GreenerPolitics

By Bernard Schoenburg, The PJ Star

SPRINGFIELD - Given the legal right in Illinois to get on the ballot just as easily as Democrats or Republicans this year, Green Party candidates took advantage of the new rules - but not in great numbers.
As the eight-day filing closed for certain state, federal and party offices Monday at the State Board of Elections, totals showed just 18 Green Party candidates among the 960 candidates who submitted petitions.

Phil Huckelberry of Chicago, chairman of the Illinois Green Party’s government and elections committee, said he estimates the number of Green Party county board candidates across the state would be in the low teens. But he also noted that with the party’s power to fill ballot vacancies in races where nobody is picked in the Feb. 5 primary, he hopes the party reaches its goal of having 100 to 110 candidates, state and local, on November ballots in Illinois in 2008.

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Jane Sterk, a 60-year old city counsellor, was elected Leader of the Green Party of British Columbia on Sunday October 21.  During her acceptance speech, she said that she intended to run only for one term and keep up with her duties on city council in Esquimault.

Her priorities over her term include are:

1.  Within six months to have a full-time, staffed office in Victoria that is capable of providing support to the leader, provincial council, regions, constituency associations and members.

2. Within three months, to have a fully functioning database so we can better retain our members and a website that is compelling and robust.

3. To increase our predictable funding from Evergreen donations and individuals donations to fund our internal operations and to help finance the 2009 campaign.

4. To bring the BC Green Party message to business groups, public service sector representatives, civil society groups, service clubs, environmental organizations, seniors’ groups so they agree that we need to have MLAs in Victoria to improve the governing of the province.

5. To have an election strategy by May 2008 and to be election-ready by the fall of 2008.

Among her supporter she singled out for thanks, she mentioned Ian Gregson for facebook and internet support, the number of endorsements from mayors and city counselors throughout British Columbia.

toronto.ctv.ca

Parties like the Green Party of Ontario will not be financially penalized for not winning elections, an Ontario superior court judge has ruled.

Justice Paul Perell said smaller parties are put at a disadvantage with a provision that forces candidates to give up their $200 deposits if they receive less than 10 per cent of the vote, the Globe and Mail reported.

Perell said the provision goes against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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by James Cowan, National Post

A Sunday afternoon discussion with teenage environmentalists turned into a testy debate for Howard Hampton after the NDP leader was derided over his energy plan.

Billed as a “roundtable discussion,” the carefully coordinated event took place on the roof of a downtown co-op, with the building’s rooftop garden and Lake Ontario as a backdrop.

Mr. Hampton opened the event by reiterating his party’s promise not to build new nuclear plants if elected, a point he had emphasized during an earlier rally in Ottawa.

But the NDP leader was forced to drop his message of the day by Nick Annejohn, a 17-year-old high school student. The Guelph resident said it was “a terrible contradiction” that the NDP want to both cut electricity rates and promote energy conservation.

“It’s absurd to propose to further subsidize electricity, which will encourage increased consumption, which means your promise to close the coal plants will be impossible and just as empty as [Dalton] McGuinty’s promise in 2003,” Mr. Annejohn said.

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Toronto, September 18, 2007 — Green Party of Ontario (GPO) leader Frank de Jong may been excluded from standing alongside the other party leaders at the televised debate on Sept. 20, but that’s not stopping him from taking part and having his say.

http://www.gpo.ca/node/618

De Jong will be the centre of attention at a Green Party party at the Pantages Hotel and Spa in Toronto. And unlike the official debate, everyone’s invited! The public and the media will be able to watch and listen to de Jong answer the debate questions as they are posed on television. The event will be broadcast on the Internet as part of the Greens’ effort to get their message heard.

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