Fair Vote Forum

First of all, I have not said anywhere I don't think or never thought the Green Party can't become a force in the House of Commons with MP's sitting there. If it were the contrary I would not have put so much effort into the last two leadership tours of Alberta. Nor helped Mark to make sure there was a full slate of candidates in Southern Alberta.

I am not disputing the fact anything is possible, and I am also not disputing the fact that these changes will happen. In fact I worked with Joe Clark on several projects and speachs outlining his visions and views on changing the way things need to be done in Ottawa. This is something he saw in 1975 when I first met him and started to work with him on.

If you talk to anyone in Alberta that I have spoken to or helped organize in the Green Party, you will find I had an expectation we would have the first Green Party MP elected here in Alberta. With the right choice of a new leader, the Green Party could very well make a difference in the next election to the point of electing three or four MP's who might well hold the balance of power in a pizza parliament.

The key to it will be to motivate and mobilize the voters that are not voting, and the 18 to 35 year old voters. Whether or not the political system is changed or not. The only way to make concrete change in the system is to get people on the inside with the vision and stamina to get the changes put through and adopted by law.

The fall of the Berlin wall was predictable.

Check out the governments that have adopted PR in Europe where the Green Party is sitting as members of a parliament. You can do a google search on the subject. All of the provincial democratic reform commissions currently running in Canada, have identified this issue as one that needs to be looked at and whether lowering the threshold from 5% to 4% will help or hinder the democratic process. There is an interesting book on the subject called 'Strengthing Canadian Democracy,' published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

What must be a part of this whole situation is to promote the need for people to get out to vote instead of sitting at home, despite the fact the system is wieghted against their votes. The only way to get the changes we want to the system to show the politicians that there is a ground swell of voters that want real change and those same votes do show up at the polls. There is a need to motivate the young voters that this process of changing the way politics is being done is one that needs work on several fronts and it is not just one thing that needs to be changed.

None of the steps are hard to do, but they do need to be taken.