Could the 'red-green coalition' be revived?

Liberals, Greens meet separately today to discuss vote strategy

By Susan Delacourt - Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–In Kitchener tomorrow, the Green Party of Canada is holding a big "campaign college" to get candidates trained for a possible spring election.

At the same time, entirely by chance, the federal Liberals will also be gathering in Kitchener for a caucus retreat.

This isn't the first time the Liberals and the Greens have accidentally held gatherings that bump into each other. About a year ago, the two parties both held election-readiness workshops in adjacent meeting rooms at the North York Civic Centre.

But a year ago, the idea of Liberal-Green co-operation was just a rumour. Since then, it's become an idea whose time has come – and gone, some argue.

In case anyone has forgotten, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and Green Leader Elizabeth May announced last spring that they'd reached a deal, under which Liberals would not run any candidate against May in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova during the next election.

That deal still exists, but you don't hear much about it any more. And you certainly don't hear any more talk of further avenues of co-operation, though May says she's open to that discussion.

"I remain interested in talking about anything else we could do together. The conversation doesn't end," May said in a recent interview with the Star.

"Stéphane Dion is my second choice for prime minister because I'm my first choice. But I'm just sufficiently realistic about the next election to know that we will be in a much better state as a country if Stéphane Dion has become prime minister. And I still think, in a minority government, with enough Greens to make a difference, we would have a very interesting opportunity for really good governance."

Tactfully, May implies that some of the excitement surrounding the "red-green coalition" was dissipated when it ran up against the wall of criticism and, yes, ridicule. Conservatives, for instance, piled on Dion, saying his deal was tantamount to saying he couldn't win without May's help.

But some of the red-green criticism also came from within the two parties. Not all Liberals in Central Nova, for instance, were happy about standing down for the next election fight – saying it was the equivalent of handing the riding to the Conservative incumbent, Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner, who holds the adjacent Nova Scotia riding of Cape Breton-Canso, was not a fan of the red-green deal and he says he's still hearing from disgruntled Liberals in Central Nova. The idea that all Liberals will migrate to May is wrong, says Cuzner. "A significant amount of the bleed will go to the NDP," he predicts.

Asked whether the Liberals should do any more deals with the Greens, Cuzner offers a blunt, one-word assessment: "No."

But there are other Liberal MPs who are bullish on the red-green deal and wish that the party was talking it up more, especially now that the Greens seem to be emerging as an important force on the electoral map in Liberal strongholds such as the GTA.

Glen Pearson, MP for London North Centre, is in part the inspiration for last year's red-green co-operation deal.

He envisions how powerfully they could oppose the Conservatives' environmental stand, for instance, if Liberals and Greens were standing together.

"We need Stéphane and Elizabeth holding press conferences," says Pearson. "And I need to be able to work with the Green Party in my own riding, because we can disagree on other things, but on the environment we can really agree."

There's a school of thought that says this whole dispute over the red-green deal is, at essence, a struggle between the past and future of politics.

Advocates of Liberal-Green co-operation say it plays to the "post-partisan" mood of the public, which is making itself felt south of the border in the excitement of the U.S. Democratic race.

Red-green opponents, however, call themselves realists, who say that it's all well and good for the strategists to dream up coalitions, but politics is still fought on the ground, and the voters have neither the time nor inclination to cast their ballots for some lofty, strategic idea.

For now, the deal hangs in a kind of limbo – still in force in Central Nova, but probably going nowhere in any other part of the country for the next election. Then again, though, Liberals and Greens will be bumping into each other in Kitchener tomorrow.

Dion, meanwhile, was burnishing his green credentials in Hamilton yesterday when he pledged a Liberal government would establish a $1 billion fund to help manufacturers move into green technologies.

He said his proposed Advanced Manufacturing Prosperity Fund would help pay for research and development projects to boost the struggling manufacturing sector.