Election Wrap up - Don Valley East

Hello everyone,

First of all thank you so much for all your support. Thanks to those who spoke words of encouragement and expressed wishes of luck even if they were not voting Green. Thanks to the volunteers who delivered flyers and were great, thanks to those who had a lawn sign which also helped the cause and of course in this election we had 4 times as many brochures distributed in Don Valley East as last election (almost 19,000) thanks to those who donated money.

In the riding of Don Valley East the Green Party - we - increased our vote by 1051 more votes than last election, or an increase of 61% with a total of 2,765 votes or 7.2% of the vote.

All the other parties in the riding had a decrease in the number of votes: the conservatives were down 360 votes, the NDP were down 479 and the Liberals were down 5,336. Even though the number of registered voters was up by 2,474 to a total of 70,840, the total number of votes cast was down 4,836 to a total of 38,577.

To me this means a) the conservatives are not making any progress in this riding and b) Liberals did not vote in droves likely because of their distaste for their leader and possibly the carbon tax.

The increase in the green vote certainly did not come all from the NDP - I suspect that it came from all 3 parties which is normal.

Provincially we are up to 8% or 411444 and nationally up to 6.8% or 940747 (as of 2:33 a.m. with more polls to report in still). Voter turn out was dismal at less than 60%.

So what happens next?

The Liberals will elect a new leader and drop the carbon tax (my predictions) and as such Global Warming will go on the back burner while the elected parties try to find their path through the economic turbulence we are likely to see over the next couple of years. The Liberal problems are not like the Conservative problems after Mulroney when people were sick of all the scandals. The Liberals are not going anywhere. They'll be back and competitive in the next election.

Jack Layton will be emboldened by his success - though frankly I don't see a lot more growth for the NDP. I suspect they have peaked because next election the Liberals will be much stronger.

The Conservatives taste a majority but I don't see much more growth for them either. Harper is still a neoconservative (IMHO - in my humble opinion) and Canadians don't want that. They will try and buy Quebec again - likely with huge spending on the arts. They will pour money into the military at the expense of social programs (before Harper put more money into the military we already had the 7th largest military budget in the world - contrary to popular belief our military was not being short changed - if you want more details on this let me know). Harper will try and woo more of the 905 and even 416/514/604 with more focus on new immigrants to this country.

Conservatives will face a tough time trying to keep the budget balanced so they'll likely do what Flarety did when he was Minister of Finance while in Ontario - be creative with the numbers. The election in/out scandal will hit the Conservatives as well which ties over from the last election. So it is not going to be an easy time for the conservatives and the opposition parties should be able to force some issues since no one wants to go back to another election.

And the Greens?

We again continued our strong upward trend. No we did not get a seat. We are now hoping that there are bi-elections between now and next election so Elizabeth can run, win a seat and we can be on the debate again. The debate helped the Green cause immensely.

and there is so much unfinished business:

Global warming - I don't see anything happening with this until other countries - U.S. and E.U. put trade sanctions on us forcing us to take action. Obama will get elected and will take action on this and we will have to follow suit.

Poverty - Given the economic times we are facing the parties in power will say we don't have the money to solve this even though providing affordable housing (one of the major causes of poverty in Canada) would be a benefit to the economy.

Health care will continue its current path with no real focus on prevention and incidents of cancer will rise (as a percentage).

The economy will continue to shed manufacturing jobs (700 more announced at Daimler yesterday), with no emphasis on long term well paying green jobs but more hand outs for companies like Ford to make cars no one wants to buy. The only thinking saving us is the now low Canadian dollar.

So given all this the need for the Green Party will only increase and we will keep on building and we will elect members and we will eventually get a majority. Like I said tonight - the 2006 election was one about anger - anger against the Liberals, anger against all parties for calling an election at Christmas. This election was one about fear - Fear of the Harper Neo-cons and fear about the economy.

When an election becomes about hope - hope to end poverty, hope to reduce and end the occurrence of cancer, hope for a life where we work to live rather than live to work and of course hope for this planet - when the election is about hope - Greens will not send one MP to Ottawa - nor 5 nor 8 - we will send 308 MPs and build a Canada that will be the envy of the world and because we are Canadians we will turn to the rest of the world and teach them how to be as great as we are.