Rebuttal to Murray Dobbin's article "Why The Greens Aren't Very Green"

Excerpts of the article appear in black text.  Rebuttals are green (of course!).

The Greens are quite familiar with Mr. Dobbin’s work. At the height of the 2004 election he attacked the Green Party with a slanted piece, very similar to this one, designed to frighten voters deciding between the NDP and the Greens back into the NDP fold. Such media attention, critique or otherwise, would be gratifying if it were done with good journalistic faith. What is frustrating about Dobbin’s articles is that he gives the impression of providing disinterested reportage but the result is a partisan hatchet job. He is clearly in close contact with one or two former, disaffected Green Party members who are now try to knock the party down, but seems to seek no-one else in the party for a different perspective.

This is not to deny that the Green Party hasn't gone through growing pains in the last couple of years. It definitely has. It has grown and changed over the span of just a few years from a small, scattered group of concerned volunteers to Canada's fourth national party. And it, like every other party, has dirty laundry. But by and large, every member, virtually all of them volunteers, are committed and dedicated to the core values of Greens around the world, values of peace, sustainability, conservation and moderation. Most of these people get involved because they are very passionate and very intelligent with lots of ideas. When you get a large number of those people together and try to find consensus, you often have disagreement. Dobbin is getting his story solely from the disgruntled few, because it serves his partisan purpose.

If you visit this page from the Kingston Greens website (http://www.kingstongreens.ca/mainpages/CampaignsWeek4.asp) , you will find a link to the Dobbin article from the last election, and you can also find a point-by-point rebuttal that debunks his claims to the contrary.

As for Dobbin’s latest salvo appearing in The Tyee, the following rebuttal is offered for your consideration.

 DOBBIN EXCERPT:

He's right about the diversity of motivation and background amongst Green voters. Though his articles are aimed at NDP supporters, frightening them with a picture of the Green Party as far-right (which is nonsense), the Green Party draws votes equally from all of the other parties even the Bloc. And this makes perfect sense. The Green Party doesn't fit into the old divisions of left and right, red and blue. We like to think it has moved beyond that old paradigm. Its policies, and the problems those policies address, are universally important, they affect all people equally. Without clean water and clean air, discussions of tax cuts, social welfare, same-sex marriage, subsidized day care are moot. Sustainability must come first. Dobbin’s dismissal notwithstanding, GPC policy is socially and economically progressive and provides a strong defence of the environment.

REBUTTAL:

Dobbin presumes to judge whether, in his words, the Greens are Green. He pronounces the Green platform to be right-wing and characterizes the Sierra Club and Greenpeace rating the Green Party as second class when it comes to environmental policy. This is untrue. The Green Party is not right wing on social policy and is more progressive-centrist on fiscal policy.

He doesn't mention that the Sierra Club and Greenpeace report cards were almost equal in their rankings of the NDP and of the Greens. In Sierra Club's instance, I believe it was the difference between an A and an A-. Of course, the Greens could counter with the fact that David Suzuki endorsed the Green Party and spoke at our last policy convention.

It's up to the voter how much stock is put into these sorts of NGO "report cards". The real difference is in action. One thing that will always stand out for Greens in the last election is that the topic of "the environment" or "sustainability" was mentioned just once in the several hours of televised leader’s debates. The journalists posing questions didn’t take it upon themselves to raise the issue. It was NDP leader Jack Layton who mentioned the environment, as an aside, in his summing up. Of course, the Greens weren’t invited then and are shut out again. If the Green Party had been included in the leader’s debate, you can bet that there would have been a good deal more attention paid to the environment and sustainability: the biggest challenges of our generation, if not any generation.

DOBBIN EXCERPT:

Green Party leader Jim Harris, a former Tory and a motivational speaker for large corporations, is again preoccupied with running as many candidates as possible (he ran candidates in all 308 ridings in 2004). This is to ensure that there is a Green Party franchise in every riding in the country so the party's government funding remains intact. He knows that a certain percentage of voters will vote Green no matter what - and each vote brings the party $1.75. The party received over a million dollars under election financing rules implemented for the first time in 2004. Yet, Harris has been almost invisible since the last election, has done little organizing, no membership drive, has managed to raise just over $200,000 and has paid virtually no attention to policy development.

REBUTTAL:

Next, Dobbin portrays the Green Party’s push to run a full slate of candidates as shameless money-grubbing. He cynically implies that the Green Party is more concerned with feeding at the trough of government funding than it is at achieving any progressive political goals. There is no question that the funding helps. The Green Party, for most of its existence, and even now, runs on a shoestring budget. All of the work is done by committed volunteers, in between full time jobs, family responsibilities, etc.. If anything, receiving this funding is finally levelling the playing field, at least a little bit. It allows the Greens to have a permanent national office, with a couple of paid staff members, a mere shadow of the permanent political machinery at the disposal of the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP. 

