2020- 2022 Policy Process | Green Party of Canada
Where GPC membership collaborates to develop our policies
G21-C010 Remove Requirement to Field Candidates in All Ridings to Allow Strategic Exceptions
Submitter Name
Meryam Haddad
Proposal
To amend Green Party Constitution Article 4.1.1 to read as follows: "Fielding, endorsing, and electing members of the Party as candidates of the Party for election to the House of Commons and supporting their election”.
Objective
To give the Green Party more flexibility to field candidates strategically by prioritizing targeted ridings or engaging in cooperative electoral arrangements with other parties, by removing the constraint to run a Green Party candidate “in every riding.”
Benefit
This would allow the Party to focus more attention on priority ridings or to enter into mutually-beneficial collaborative arrangements, in order to win more seats, achieve official party status and possibly hold the balance of power to address urgent Green priorities such as electoral reform, vigorous climate action and social justice.
Supporting Comments from Submitter
Green Party supporters are very aware that to win seats, a party has to reach a certain threshold of support in a riding. Vote splitting and strategic voting makes it harder for a small party to win seats under our first-past-the-post system. In order to win seats, the Green Party is obliged to focus its efforts strategically in winnable ridings, as it has always done.
A supplementary measure could be to negotiate mutually beneficial arrangements with other parties to avoid splitting the vote. The current wording of Article 4.1.1. makes it impossible to consider such collaborative arrangements, however much they might benefit our Party and the implementation of Green Party policy and values.
We have reviewed the
NDP of Canada Constitution, the Liberal Party of Canada Constitution and the Conservative Party of Canada Constitution and were not able to find any explicit requirement by other parties to field a candidate in every riding as a constitutional requirement.
Collaboration across party lines has been proven to work in the past. On the right, in Canada, the most common arrangement has been the outright merger of parties. This is what allowed the Conservative Party of Canada to form government avec years in the wilderness starting in 2011. Mergers of this sort have taken place also in British Columbia and Alberta.
However, the constitutional amendment proposed here is not about mergers. It covers cases of collaboration in which both parties would maintain their own identities. Examples of this type of collaboration also exist. One example was the recent Unite to Remain Alliance in the 2019 UK election, which
successfully increased the vote share of participating parties in ridings where collaboration was involved. In France, alliances are systematically negotiated in every election. In the last legislative elections in 2017, these alliances allowed smaller parties who were part of those alliances to win seats in rough proportion to their share of the vote.
Simulations conducted by the One Time Alliance for Democratic Reform and the Climate Emergency Alliance suggest that the Greens and the NDP could significantly increase their seat shares based on collaborative arrangements in key ridings.
Green Value(s)
Ecological Wisdom, Sustainability, Participatory Democracy, Social Justice, Respect for Diversity, Non-Violence.
Relation to Existing Policy
This proposal would amend Article 4.1.1.
Amendments (1)
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13 comments
Conversation with Paul Wilson
Promoting the Green Party in all 338 ridings is critical to the supporting a multi party electoral process… I do not support any effort to run fewer candidates.
Hi Paul
I support a multi-party system too. However, I strongly oppose running in ridings like mine in which it's obvious that voting for the GPC gives an edge to Liberals. Here in Davenport they squeaked by the NDP by 72 votes. I don't want the GPC to a) contribute to the potential for a Liberal majority (in the case of this riding) or b) demonstrate partisanship—"loyally" fielding a candidate just to show we are an option, in spite of historically consistent failure to break 10% of the popular vote.
In this broken/undemocratic federal voting system we (not just the GPC) can't afford the luxury of the principle on which you hang your argument against this proposal. If principles are truly your guide, how about building consensus: C010 has been supported by our membership and we should thus all get behind it!
Conversation with Michael Strumberger
This is something I've gone back and forth on over the years. It has come to my attention in the past that an inordinate amount of (extremely precious and limited) staff energy goes into the scramble to organize candidates (be that paper or or human) in districts where there is not local capacity on the ground, simply to meet this constitutional requirement.
My overall take is that this proposal is trying to make it easier to handle the challenge without addressing underlying systemic deficiencies. If our party strategy included in clear party-building phase between elections and focused more on empowerment and culture building, then the ground capacity issue would be addressed, preventing the problem of staff needed to do the organization from central. Easier said than done, but it starts with setting priorities. I am not in favour of this proposal at this time. It feels like a bandaid, not a solution.
Hi Michael
I like your reasoning—stretching our resources is on the 'pro' side of C010—and the need to build between elections is clear.
You wrote that you don't support C010 "at this time". Post-VGM2 and after your excellent work to change the Party culture and empower EDAs, please let the consensus argument bring you over to supporting this. It's totally in line with what you're working for, methinks.
Conversation with Laurence Hudson Montgomery
I started out with a 'no' but talked myself into a 'yes'.
I am supporting this resolution because it allows more proximal decision making. The GPC needs to get into the habit of making strategic decisions - in small groups - while the ball is up in the air. We are not terribly 'agile'. So why bake in a limiting decision ahead of time? Why not make it when we have the right amount and kind of data?
Is it possible that there is a culture (trust) problem here? Do we set these cumbersome requirements as a way of preempting just-in-time decision making by a small group of representatives? Why wouldn't we want that group using the best strategy in the moment?
