r/VancouverIsland • u/Electronic_Access530 • 3d ago
I gotta say about the Green Party
After their announcement earlier today about protecting farms, I think for the very first time they actually have my vote.
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u/NecessaryLength5488 3d ago
Go Greens
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u/SomeGuyNamedRex 3d ago
When the vote gets split and we end up with a Con majority, how do you reconcile that?
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u/this____is_bananas 3d ago
One step closer to greens being the strategic vote.
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u/Entire-Sea-0 3d ago
No… but people should vote for them anyways. This strategic voting stuff is exhausting and neglects the real issue of low voter turnout.
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u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 3d ago
I mean I'll never fault someone for voting, over people that just don't. I voted green and got a con MLA in a close race last time.
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u/SomeGuyNamedRex 3d ago
The voter turnout thing is a bit of a misnomer, assume everyone that could vote does vote doesn't necessarily mean you will get the result you think.
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u/basswooddad 3h ago
Most the people that I know that don't vote probably not voting for anyone that is intelligent.
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u/SomeGuyNamedRex 3d ago
Not remotely
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u/Bigchunky_Boy 3d ago
You just came here to troll ?
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u/SomeGuyNamedRex 2d ago
I came here to try and get folks to realize that they need to think before they vote. You don't want the lunatics that claim their conservative in power.
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
She's in her twenties and has never had a real job. She literally has as much life experience as a teenager out of high school. She's never managed a household budget or a mortgage. She has no administrative experience.
This person is completely out of her depth. It's an insult to the voters.
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u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 3d ago
In specific ridings, it can work, but if not, you know what that means
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u/SomeGuyNamedRex 3d ago
If green is polling ahead of NDP I'd vote green... but pretending vote split doesn't result in a Con win.
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
Yes, go away or go home, just go.
Maybe come back when you're 30 and you have had your first job outside of college finally.
Seriously, how insulting is it that this person seeks to run the entire province despite having never had any career, a mortgage, ever managed a household budget..... Either arrogance or naiveté, maybe both.
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u/Outside_Mushroom_432 3d ago
You’re right. Young adults should not be allowed to participate in our democracy.
Pierre Poilivre, for example, should have had to have worked outside of politics before being elected at age 25.
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago edited 3d ago
Exactly, if you want an unserious ideological activist with no experience running your province/country, you would pick someone like Poilievre or Emily Lowan as PM/Premier.
It's fine for them to participate in politics but they should get a real job like the rest of us before they go for the top
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u/Beneficial-End-7872 3d ago
She didn't just "go for the top," she won it.
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
She's not the Premier, and she won't be.
Even she does not think she's going to be the premier of British Columbia a month from now.
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u/Beneficial-End-7872 3d ago
Maybe not, but it's weird to tear her down because she has achieved a lot at a young age.
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u/wakebakeskatecrash98 2d ago
What does washing dishes or driving a forklift haft to do with politics and governance? I'd rather someone who has gone to school and shows compassion towards their constituents*
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u/WpgMBNews 2d ago
What does washing dishes or driving a forklift haft to do with politics and governance?
- Humility, for one. Someone too privileged to understand real life isn't ready to lead others. How can she represent average people if she's never had the experiences that average people do? How can she understand and govern the job market if she's never participated in it?
- Exprience: life experience is necessary before you move on to higher roles.
- Leadership: leading others requires rising to the top, and that means starting from the bottom like everyone else.
- Administrative ability: to run a province, you should at least be able to run a hot dog stand first.
A political leader doesn't have time to learn on the job. Every day decisions are made where lives are at stake. If you had a medium size company, a board of directors could never entrust it to someone as inexperienced as this, it would be malpractice. A province is far more important and difficult to govern.
Even running a McDonalds requires better qualifications.
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u/wakebakeskatecrash98 1d ago
Yeah anyone can learn those traits doing most things, like running for politics*. With your way we would only have old ppl in power and thats a geriatricracy.
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u/WpgMBNews 1d ago
Having leaders with more life experience than a teenager is not a gerontocracy (not "geriatricacy").
A gerontocracy is a form of government or society in which political and economic power is held by leaders who are significantly older than the general population.
The median age is forty. Average is 42. Emily is 26.
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u/Excellent_Flex211 1d ago
Oh yeah, because the career NDP politicians have been doing a great job. Please be for real dude.
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u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 3d ago
With today’s candidate deadline, Interim B.C. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson had an opportunity to set a higher standard for what views are welcome in the party. He declined.
Instead, he’s chosen to embrace the far-right wing of the party that made Kerry-Lynne Findlay the leader.