It is disingenuous for the partisan Dobbin to suggest a misuse of government funding by the Green Party. The NDP also receive $1.75 for each vote they garner under the new election rules. But it is important to note that in the last federal election, the Green Party spent only 86 cents for each vote they won. By comparison, the NDP spent $5.66 per vote, the Conservatives $4.30 and the Liberals $3.34. It is quite clear which party demonstrates the most efficient and responsible use of its funding.

But achieving a financial footing that the other parties have always enjoyed is only a part of the motivation to run a full slate. It's also important to give every Canadian the option of voting Green, to give the voter an alternative to the old, non-progressive choices. In previous elections, many Canadians wanted to vote Green, but there just wasn't a Green candidate in their riding. As mentioned earlier, the Green Party is a truly global, universalist movement, and not just a regional phenomenon. So, it is important to give each Canadian the opportunity to vote Green in federal elections.

Are we to apologize for running a full slate? Isn’t that a primary goal of a national party? Dobbin writes scornfully as if the Greens have overstepped their bounds. There is only one way to have an impact on national politics and that is to run in every riding, to grow, to gain momentum and have the political elite, the old style parties, and the establishment media take notice. They've been able to ignore us and relegate us to the back pages for too long. If we're serious about actually achieving change, then we need to take bold steps. As most Greens are fond of saying, we don't really care if one or more of the other parties steal our platform, in its entirety, to keep us from winning. We'll still be getting a Green government. Running a candidate in every riding compels the other parties to sit up and pay attention, to start talking about sustainability and conservation, and fresh ideas. 

DOBBIN EXCERPT:

But most disturbing to many inside the party, is Harris's authoritarian style. Many people vote Green because they assume it is more grass roots, more democratic, than the others. They would be shocked to know that the party is the most top down of any of the federal parties - and that Harris simply ignores decisions that he doesn't agree with. The situation is so bad that half of the party's governing council have resigned in protest or been forced out in the past eight months. Harris has not moved to replace them because, argue the dissidents, he is happy with the remaining council members who tend to support him and he does not want to risk having more people turn into troublesome dissidents.

REBUTTAL:

The article goes on to describe Green Party leader Jim Harris as a ruthless autocrat. It is true that Harris has brought a more top-down approach to the central party. Dobbin, however, states that "half the governing council have resigned", recycling a myth that has been circulating for several weeks and was repeated on a CBC "expose" on Tuesday, Dec. 13th. Unfortunately for Dobbin, it isn't true.

According to the GPC National Office Manager, Matt Takach, "four councilors resigned out of twenty-one because of disagreements within the party, not half. Outside of those four, one councilor resigned to join a closed community, one councilor resigned due to ill health and has since passed away, one councilor resigned because she is a staff member (and has been replaced), and one council member due to professional reasons. Vacancies have been filled, as recently as last month's council elections."

As mentioned earlier, the party has gone through a phase of rapid growth, and there are some growing pains. Not everyone in the party loves Jim Harris. Like any of the party leaders, he does some things well and some not so well. He characterizes himself as the national representative and chief organizer, rather than a policy director, and not everyone sees that as a bad thing. At any rate, there is too much emphasis put on the party leader in Canadian politics and in the media.

Nevertheless, Dobbin states that the Green Party “is the most top down of any of the federal parties.” And here, he is being wilfully dishonest. Jim Harris is not the party. The Green Party is still very much grassroots. We get next to no interference in our activities as the Kingston Greens. We get some guidelines and the odd offer of help. But for the most part, each EDA directs itself, according to Green values. And I know this is the same across the country. I know we are far more decentralized and grassroots than any of the other 3 national parties. For instance, it is my understanding that the NDP EDAs can't do any of their own fund-raising. Everything is decided by their head office. If their HQ decides their riding isn't winnable, they get a much smaller share of campaign funds. The Green Party, instead, relies a great deal on grass roots organizing and fund-raising. The party is the strength of its constituents. Dobbin clearly did not talk to anyone beyond one or two disgruntled former party members. He's not interested in the other side to this story. 

DOBBIN EXCERPT:

At the 2004 AGM, members passed several constitutional amendments which were supposed to be ratified by a party-wide vote within six months. Fifteen months later, it hasn't happened and there are no plans to hold a vote. The 2005 AGM voted to have a policy convention this fall in anticipation of a federal election. Harris simply declined to hold one, then rescheduled it for February. Now that convention has been postponed.

Recently, a party-wide binding vote was taken on the sensitive issue of revenue sharing. Members voted overwhelmingly for an option that would divide up party revenue equally between local riding associations, provincial Green Parties and the national party. Harris was strongly opposed to this option, and recently announced that the issue was more complicated than he thought and he was not going to adhere to the members' wishes. None of this would be tolerated for a minute in any of the other federal parties. And none would simply allow half the seats on their governing council to go unfilled for months.