by PATRICK LEJTENYI

The federal Green Party of Canada has been flying under the radar for a long time. In last January’s election, they got 4.5 per cent of the national vote, their highest ever, but failed to send anyone to Ottawa. When the three candidates vying for the Green Party’s leadership meet for a debate next Tuesday at John Abbott College, raising the party’s profile will be a high priority.

The candidates are Elizabeth May, the former head of the Sierra Club of Canada, David Chernushenko, an environmental consultant from Ottawa, and Jim Fannon, a real estate agent, hemp store owner and trained Toastmaster from Ste. Catharines, Ontario. Of the three, the 52-year-old, American-born May is easily the most familiar to Canadians, having recently stepped down from her high-profile position as executive director of the Sierra Club (“the hardest decision I’ve ever made,” she says). It would seem, in the week prior to the Green’s national convention in Ottawa, that May is the one to beat.

Spreading the word

But never count out the challengers. Chernushenko, 43, enjoys a long list of eco-friendly accomplishments and is currently the Green Party’s deputy leader and climate change critic. In January, he received the highest vote total—around 7,000—of any Green Party candidate ever, in his Ottawa Centre riding. He’s soft-spoken and exudes a quiet, technocratic competence.

Jim Fannon, on the other hand, seems to relish his role as a salesman. At 38, he has the most experience in campaigning, having first entered politics as a Green in 1993. The Green leadership campaign makes the sixth he’s run in. Affable and quick in conversation, he also likes to promote healthy living through essential fatty acids and “transforming the world through diet.”

What all three have in common is the shared goal of raising the party’s profile. But there are differences of opinion in going about doing just that. In the lead-up to the January election, the Greens were annoyed at not being invited to the televised debates between the leaders of the four main parties. Because they didn’t have a sitting MP, and didn’t have much of a presence between elections, they weren’t considered eligible.

To Chernushenko, getting the message out to people and making the voting public aware that the Green Party isn’t a joke is priority number one. That means knocking on a lot of doors and building up a viable and strong grassroots movement. “We’ve done everything we have to [to get invited to the debates] except get elected,” he says. “But we’re not going to whine or beg. We’ll get invited when it’s felt that the party can’t be left off.”

Fannon says getting an MP elected as soon as possible must be the first priority, thus ensuring the party a spot on the televised debates. If that means making arrangements with other parties to ensure a Green gets elected somewhere, so be it. “There are deals to be made in politics,” he says.

As for May, her position is somewhere in between. She agrees with both men that strong, national support is vital to being taken seriously, but she also says there is a distinct possibility of getting a parliamentarian—most likely a senator—to switch to the Greens. “Getting a senator to switch would be easier, because there can be a psychological barrier to electing the first Green MP,” she says. She also says the party needs to build a profile on a wide range of topics other than environmental, something she says she’d encourage at public policy meetings leading up to the next election.

Passion and pain

One problem the party’s faced, other than being ignored by the mainstream media, is some nasty infighting. Fannon in particular complains that too many decisions are being decided by the inner core of Green Party executives behind closed doors, and too many good people have been lost due to ego-clashing and personal agendas. He wants to bring a spirit of reconciliation to the party and welcome people who’ve been tossed back into the Green fold. “People here tend to be passionate, and passions can run high,” he says. “Sometimes the infighting can be unbelievable.”

Having been a Green Party member for only a few months, May says, has spared her from being tarred with that brush. This may indeed help her when it comes to that particular concern, but, says Fannon, being “green” to politics won’t with others.

The Green Party leaders’ debate takes place at the Agora on the John Abbott College campus on Tuesday, Aug. 22 at 7 p.m. See www.greenparty.ca for more info.