"God help us all"

I've said before, if [Harper] gets a majority government, God help us all.

Danny Williams, Premier of Newfoundland

I couldn't agree more.

CMM Joint GPO/GPC CA/EDA AGM

That's a lot of acronyms.

CMM - Carleton Mississippi Mills
GPO - Green Party of Ontario
GPC - Green Party of Canada
CA - Constituency Association (Provincial term)
EDA - Electoral District Association (Federal term)
AGM - Annual General Meeting

This year the provincial and federal Green Party associations for CMM decided to work as a unit and we elected a unified executive. Except for CEO and financial, which we have kept separate for each association.

Outside of an election, the AGM is the time when we renew the hardcore volunteers and try and plant the seeds of strategy for the next year.

Financial reports for the year were given for GPO and GPC.

Jim McKenzie gave a nice analysis of the last provincial election.

John Hogg gave a presentation on the campaign plan for the next federal election.

Jake Cole talked about his views on when the federal election might happen and what it will take to win.

John Ogilvie gave a summary of the GPO AGM.

Jeannie Warnock and Mark MacKenzie the GPO Eastern Ontario representatives on the GPO council gave us an update the state of the GPO.

Mark MacKenzie closed out our meeting with a presentation about the recent Global Greens conference in Brazil.

We had guest speakers.

Donate
GPC: https://secure.greenparty.ca/donation.php?origin=FSA-35012
GPO: https://secure.civicrm.ca/gpo.ca/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1

Al Gore's New Slideshow

US GP Presidential Candidates

This video provides a nice introduction to the US Green Party Candidates for the 2008 Presidential election.

From Greenpeace... a must see

Andrew Ference, my new favorite NHL player?

Andrew Ference may have just become my new favorite NHL player.

Why?

[Andrew Ference and David Suzuki] are teaming up to help offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced by NHL players whose jobs require them to travel by planes, trains, buses and cars. link

Aftermath

The election is over and Norm Sterling has won a ninth term in office. I could have written that first before the election writ was dropped, sadly.

John Ogilvie came in 3rd with 10.5% of the vote. An awesome step forward for the Green Party locally.

We need to congratulate ourselves for the effort we put forward and congratulate John on the fine campaign he ran.

Well done folks, now we move forward. We look to build on the ever growing team we put together throughout this election. Get ready for the, possibly, coming federal election and the GPO AGM.

John Ogilvie Endorsed by the Ottawa Citizen

John Ogilvie, the GPO candidate in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, has been endorsed by the Ottawa Citizen.

If the voters of Carleton-Mississippi Mills want to make a difference at Queen's Park, they should elect John Ogilvie as their MPP.

Unfortunately the article is not currently available on-line, but pick a copy of the Friday October 5th edition of the Ottawa Citizen, page F4.

UPDATE: found the link to the article on-line.

GPO release MMP list plan

The Green Party of Ontario has outlined its process for nominating list candidates.

The Greens' list, de Jong said, will feature alternating male and female candidates, beginning with the party's Leader and its Deputy Leaders, who are elected democratically in party-wide ballots. The current Deputy Leaders are Victoria Serra, the candidate in Huron-Bruce, and Dr. Sanjeev Goel, who's running in Brampton West.

Also on the list are the top female and male vote-getters, by percentage, from the previous election, in order to reflect the will of party supporters. The balance of list candidates will be chosen through a democratic election among members at the Green Party's annual general meeting. (link)

The case against FPTP

Andrew Coyne has another excellent article on MMP, specifically the case against First Past The Post.

Here is an exert:

The winner is not the candidate who receives a majority of the votes cast, but simply the one who comes in first place. With four candidates, it can be done with as little as 25% plus one of the vote. The other 75% of the voters are rewarded for doing their civic duty with … bupkus. All in all, between one-half and two-thirds of all the votes cast in a given election are, in this sense, wasted.

MMP news round-up

A good round-up of recent news on MMP, from democraticSPACE.com.

Loss of Respect

I used to respect Sheila Copps, that is until I read this article.

In it she goes on about why she is against MMP in Ontario. The primary tool in her argument is fear mongering. She claims religious extremist will take over the government.

I used to have respect for her. All of that is now gone. She has demonstrated herself to be a bigot.

Not doing your homework Paul?

Paul Arbour, federal CMM NDP candidate, either likes to deliberately mislead the public, or simply can't be bothered to read beyond the headlines.

How else can you explain this blog posting. He accuses the Green Party of Canada (GPC) of wanting to raise your taxes. Which on the surface looks like what the GPC was trying to do. Why only on the surface? Because the GPC plan calls for imposing a carbon tax and taking that revenue and lowering personal income tax and payroll taxes. The net result is revenue neutral. Elizabeth May has a great blog posting about the proposal.

Paul doesn't even allude to this possibility in his posting. I hope he puts more research into other things he does or having him as our MP would be very similar to having Gordon O'Connor. Mr. O'Connor seemed to be apologizing for misleading parliament every other day.

Vote Yes for MMP

It should be no surprise that I am a yes supporter for MMP.

Donate $10.10 to cause. I have. Why $10.10? Find out here.

It is time to give Ontario the government that it actually votes for. Vote yes for MMP on October 10th.

Learn about MMP here.

Frank de Jong in Australia

Walk Score

Stumbled onto an interesting mash-up site.

You put in your address and it gives you a score out of 100 indicating how walkable your neigbourhood is.

I live in a rural area and got a very low score of 8 out of 100.

What is your "Walk Score"? Find out at www.walkscore.com

CMM Greens AGM - live thread

I'm sitting at the CMM Green FGPA AGM.

We're currently waiting for quorum to show up so we can elect the executive.

It's far too sunny outside to have an indoor meeting.


Update 7:00PM: We're good to go! Jake Cole kicks it off.

Nominations for CMM Greens FGPA executive positions.
CEO - Murray Reeves
FA - Bill Pickett
Sec - vacant
Membership - Carl Bovell
Fundraising Chair - John Ogilvie
Volunteer Chair - Rick Lorenz
Communications Chair - Ronald Servant
Youth Chair - vacant
Policy Research Chair - Jim MacKenzie
Campaign Readiness - vacant
3 Members-at-large - Rex Benning, Andrew MacDonald, Bozena Lech
Organizing Chair - Diane Smith

No contested positions.

Update 7:30 PM: John Ogilvie is giving a great presentation on the CMM Greens GPO plans for the fall election.

A presentation by Andrew MacDonald on raising the profile of the Green Party and the green message. Check out www.theworldcafe.com

Update 8:00 PM: Murray Reeves presents the year in review.

Outgoing FA Rick Lorenz gives the current financial report.

Update 8:20PM: Murray updates us on how we did against our operating plan.

Update 8:45PM: We have agreed to have joint meetings of the Federal and Provincial Greens.

Update 9:00PM: Meeting closed!

Citizen's Assembly

Via democraticSPACE

Live Earth in Kanata

Come out to the Royal Oak in Kanata for Live Earth this Saturday July 7th starting at 5PM.

Go here for event details.