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Although VanRamblings will post, at some point later this evening, our usual wrap-up of important election events of the day — following, of course, a long, enjoyable, sun-dappled walk along the pristine, west coast beaches of Jericho, Locarno, and Spanish Banks — we’ll leave you with the following to consider on this beautiful late spring day …
The Greens are right, right?
 Green leader Jim Harris |
From the outset, VanRamblings has experienced serious misgivings about Green Party leader Jim Harris, his ties to the former Progressive Conservative party, the pro-market policies the Greens have developed under his leadership, and the Green commitment to ‘smaller government’ — which would bring about the kind of massive downsizing in the public sector that has been experienced in recent years in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.
A reactionary rather than a progressive party, the Greens under Jim Harris have little or nothing to do with the progressive European Green movement — a movement which rose organically out of the work of radical political groups across Europe — and much more to do with the worst excesses of the Reform / Alliance / ‘new’ Conservative movement in Canada.
In an article published in the Globe and Mail yesterday, Murray Dobbin, a rabbler (that’s the progressive web site rabble.ca) and author of Paul Martin: CEO for Canada? paints the Greens as Tories in disguise — pro free markets, smaller government, lower taxes, the lot.
The Green’s fiscal policy, he writes, could have been drafted by Bay Street. Rather than eliminate poverty they opt for the Band-Aid of more food banks. They want to raise property taxes — one of the most regressive taxes. And apply budget surpluses to debt reduction rather than social programmes.
“The party is to the right of all the major parties, which are now committing billions for spending on social programmes,” Dobbin writes. Citing the Greens’ preferred reliance on community groups rather than government to clean up the environment, Dobbin concludes: “These are not the actions of a government committed to using its mandated power to actually protect the environment.”
By the way, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace this week each give the NDP slightly higher marks than the Greens on environmental protection.
