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Perhaps you’ve heard, the Green Party was supposed to be included in the French and English leaders debates over the next two days and on Wednesday were thankfully tossed overboard. This is a good move, they don’t deserve to be in the debates and it’s a farce that we’ve allowed them in for years.
In order to be a recognized party in the House of Commons, you need 12 members. That’s a threshold that the Greens have never met.
Still, they’ve been invited into debates over the years, initially because the debates were run by a media consortium that sided with the Greens on many issues. Now though, we have a quasi-government organization, The Leaders' Debates Commission, which is charged with running these things.
Their criteria is that a party has to meet two of three thresholds to be invited to the debate.
- Be represented in the House of Commons by at least one sitting member when the election is called.
- That public polling shows the party receiving at least 4% popular support in public opinion polls.
- That they field candidates in at least 90% of all federal ridings.
The Greens had a total of two seats when the election was called, they haven’t been polling much above 2% voter support and they had enough candidates and then withdrew several to try and make sure Conservatives didn’t win. Yes, you read that correctly, the Greens - a truly principled party - withdrew candidates in ridings the Conservatives could eke out a win to try and make sure they didn’t win.
It’s not about the environment, these guys are watermelons - green on the outside, socialist red on the inside.
Regardless, they didn’t deserve to be in the debates now or ever and it is a good thing they are gone. Let the serious parties, the ones who can reasonably challenge for taking government be on the stage.
That of course raises the question of why the NDP or Bloc Quebecois are there, but I’ll take victories wherever I can get them.
