PHOTO: Bramalea-Gore-Malton Green candidate Bruce Haines standing in front of his enemy, urban sprawl.
PART ONE
Bramalea-Gore-Malton Green candidate Bruce Haines walked into City Council this morning and demanded that the rules for the City-hosted provincial election debate be changed to allow Green Leader Frank de Jong to take part.
He said to council: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mayor and Council, it is not too late to rectify your decision to exclude the Green Party from the debate. The motto for the City is 'Leading today for tomorrow.' Today you have a chance to lead. Please allow the Leader of the Green Party of Ontario to participate on September 19th."
Then, council voted to do just that.
Frank de Jong will be taking part.
The original rules excluded the Greens because they don't have any seats in the legislature.
This morning, council changed the rules. Now, any party that received more than 1 percent of the popular vote in the 2003 provincial election will be invited to take part. That means the Green Party, which received 2.8 percent of the popular vote, will be invited.
The cut-off also means that Guiseppe Gori, the leader of the right-wing Family Coalition Party, which only received 0.8 percent of the vote, will not be invited.
PART TWO
Speaking to Bruce Haines about his triumph at City Council this morning, we got to talking about the poll numbers.
A new Canadian Press-Harris/Decima survey has the Liberals at 41 percent, the Progressive Conservatives at 33 percent, the NDP at 13 percent, and the Greens at 11 percent.
At 11 percent, there's a distinct possibility the Green Party could beat the NDP.
As Haines said: "If I could make any projection it would be that the Green Party will slide into third in the popular vote."
The problem would be that because the NDP has concentrated support in a number of ridings, they could win seats in the legislature with less support than the Green Party, which will likely win zero seats.
It will be an entirely new argument in favour of changing our electoral system, as we have the opportunity to do on Oct. 10.