Green vote moves party shade closer to becoming major player

The results for women, Greens show that voters are not willing to accept the status quo in politics

By Susan Delacourt - Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–The Green Party may not have won a single seat in last night's by-elections, but its strong showing in Toronto and Vancouver seals its standing as a political force to watch in days and months ahead.

As the results were still being tallied late last night, the Greens were vying for second place in Toronto Centre and poised to surpass the New Democrats in Willowdale and perhaps Vancouver Quadra, too.

The implications are significant and likely to be much discussed by strategists of all parties in the coming days.

Among the questions:

Will Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion ratchet up his talk of co-operation with the Greens?

Are the Greens making the New Democrats irrelevant?

Does this mean that Greens leader Elizabeth May should be guaranteed a spot in the televised leaders' debates in the next election?

Will Prime Minister Stephen Harper read this as a judgment on his environmental policy and renew efforts on that score, as he did in the wake of Greens' strong showing in late 2006 by-elections?

And, most important, is the next election going to be about the environment?

There will be a temptation to see the Greens' showing as a mere protest vote, a "none-of-the-above" ballot against the status quo.

It isn't unusual for by-elections to turn into protest votes. But this Green vote may be tapping into a theme that's emerging whenever the voters have been asked to render a verdict during this current Parliament.

In the three sets of by-elections that have been held since the last general election in 2006, there appears to a constant thread of rejection of business as usual in Ottawa – not just protest against the government, but against the entire, political status quo.

In Quebec in the fall, voters threw the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois out of their safe ridings and installed the New Democrats as a presence in the province for the first time in nearly 20 years. The message seemed to be: don't take anything for granted.

That's something for all federal politicians to keep in mind as things are warming up to a general election, maybe even this spring.

If the Greens are "none of the above," that could include the New Democratic Party, which has been trying very hard for more than two years to argue that it's the natural home for people fed up with Conservatives and Liberals. Now it may be that voters are seeing the NDP more as part of the problem than part of the solution.

But the Greens have long argued that they're stealing votes from all parties – not just New Democrats, but Liberals and Conservatives, too.

That's not the only way, though, in which these by-elections parted ways with the usual picture of politics in Canada.

The presence of so many strong women candidates in these by-elections – 40 per cent of the candidates were women, as opposed to the usual 23 per cent or so in recent general elections – is raising expectations for more female participation in federal politics.

Right now, there are only 65 women in the 308-member Parliament – a dismal 21 per cent – and the number of women who are candidates has been declining in the past decade or so.

Last night's results actually can be seen as a continuation of the trend that emerged in the by-elections of November, 2006, when the voters in London North Centre rejected the made-in-Ottawa campaigns waged by Conservatives and NDP, opting instead for a local fireman, Glen Pearson of the Liberals.

May took second place with 26 per cent of the vote.