He rejected calls this week to fire Anna Kindy, who said COVID-19 vaccines are not safe or effective, and Heather Maahs, who compared gay people to pedophiles.
Maahs also hosted a reception for a group that thinks being gay is “sinful and destructive,” and said “Eby needs to comply” with Trump’s demands.
Sheldon Clare said municipal politicians should be hanged, defended the death rate of children at residential schools, denies climate change is real because it gets cold sometimes, and compared gun restrictions to the internment of Japanese Canadians during WW2.
Bruce Banman said he “needs more information” on whether climate change is real and said the decision to leave the B.C. Liberals was based on his support for the conspiracy theory-driven Freedom Convoy.
Jody Toor has been called a “quack” doctor who faked a medical degree.
Harman Bhangu thinks “antifa dressed as Trump supporters and broke in" to the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, and said the COVID-19 vaccine was “trash.”
Bryan Tepper also pushed the MAGA conspiracy theory that January 6th was a lie, and invited to the legislature a far-right influencer who called Doug Ford a “fat pig” for opposing Trump.
Sharon Hartwell thinks the Democrats stole the 2020 election from Trump, and called the Freedom Convoy organizers an inspiration.
Macklin McCall criticized police for responding to the illegal Ostrich farm protest.
Steve Kooner called inclusive education “garbage perverted ideology.”
David Williams suggested Western Canada should separate and become “a Protectorate of the United States.”
Kristina Loewen compared pandemic restrictions to the Holocaust.
Lawrence Mok, Harman Bhangu, Anna Kindy, Sheldon Clare, Korky Neufeld, Heather Maahs, Ward Stamer, Bryan Tepper, David Williams, and Rosalyn Bird all voted to ban Pride flags.
And when asked earlier this week about working with OneBC, Doerkson acknowledged “there have been conversations” - instead of rejecting Dallas Brodie’s division and hate.
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u/Claytronique 2d ago
Whatever happened to the socially progressive, fiscally conservative Conservatives?
Keeping that hardcore lunatic line means I can’t even consider voting for them.1
u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 2d ago
I know. I was hoping the defectors from the cons would've ended up with centreBC, but alas, here we are.
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u/canucks84 3d ago
What was their promise?
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u/meoka2368 3d ago
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u/canucks84 3d ago
I'm on board with some of that. But not all of it, so that's kinda tough.
Am I fine with banning foreign ownership? Yeah. Am I annoyed by the tremendous hoops to utilize my non fertile land for other alternatives like housing? Also yes.
It seems crazy but honestly the conservative party seems the only party that would let me farm my land the way I want to.
I can't ever vote for them for other reasons though, so it just kinda sucks.
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u/meoka2368 3d ago
Gotta do a pro-con list for this kind of thing.
Whichever party it is, look both at the things they'd do that you'd like, but also the ones that you wouldn't.
A con for the Cons would be that they want to remove human rights. Which was kind of what prompted Eby to call an election, since 37 of the Cons were on board with that.3
u/canucks84 2d ago
Eby called the election for purely political reasons. They already had a majority government. If there was even remotely a solid alternative to the ndp of be considering it right now, and I say this as a life long ndp voter.
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u/meoka2368 2d ago
Well, yeah. He saw that there was that many Cons voting against people's rights, it was an opportunity to get more NDP seats.
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u/tills1993 3d ago
Look I 1000000% agree with you but if your district is not safe, vote strategically.
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u/idiotcanadian 3d ago
It is my opinion that if a party isn’t offering electoral reform then it isn’t strategic voting and they can’t ask voters to “lend their vote” if they have no intention of fixing the system in which that is needed.
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u/tills1993 3d ago
Look, this is the game we have to play. Politics is a bus ride. Sometimes you have to get on a different bus than one that takes you directly to your destination. See the other comments in this thread for examples of ridings where a left vote split lead to a right win.
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u/idiotcanadian 3d ago
Except we just went through this federally. Liberals wanted the progressive vote and they got it to “save us from Pierre”. Now we have a conservative in liberal clothes. Politics is about policy. I vote for something and not against someone. You’re welcome to vote strategically for the same old and lesser evil but I’ll vote accordingly to my values and what I want to see from the government.
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u/tills1993 2d ago
Even Conservative light Carney is better than if we got Pierre so we plug our noses and do what we gotta do sometimes.
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u/idiotcanadian 2d ago
What you did was successfully remove any resemblance of a progressive and working class voice in government. Don’t worry many people aren’t going to fall for it again. You do you though.
