Dion bid for left voters has some Greens seeing red
By Sue Bailey
THE CANADIAN PRESS
ORILLIA, Ont. -- Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's ratcheted up pitch for Green and NDP votes didn't go over well Saturday with Valerie Powell.
The Green candidate in the Orillia, Ont.-area riding of Simcoe North was fuming as Dion made his escalating appeal at a farmers' market here.
She resents his political expedience almost as much as she regrets what she says is her own leader's mixed message to confused voters.
"I think she's muddying the waters," Powell said of Green party head Elizabeth May. "I think she's the best prime minister, and we have to keep working hard as Greens to make sure we have as many MPs as possible.
"It won't happen if we keep giving our votes away."
May's intense focus on defeating Prime Minister Stephen Harper clashes with the Green leader's repeatedly professed disapproval of strategic voting, Powell says.
The implication is that the only real option is to abandon voting on principle for Greens or the New Democrats, she said in an interview.
In fact, the second and more desireable option is for left-of-centrists to stick to their electoral convictions and build lasting alternatives to a tired two-party system, Powell says.
She concedes that the opposition vote split could well propel the Tories back into power.
"But we have to stay the course and definitely vote for what we believe in."
Another crucial factor is funding, Powell says. Any party that wins at least two per cent of the popular vote gets $1.75 per vote.
"We could lose our funding" if enough voters answer Dion's clarion call, she said. The Greens won 4.5 per cent of the popular vote in 2006, or about 660,000 ballots in their favour.
Results like that put the party, along with the NDP, squarely in Dion's sights. But he saves his strongest words for the New Democrats.
"Consider that twice because it's a vote for Stephen Harper," Dion is warning Jack Layton supporters in a tried and true Liberal attempt to squeeze the NDP vote.
"I'll be a progressive prime minister."
It worked in 2004 as a minority Liberal victory was eked out of a sudden surge of what had been soft NDP support. The same tactic was less successful in the last federal campaign.
Dion has repeatedly refused to consider the notion of banding with one or more of the NDP, Bloc Quebecois or Greens to topple a Conservative minority government and form a coalition if Harper narrowly wins Tuesday.
People "have one vote" in the current system and must support Liberals if they realistically hope to replace the Conservatives, he says.
"Never will you have a prime minister greener than me," Dion likes to say.
Into the fray step constituents, many of whom say they're not sure what to do Tuesday. For some it's a bland choice between leaders they find equally unsavoury, for others a reticence to "waste" their ballot on a party with no chance of governing.
"Well, I have a problem," said Lynn Lambert, who was selling bread as Dion and a media throng moved past at the farmers' market.
"I like Stephane Dion, but I'd like to see a majority government. I'm struggling."
He would have preferred "less criticism of the Conservatives and more substance," on Liberal economic policy. "I hear a lot of rhetoric."
John Rosebush, a retired small-business tax and investment consultant, stood by Lambert as Dion walked by. He's a life-long Conservative but says this time he'll choose between the Liberals and the Greens.
"I despise the Harper campaign for the way they've done it.
"I don't like negativism. I don't like the attacks. I like people to tell me what they're going to do. I like to hear positive thoughts and not negative thoughts. That's basically it."
The Canadian Press
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