Elizabeth May cannot be trusted, in my opinion, to lead AND BUILD the Green Party. During the last federal election, before she assumed the reins at the GPC, she publicly advocated “strategic” voting (don’t vote Green if it hurts the Liberals — never mind that strategic voting could drive a stake through the heart of the party). Lately, however, she’s been saying she is against strategic voting. Uh huh. She says she doesn’t advocate it while shilling for the Liberals at every opportunity, which is sending the message to Greens to vote Liberal. She denied there were any backroom deals when she announced her candidacy in Central Nova. She said she doesn’t believe in them. Then she comes up with this cockamamie backroom deal.

This is all about Liz and the Liberals, and not what is good for the party and continuing to build it as a force to be reckoned with and a voice for the Earth that will be heard long after she has fled the scene.

If May really wanted to get a seat in Parliament for the Green Party she would have brokered a deal for the Liberals to not run in one of the electoral districts where the Greens performed well in the last election.

When the media uses words like “cozy” in their headlines, it distorts conversation and communication (essential ingredients in any democracy) into something that it is not.

Father Coady’s ideas seek to balance narrow economic efficiency with the broader context of business. “Labour” are not machines: workers have families; they worry about invasive species, drowning polar bears, the destruction of social programs, the destruction of community by invasive giant corporations like WalMart, and how climate change will increasingly harm the livelihoods of nearly everyone on Earth.

Elizabeth’s actions are based on who she is as a person, and what she correctly sees as the corrosive effects of an American style of government acting in the interests of transnational corporations to make profits without social or environmental responsiblity. People are not “costs of doing business”. Atlantic Canada learned this before NAFTA made Ontarians learn this.

I confess I didn’t understand your phrase “how dare she” until I looked at the news and realized that Elizabeth May and Stéphane Dion have agreed not to run candidates in each other’s ridings.

I can certainly understand why that would upset you. It’s a very divisive issue.

I’m more afraid of a Harper majority, but I’m not comfortable either with the media portrayal of a cozy relationship with the Liberals, and this obviously doesn’t help.

How DARE she!