I have never gotten around to writing about our AGM and that election.  It’s never very interesting to write about one’s own election, but the election of 11 other members onto our executive ought to have inspired me.

But I was busy.

And now, the excitement of London’s byelection has temporarily removed everything else from my mind.  I’ll write tomorrow about how exciting Elizabeth’s campaign was, but I wanted to go to bed only after writing a quick thought.     Read more »

Well, when the first five polls were in, Elizabeth had the lead.  Now, with a quarter of the results in, she’s in second place, trailing the Liberal candidate.  And now, with 90% of the the polls reporting, she’s still second place, but the Conservatives are close behind.  You can watch the results as they come in on the Elections Canada website.

It’s all over.  And the (rounded) results are:

The rounding makes it easier to conceptualize the numbers, but it exaggerates the spread between the Green Party and the Conservatives.  It was only 1.5% (25.9% – 24.4%), not a full 2%. And of course each of the “other” parties got more than zero percent (though less than half a percent).

On behalf of GTA Greens and even Greens from as far as Ottawa, I would like to thank the Danforth Greens for offering and eventually hosting the GTA Car Pool blog. I went to London this past weekend and was totally blown away from what is going on there. The champagne office is very impressive and more importantly was buzzing with all kinds of election action. A few GTAr’s and myself canvassed the streets of London North and were encouraged to have had very positive responses at the door for Elizabeth.

This blog may be moved as the Elizabeth May web site gets more and more updated. For now I am still accepting emails (ncapra@greenparty.ca) from GTAr’s who would like to car pool to London.

Once again…Thank-you Danforth Greens for your continuing hospitality.

Nick Capra, York West Greens
The Green Party of Canada
www.yorkwestgreens.ca 
ncapra@greenparty.ca
647.212.9403

Let’s get a Toronto-Danforth team out to campaign for Elizabeth.  Jim Harris, in his blog, laid down a challenge to get people to donate to Elizabeth’s campaign, to help with her campaign or even to move to London for 6 weeks to help in any way.

My reaction to this was to actually pause and contemplate the idea of moving to London for 6 weeks.  But I can’t.  We’re in the midst of a municipal election, I’ve got daily commitments for the next 3 weeks or so, and I’ve got five kids that need me from time to time, and in my experience, the times between when they’ve needed me have never lasted 6 weeks.  They’ve never lasted more than about 6 minutes, truth be told. Since I joined the Green Party a year ago, I’ve stopped micromanaging our household and, as Charlie says, we’ve just been allowing our children to grow organically.  Still, not so organically that I could completely absent myself for 6 weeks.

If anybody in Toronto-Danforth is available to go to London for the duration, though, that would be so great that I will do what I can to make it work out.  For those of you who need to stay in Toronto because you have a job here, some of the money you make could be thrown Elizabeth’s way, ’cause she’ll need money too.  I want giant Elizabeth faces smiling from billboards all across London Centre.

What I want to do as a group, is get a team to go out to London on the last weekend before the election – that’s Friday, November 24 to Sunday November 26.  I’m going and I’m bringing paperclips. Who’s coming with me?

London Centre North will be having a byelection on November 27, and the Green Party candidate will be – our leader, Elizabeth May.  Former Green Party leader and Toronto-Danforth local Jim Harris just announced it in his blog, and explained why we very well may get our first elected Green.

You can wish Elizabeth luck or pledge to donate to her campaign at leader@greenparty.ca.