Ian Gartshore

Turns out that when Green candidates do well their right-wing counterparts don't!  How is this? Let's take a look at the data from past elections in B.C. that had strong Green candidates. In the 2008 federal election, the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding was won by a Conservative incumbent with 43% of the vote. The Liberal’s had 39% and the Green Party had 10% (Note: the NDP candidate dropped out of the race but still received votes). In 2011: Elizabeth May won with 46% of the vote, Conservatives 35%, NDP 12%, Liberals 6%. Provincially, in 2009, the Oak Bay- Gordon Head riding was won by a right wing Liberal incumbent with 46% of the vote, followed by the NDP with 44% and Greens at 8.9%. In 2013: Andrew Weaver and the Green vote won with 40% of the vote, followed by Liberal Cabinet Minister Ida Chong and the NDP each receiving nearly 30% each. The federal riding of Victoria in 2011 saw NDP incumbent Denise Savoie with 50%, Conservatives were second with 23% and the G...

Let’s be frank: Fear motivates us! No wonder politicians love using it! Currently fear is being used in two different ways by political parties and “neutral third parties.” The Conservatives are masters at scaring people. They are constantly sending fear-invoking propaganda to their supporters. During this (and past) elections their main focus is to invoke fear in the electorate. They got some bang for their buck (for a while) by whipping up hatred against Muslims (the niqab issue), and are now using fear to shore up support from Conservatives moving their vote to other parties. When Canada was becoming a nation very similar tactics were used in 1849 in an attempt to keep Canada racially “pure,” that is, free of francophones. The current technique is the same, only the lingo has changed. In the words of a Huffington Post article ,“...the fear of francophones has been replaced by a fear of Muslims. Instead of rebellion, Stephen Harper talks about terrorism. Instead of...

Here on Vancouver Island there is a lot of talk about the “need for strategic voting” in order to prevent any Conservatives from winning seats. Even though it is rather obvious that on the national stage it is the NDP and Liberals who are splitting the non-Conservative vote, here on Vancouver Island many NDP’ers are again (falsely) accusing Greens of doing so. Their anti-Harper cause is being boosted by third-party organisations using questionable polling results to encourage all but those in Elizabeth May’s riding to vote for the NDP. In some ridings the NDP are even using election data from four years ago to boost their fear-campaign. Back then they and the Conservatives received over 80% of the vote. By ignoring the surging Greens (and improving Liberal support) their strategy intends to sway voters into believing that one has to vote NDP in order to stop the Conservatives. (Using old data to suppress or sway the voters of another Party is, frankly, manipul...