Steamy gossip: Dufferin-Caledon can win seat in Ontario

Question: After winning our first green seat in Canada, what would be the next best thing to happen to the federal party? Answer: winning a green seat for a provincial party in the upcoming elections.

Winning our first green seat in Canada was a historic break-through. But, it won’t mean much unless we can confirm it was just a first step. It won’t mean much unless winning green seats here and there in every federal and provincial election becomes the new normal.

At 29% in a recent poll (http://t.co/jq7Heni), Dufferin-Caledon is as likely as any constituency to keep the momentum going in Ontario. The obvious reason for our optimism is that we have a great candidate in Rob Strang (www.RobStrang.ca). He’s been involved with the Green Party for over 10 years. He’s been a respected local municipal councillor and local newspaper columnist. He’s a professional engineer running his own business, an experienced green candidate and the male deputy leader for the GPO. The less obvious but equally important reason for our optimism is that we have been making good use of our time in between elections; we have been steadily and quietly building up a green local presence and a winning campaign team machine over the last 10 years.

It was a pleasant surprise for us to get confirmation that we are polling at 29%  in Dufferin-Caledon but it was hardly a shock. In the last federal campaign, where we ended up with the only 2nd place GPC finish in Canada, we were polling at 20-25% levels before the orange wave hit. More importantly, because provincial voting patterns in Dufferin-Caledon have always been much less skewed than federal ones, provincially we are much closer to the incumbent Conservatives.

We are working closely with the provincial campaign team and were already working closely with Mike Schreiner even before he became the GPO leader. We are doing our best to ensure that a huge local issue, the Melancthon Mega Quarry, becomes a provincial level election issue. The proposed monster quarry that’s increasingly been raising concerns all over Ontario is in Dufferin-Caledon.

We’ve been steadily increasing our campaign budgets to the point that our last federal campaign was fully funded. However, provincially we don’t benefit from the 60% campaign rebates given to federal parties that break the 10% barrier. Hence, we still need more funds. Please consider making a donation to the GPO or to the local Dufferin-Caledon campaign. Either will equally help to increase our chances of winning a seat in Ontario and either will help our federal party.