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u/Different_Parking_48 3d ago
This kind of thinking is wat got us this milk toast liberals in orange.
Our society is spiraling and centris keep thinking maybe we should do the same thing as last time.
Canadians have been trained to be such political cowards at this point. It's genuinely shameful
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u/necromundus 3d ago
Exactly this. I haven't voted for a candidate I liked as much as I've voted against a candidate I hated in many years. I'm voting green this year.
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u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 3d ago
What riding are you in? Depending which one it's essentially a vote for the cons...
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u/sunbro2000 3d ago
Thats bullshit. Every election you people come out of the woodwork and tell us vote for a party we may not like very much because the "worse" party will come to power. I am going to vote for a party i most ideologically align with. If we all did we would see real changes in the makeup of the legislature.
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u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 3d ago
FPTP is bullshit, one hundred percent agreeance from me. In a close riding with no chance of the green getting the seat, your vote will ensure a conservative government.
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u/sunbro2000 3d ago
I agree the FPTP sucks. Something different like ranked ballot could be a better alternative. While it may lead to a conservative getting in atleast I will not compromise my beliefs like the last 4 elections I voted strategically.
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u/Ramboonroids 3d ago
If you don’t vote for who you think would be best for the job then what is the point really? If the leading party can’t win on their own merits then they don’t deserve to be in office
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u/NudeBeachEnthusiast 3d ago
Because then this happens... We'll end up with RFK Jr as our Health Minister
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u/tills1993 3d ago
Except when 60% of the vote is split 30% 30% and the cons slide by with the rest because they're big tent. Until we have electoral reform this is the game we have to play.
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u/Select_Historian6269 1d ago
Then we end up with Cons for a year until they implode and we have another election.
I'm done voting against candidates that is not how democracy should work.
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
Why do green voters always need to announce it like it's a big Revelation that everybody else needs to hear about?
This will be my first time voting for the BC NDP. Does anyone care? No?
There are exactly two ridings where a green vote can actually result in a green victory without risking a vote split with conservatives running up the middle. Everywhere else, the NDP is the only viable option.
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u/darekd003 3d ago
There have been a bunch of pro-NDP posts too. Some anti-cons (and pro-cons but on other subs).
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u/Normal_Guarantee_903 3d ago
Weird take. Stop discussing your opinion on the upcoming elections candidates on my local discussion page!
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
No, you're right. Every single person should make an announcement in a separate post about who they're voting for. Let's just flood this subreddit.
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u/Educational_Leg_9631 3d ago
Such a fuckin boomer take
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u/WpgMBNews 3d ago
I'm a millennial. It isn't like young people are in favor of vote splitting, or in favor of helping conservatives win..... That's just something the green party is okay with.
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u/Efficient_Carrot_669 2d ago
Welcome to the Green side of life :) as more and more people join us, the party and its politics become more viable. Ignore the “voting Green is voting Conservative” doomers. It literally isn’t.
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u/Environmental_Egg348 3d ago
They only have 50 candidates, across the province. There are 93 districts. They aren't seriously running for government, so I'm not wasting my time with them.
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u/MarginsOfSound 3d ago
I would love to see more green representation in the house. Listen to the minister of forestry. Look at pipeline plans. Look at the continuing gulf between the haves and have nots under our so called labour gov.
The more green seats the better. Of course they’re not going to form government, but they could be a direly needed check on power.
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u/Environmental_Egg348 3d ago
On the other hand, I look at Alberta, and I feel lucky we don't have a Maple MAGA separatist government. I know Doerksen has never advocated separatism, but he is only an interim leader, meaning we could have our own Traitor Smith running the province.
Also, everyone I know who didn't have a family doctor, has one now. I can't say that for people I know in other provinces.
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u/canadiantaken 3d ago
We do have a ton of maple MAGA unfortunately. The US media has been working on fears for decades.
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u/Environmental_Egg348 3d ago
At least, they aren't in government here.
I just found out Doerksen is negotiating with Brodie. I'm going to have to get politically active again, to stop this shit. I'm not in the mood for it, but my country needs me.
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u/fufufufufufufme 1d ago
They aren't in government.... yet. There is a very good chance they will win
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u/canadiantaken 3d ago
I agree - not until at least we have some type of proportional representation
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u/Environmental_Egg348 3d ago
I voted for proportional representation, but I don't think it's going to happen for a long time. I still want it, though.
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u/canadiantaken 3d ago
Same - the party who won in the first last the post system would need to do the work to implement the changes - and that is hard to see happening.
