The ONDP has sent out a release calling Eco Fees a “fiasco”. It isn’t. It’s not perfect and their are some real issues to address, but its a baby step in the right direction towards taxing “bads” instead of income. A while back I differentiated the Green Party of Ontario stance on the HST from the ONDP and the PCs by putting forward the idea that we provide thoughtful opposition, I think this falls into the same category. Read more »

Sorry I seem to have forgotten that I'm a blogger.  Anyway I've been rather busy on some other web projects that have unfortunately taken away my writing time.

I meant to blog about this earlier, a little while back Mike Schreiner and co swung through Ottawa for the weekend and held a well attended policy forum at the University of Ottawa.  There were two rooms and two groups one focused on local food policy (I think, since I wasn't in that room) and the other focused on reforming the GPO constitution (that's where I was).

For those of you who would rather watch paint dry than here about party governance I will just say that the constitutional resolutions that came out of that and other meetings are very important and will allow the party to function more easily.  It really moves the constitutional ball down the field, I just didn't realize how far the ball had to go. Read more »

Yesterday I wrote that the GPO distinguishes itself from the other opposition parties by providing thoughtful opposition.  I cited the various opposition positions on HST as an example.  Today on his blog Steve highlights another great example of this.

Tension between Toronto and the rest of Ontario?  Easy just have Toronto succeed, or at least that's what one Conservative MPP suggests.  That tension is a real problem in Ontario but Murdoch's solution (which I do believe is titled Cutting Off Our Nose to Spite Our Face) is far from thoughtful.  The PC's simply do not provide a realistic alternative to the Liberals. Read more »

On Sunday John posted a blog putting forward that the GPO might leaning too far to the "blue-green" side and suggested we move a bit back towards "tree-hugging".   I think his point is important, we need do distinguish ourselves from our competition.  In an effort to ensure that we are taken seriously and not simply written off as the granola-munching fringe we have perhaps made ourselves look very much like PCs.

However I think we can distinguish ourselves from the them without becoming more "deep-green". Read more »