Green Party Canada

[Goosefoot]

I noticed on my FB feed today that Elizabeth May was flogging the Green Party's policy highlights as the election is about to be called.

In a very short post it mentioned environmental issues, pharmacare, poverty, and trans and two-spirit healthcare.

I've known that generally they were trans-positive but mostly it's seemed pretty low key, so I was a disappointed to see it highlighted like this. I've had a difficult time over the past year or so that I've been trying to suss out their views finding anything very useful or enlightening.

Do any of the Canadians here know anything about what's behind this, if it represents a change, or what? I'd like more information before I vote, or say anything to our local candidate.

I guess there isn't enough Canadian traffic here to get any information.

Sine yesterday it's pretty clear that the Greens have decided their best bet is to take a decidedly progressive stance on any number of issues - trans health, abortion, conversion therapy (the broad definition.)

An interesting strategy when there are already two progressive parties with the same policies and we are in an environmental crises that is absolutely upon us.

Everyone is falling over themselves at the moment because the Conservative has some dodgy views and the other candidates feel this is a great stick to beat him with.

It seems like they have given up on any idea that they might appeal to more socially conservative people who have strong environmental views. And they've also missed that there are many people who are normally progressive but don't buy into transgender ideology, probably most regular people. Even the CBC when they run comments get terrible responses on their trans pieces.

Today I was kind of shocked though - a big part of their organisational policy has been that they don't whip votes, that they do what the constituents want, and I've seen several people on FB say this means they can't guarantee that their MPs won't vote against these social policies, particularly WRT abortion. The Green response has been that they eliminate people with the wrong views from standing before it gets to that point.

Of course this totally contradicts the idea that the MPs vote for what their constituents want, not the party policy necessarily. That is, they are only showing the face of being a grassroots organisation, they are surreptitiously keeping centralised party control. It's a big deal based on their previous commitment to preventing that kind of centralisation.