THUNDER BAY – ANALYSIS – The Ontario Green Party has a hard working and respected leader in Mike Schreiner. In the last election, Schreiner was re-elected with 55 per cent of the vote in his Guelph riding.
Yet, across the rest of Ontario, the Greens were, politely speaking hardly present as a political force.
Fixed election dates should be a major bonus for the Ontario Green Party. It should allow the local riding associations to set goals, work to those goals, raise memberships, train candidates and volunteers and then really contest elections.
It is almost as if even with fixed election dates, the riding associations for the Green Party treat elections with no real expectation of winning, and pass around the nomination like a baton.
Wondering “who should run this time?” and then foregoing all the hard work needed to raise the funds, the profile of the candidate and party, and building the momentum for winning almost seems beneath the Green candidates.
Instead it almost seems that most Green Party candidates simply figure that they have the right ideas for the future and are content to sit on history’s path waiting for people to find them.
Truth is in politics, nothing moves until it is pushed.
The task before Mike Schreiner, as Green Party leader should be, starting today to start building riding associations, start setting membership levels that each riding association needs in order to nominate a candidate, and start educating those riding associations on how to win elections.
If Schreiner isn’t interested in doing that, then he might as well get used to being asked, “party of one?” for the foreseeable future.