I agree with Michael S. above in the sense that our entire system of governance needs an overhaul to optimize our ability to respond quickly. However, one of the lessons we can learn from sociocracy is that the perfect is often the enemy of the good. This amendment is *absolutely* a bandaid. But any tool that enables strategic decision making up to the 11th hour is a tool worth having. Because the resources unleashed by sociocracy aren't going to appear overnight.
"More proximal decision-making", "the perfect is often the enemy of the good", "enables strategic decision making" and especially "a culture (trust) problem" are right on.
I land on the latter because the GPC culture is rotten (in my POV) in at least two ways:
1. Participatory Democracy/GPC Value 3 is, sadly, less of a priority in our culture than winning—i.e., always running, everywhere, which both instils a culture of 'noble' failure and, as you and Michael Strumberger agree, strains our feeble Party structures (staff);
2. The mentality of many of those who volunteer above and beyond the normal (e.g., FC) that it is they and not the uncommitted who must shoulder the load; this dynamic goes by the handle "learned helplessness" because of how it enfeebles EDAs and by the handle "corruption" because of how it corrupts the perceptions of those in the GPC who hold "positions of power".
Conversation with Shel Goldstein
Although the proposal would have the band-aid effect on the problem that @Michael identifies, that is not the concern full concern of the proposer. And while that band-aid can be useful, while concurrently it is possible (and advisable) to address the lack of ground capacity, so that when it is in the best interests of GPC to run in all 338 ridings, we are adequately prepared (without the extraordinary stress on central staff). I have some hesitancy with short-term specific pacts with the NDP (or anyone), I would like to have the pathway open to unique opportunities of mutual benefits should they arise. That other countries and parties have succeeded in shared strategic campaigns gives me hope; the world in crisis needs us to collaborate.
Thanks, Shel, for closing with the reminder of how little time we have to right the ship.
The wording is a little awkward, for sure. I agree with everyone on this thread. I wish it was more explicitely about decentralized power...I think that's one thing all Greens can agree upon now: empower the EDA's, grow the EDA's and give less and less 'power' to the HQ as an overarching decision-maker. The proposal itself says nothing about sharing with the NDP. I wish that wasnt' in there in the afterwards rationale, as that's its own can of worms. It's just about removing the super stressful and harmful practice of HQ feeling 'forced' to field paper and parachute candidates. We all know now, from experience, that that does not necessarily help the Green cause, and perhaps hurts it more than helps.
Conversation with Gerald Enns
The Green Party of Canada recognizes ecological limits to economic growth. For me this is the single most important distinction between our party and other party's. This is fundamentally distinct from the NDP. We all here the calls to collaborate with the NDP and form a climate alliance, this is indeed compelling, and while this proposal gives us flexibility to target winnable ridings, it undoubtedly will be used to promote the climate alliance which comes at us in a sideways glance in this proposal. This means I might expect that in my riding I could be expected to vote for the NDP. Until we see a stronger commitment from the NDP to recognize ecological limits to economic growth I am unwilling to vote for them. I am looking for a caveat in this proposal that wouldn't allow the central campaign to decide unilaterally that we are running a strategic campaign in some form of a quid pro quo with other parties. When it's time to vote, I vote for what I want, and not what I am afraid of. The strategic direction for climate success is recognizing ecological limits and reframing our priorities on that fact of life.
Gerald, I'm looking in vain for the words in this proposal you're arguing against, i.e., that somehow C010 allows "the central campaign to decide unilaterally" anything.
As to holding out until the NDP sees things our way, Meryam points out that "both parties would maintain their own identities." C010 would increase the chances of their seeing things our way but that's hardly the point; the proposal would make it much more important for EDAs to hear anti-NDP voices, for one thing, and debate is what we need more of at the grassroots level.
Of course we stand for limits to growth! Flexibility in how we make that stand—and participation at the ground/riding level—can only strengthen this central position of the GPC.
The pros and cons above are great—I'm particularly glad Gerald made the point about what this proposal would mean in practice, i.e., collaborating with the NDP (in whatever alternate universe they would accept that), which would compromise the GPC recognizing eco-limits to growth.
Laurence nailed it for me, though.
In practice (again), passing this proposal puts the decision in the hands of EDAs.
Case study: Davenport.
Davenport (my riding) was identified by One-Time Alliance (OTA) as having a "105%" chance of defeating the incumbent Liberal if the GPC didn't field a candidate. We did and the incumbent won by 72 votes. It's lucky that didn't give the Liberals a majority!
I quit the Davenport EDA over this (had to: ethics) and campaigned for the NDP candidate, who I know and respect highly. My subjective analysis of the local GPC dynamics is that even given that our riding was a prime candidate for collaboration—which the narrow outcome proved—the resistance by our membership and EDA was too great to surmount.
To put that differently (and to echo Laurence), even if we pass this there's little chance of collaboration in today's toxic political climate. This proposal is a far-sighted, sensible one that we're not ready to exploit—but that just means it's safe to vote for.
Participatory Democracy
We strive for a democracy in which all citizens have the right to express their views, and are able to directly participate in the environmental, economic, social and political decisions which affect their lives; so that power and responsibility are concentrated in local and regional communities, and devolved only where essential to higher tiers of governance.
- gpc constitution
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