Dave Bagler

Last night the Green Party of Ontario took some important strides in the ridings of Leeds-Grenville (LG) and Ottawa West-Nepean (OWN).

In 2007 we were 3rd in LG with 7.18% of the vote.  We led the NDP by only 86 votes (we had 2,907, they had 2,821) with 40,462 or 54.9% of voters participating.  Last night we extended our 86 vote lead on the NDP to 700!  With a voter turn out that dropped down to 36.9% every party last votes.  However we lost the least number of votes or second least proportionally depending on how you want to look at it.

There was great news today for both of the Green Party of Ontario by-election campaigns in the form of a strong endorsement from Randall Denley in the Ottawa Citizen.

From our candidates to, our leader, to our party's policies Mr. Denley is very impressed.

On our competition:

"There are the Liberals, with their scandals and broken promises; the PCs, still trying to figure out who they are; and the NDP, for those who think we don’t have enough socialism and big government."

On our platform:

"...the Greens have policies that are much more in sync with real life than those of their competitors."

On Mike's involvement in the by-elections:

Mark MacKenzie is the GPO candidate in the Ottawa-West Nepean by-election.  I've known Mark for a while now as he's a prominent Green in the Ottawa area.  I like Mark's three election strategy he's taking in the riding.  There's this by-election, the next federal election and the 2011 provincial election in a short span of time.  Mark is planning on running in each of these and building off the canvassing efforts of the previous campaign.  Hopefully our results in OWN will show substantial growth over the next couple years.

There have been two Ontario by-elections since the 2007 general election.  In each of these by-elections the voter turn-out was far lower than it was in 2007.  In HKLB the turnout dropped by 34% or to put it another way only 66% of people who voted in the general bothered to vote in the by-election.  Even in a by-election with provincial implications only 39% of voters showed up at the polls.

So there's a new HD poll out.  My first impression is that I like the new green look but now on to more substantial observations.

So this survey was conducted over 2 weeks with a sample size of 1,000 per week.  Nationally HD has us at 9% (not bad) with the Libs and Cons tied at 32% (hopefully keeping us from a spring election).

Regionally we are sitting at:

The Ontario Young Liberals have a postcard that they have been distributing on campuses across the province which strongly states that we need to Stand Up For Kyoto.  Their point I guess is that Canada needs to take strong action to reduce emissions and make good on our international commitments.  Bravo, I could not agree more.

We're coming up to the end of the year and I've been trying to decide how much I will be donating and where my donations will be going (local GPC? local GPO?  Central GPC? Central GPO?) and through this process I have also been thinking of ways that the GPC/GPO could raise money through small but steady donations.

One time donations are great but but for many people a one time donation of $50 is more difficult than a monthly donation of $10 even though the monthly donation of $10 will end up costing $70 more by the year's end.

Mike Schreiner became the leader of the Green Party of Ontario last weekend in London.  There was a lot of media coverage this morning marking a beginning of a new and exciting chapter for the GPO.

Mike was in Ottawa last week for the Ottawa Centre AGM and to speak with Eastern Ontario Green Party members.

I got some time to speak with him and was really impressed by his vision of the GPO as we begin (and in some cases continue) preparations for 2011.

Update your bookmarks.  Update your RSS readers of choice.  There is a new Green blogger feed cluster aptly named Green Bloggers.

This feed cluster found at greenbloggers.feedcluster.com already has a more comprehensive list of Green bloggers than the Canadian Greens cluster.

Make sure your blog is added to the new feed cluster and checkout all the great Green blogs.

I was in Toronto this weekend for Frank de Jong's goodbye bash.  It was really great to hear all the letters from around the world thanking Frank for his service.  Dalton McGuinty and Howard Hampton sent letters.  John Torry showed what a class act he is by being there and giving a wonderful speech that was both humble and hilarious.

All-and-all it was a great event, it was a deserved tribute to Frank where we all had fun and to top things off raised $10,000 for the Green Party of Ontario.