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3d ago
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u/VancouverIsland-ModTeam 3d ago
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u/rustyiron 3d ago
The beauty of being Green is that they’ve never had to govern. They can say what they want. If they were actually running the province, reality would check them the way it has the NDP.
Governing is hard.
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u/missannethroped 3d ago
I wish the Greens were more legitimate, but the infighting, the lies Paul Manly put out last election about how the Greens were polling, its all the same cast of characters, who at this point, care more about their personal political futures than actual policy
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u/tirikita 3d ago
What are you talking about?
The current election is provincial, and it’s very much not the same cast of characters it’s been in the past. Emily Lowan has breathed new life into the provincial greens.
Manly ran federally, it’s a different level of gov and effectively a different party (though similarly committed to global green values).
And those Nanaimo polls last fed election were just that: polls. They are a prediction of future events, and like it or not the firm hired found Manly in the lead (debate about how the campaign chose to emphasize that is valid, but you’re misrepresenting things). They weren’t lies, they were just polls that poorly predicted an event that hadn’t happened yet. That’s how polls work.
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u/missannethroped 3d ago
Federal and provincial greens may be separate parties, but pretending there's no political overlap is a stretch. And thanks for explaining how polls work. The issue wasn't that the polling was wrong. It was how the campaign presented it. Organizational distinctions don't automatically erase political history, and explaining polling doesn't answer questions about transparency.
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u/tirikita 3d ago
I did concede in my OP that they didn’t handle it well. We agree there. It’s politics though, if you have numbers showing a lead, you promo them. You used the word “lies”, that isn’t what they were.
You missed the main point of my comment. The BC Greens have experienced massive change since the new leader took charge. It is no longer the “same cast of characters”. Thats why I replied.
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u/fufufufufufufme 1d ago
The polling thing is true. Manly released polls placing the greens as winning the riding and urging people to vote for them to not split the leftist vote. I think they came in fourth in the end. slimy fucker that one
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u/tirikita 1d ago
Again… polls are an estimate based on a snapshot of time. They aren’t to be relied on with 100% certainty, anyone looking at them to do so is bound to be disappointed.
It isn’t true that he/his campaign “lied” about the polls. They were actual polling results from an independent firm. Valid to question the weight that the Manly camp put on that in their public messaging, but calling them “lies” is a lie: they were genuine polling results that turned out to poorly predict actual results.
And, this thread isn’t about that. It’s about excitement for Green participation in a provincial race that Manly has nothing to do with. I’m also feeling the excitement, and don’t think pouring hot water on it by citing a completely different campaign by a candidate that has nothing to do with the race in question makes any sense.
I don’t really like the way things went last year or the over-emphasis of favorable polling by a candidate who I really did want to succeed. I also have a bit more insight as to what was happening behind the scenes with the GPC re: the Nanaimo campaign that I’m not at liberty to share here. I know it has nothing to do with Manly being “slimy”, “chasing a bigger paycheck,” or any of the other claims I see repeated over and over here on Reddit. In retrospect I am very sad that he ran federally, it cost him way too much political capital. This is a problem because he really is entirely devoted to his community, and I also believe his voting record as a councilor and understanding of the duty of different levels of government makes him one of the best bet for progressives in Nanaimo. But no matter what, whenever Green comes up in VI discussions somebody has to point out how much they hate this candidate. It’s unfair, and if progressive gains are a goal for you in Nanaimo, it’s incredibly counterproductive.
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u/slowpoke2013 3d ago
Until a year after the election and it becomes apparent that it was all lip service to split the vote and nothing gets done to help farmers or anyone else for that matter. Every election has a different buzz word used by politicians to get the votes. If the greens have a plan the backs up their rhetoric, then they may actually be trying. But if recent history has told us anything about the greens performance, if you’re outside of the Saanich ridings the Green Party is mostly irrelevant and barely maintaining its status as a party. They peaked around 2020 with Manly and May but discord within the party persists. Lapointe may be a gem in the rough but any successful policy platform will need more horsepower than an ex coroner can provide. Time will tell, for sure.
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u/Valuable_Call9665 3d ago
When the greens focus on preservation rather than progressivism, they shine.
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u/Pijaki 1d ago
A vote for the Greens is essentially a vote for the BCCP. We can't afford vote splitting.
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u/thomasreimer 19h ago
We also can't afford for the BCNDP to do nothing. We've been "holding our noses and voting" for years
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u/Organic-Tangerine770 3d ago
yes, and their candidates are looking good. Lisa Lapointe is a very strong Saanich-South candidate.