducing myself;
(2) Opposing industrial forestry and spraying;
(3) A call for marine protected areas and a ban on
inshore seismic testing;
(4) A call to change Canada' s energy policy and to
oppose LNG terminals in the Maritimes;
(5) Public health should be seen as a component of
ecosystem health;
(6) Some differences between the Green Party and the
NDP and why one should vote Green; and
(7) The necessity for free Earth-centered, socially
aware education.
I attended the four all-candidates debates. One was at a
local regional high school in New Glasgow, Pictou County,
with about three hundred grade twelve students. Three were
community based meetings - one in Pictou County (Stellarton)
with several hundred people; one at the university in the
riding (Antigonish) with over 400 people; and a smaller
meeting with under a hundred people in a community on the
Eastern Shore (Moser River). There were a number of
interviews by radio and print media, and quite a few
internet queries which came out of our electoral work.
The Green Party leaflet "Yep. We're a one-issue party" and
the printed version of the 2006 Election Platform only came
towards the end of the campaign and much too late. We
decided the leaflet was so pathetic and dumbed down, that
we did not want to distribute it. (What a waste of money
sending such a leaflet out to all the ridings!) We rushed
to produce our own leaflet "Make Peace With Nature - Vote
Green", based on the press releases we issued. We had
3,000 printed, and distributed 2,500 through the post
office at communities we targeted. The rest we gave out
mainly at two of the all-candidates meetings.
Two further topics I discussed, were on the military and on
seals. I raised the issue of the growing militarization of
Canadian society and its integration into the orbit of the
US military, and that I felt the Green Party should be
calling for the withdrawal of Canadian soldiers from
Afghanistan and disengagement from Haiti. I used a quote
from the Canadian red Tory philosopher George Grant, which
I felt was specially appropriate against the neo-conservative
incumbent Peter MacKay. In his wonderful book _Lament For A
Nation_, Grant wrote: "Of all the aspects of our society,
the military is the most directly an errand boy for the
Americans."
I also brought up my opposition to the killing of grey and
harbour seals in the Maritimes by those connected to the
fishing industry, and to the annual commercial slaughter
of harp and hooded seals. In two different newspapers,
in response to a question as to what I would do first, if
I could pass one bill in the House of Commons, I said it
would be to end the annual so-called seal hunt. I have
always believed that seal issues show in Greens,
environmentalists, and others, a crucial test of the
ecocentric depth of environmental consciousness. Conflicts
over seal issues are fundamental conflicts over basic value
systems, in how we are going to relate to the natural world.
(See for background, Green Web bulletin #74 "Deep Ecology and
Animals" at http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/DE-Animals.html
It is a paper given at the "Representing Animals" conference,
at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, in November of
2003. It outlines the deep ecology approach to animals and
contrasts this with an animal liberation perspective. The
paper covers an outline of deep ecology, seals, aboriginal
hunting in parks and protected areas, Earth spirituality,
and activism.)
What happened in the Central Nova riding for the green vote
to fall? I believe one reason was strategic voting, because
the NDP seemed to believe they could defeat the Conservative
candidate and win the seat. Quite a number of people told
us their heart was with the Green Party, but that they would
vote NDP because they believed they could win. In other words,
the Left-Right distinction was more important for them than
the Nature first (deep ecology) distinction. It seems that
even for many Green Party supporters the Left-Right
distinction, in a conflict situation, overrode their deep
ecology sentiment. This points to the need to strengthen deep
ecology consciousness (not mentioned in the 2006 Election
Platform) among Green Party members and supporters. Given
the NDP-Conservative polarizing nature of the local campaign,
hopefully those who did vote for the Green Party, grasped at
a deeper level the two themes which we pursued, and gave
them their support.
I found this campaign to be intellectually and emotionally
stimulating. I would like to thank my campaign manager
(Mark) and my official agent (Helga) for their support,
which made possible the theoretical work I was able to
carry out. The press releases we issued are available on our
web site at
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Election_Campaign_Press_Releases.html
For the Earth,
David Orton
2006 Green Party candidate in Central Nova
January 29, 2009
P.S. There were two spin-offs from our electoral work. The
New Glasgow Public Library is organizing an evening discussion
"Green Movement Information Session" on February 8th. Their
web site states "David Orton, national spokesperson for
Deep Ecology for the Green Party of Canada, will lead
an introductory discussion on the Green Movement and the
tenets of the Deep Ecology movement." They are doing print
and radio publicity for this. The event will be covered by
the community TV station. This came about, apparently,
because one of the librarians liked what she heard at one
of the all-candidates meetings. Also, the student
"Green Council" at Saint Francis Xavier University has
invited me to give an evening public lecture on
"Deep ecology and the green movement" on March 9th.
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Visit the Green Web Home Page at:
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/
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