TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
Elizabeth May is one of two sitting members and the leader of the Green party.
Bruce Hyer is the second sitting member; he was elected as an NDP MP, left the party over its gun registry position to sit as independent, and in December 2013 joined the Green party.
Elizabeth May did not vote in favour of going to war, but also was not able to speak on the issue because of a motion to close debate. One non-whipped vote can't fairly be said to represent the party as a whole, or to define the relative "progressiveness" of the party or even its (2) elected representatives.
Just to clarify, since this is still kicking around, my point wasn't about the Greens so much as it was the NOW editor declaring, as if it was an objective fact, that the Greens were not a "progressive" party. Putting aside that he was factually WRONG about the actual vote, it's not his right to make such unilateral statements. I've seen a lot of that this election, with both "progressive" and other loaded terms, and I don't like it.
I'm sure Hollet wouldn't consider me progressive but I think I am on the vast majority of issues. I happen to think Chow has run a weak campaign but she is the self-professed "progressive" candidate so that means "progressives," like the entire staff of NOW, are going to unquestioningly vote for her.
I don't label myself (as a progressive or a liberal or a Ford National or anything else) and situate myself based on what I see. There are some people who think John Tory is Doug Ford with a better vocabulary; despite some elements of his campaign that give me trouble, I think that's absurd. But if you're a "progressive," you don't have much of a choice but to think so, while pretending Olivia has just done a bang-up job with her "high-road" approach to the Fords and her non-stop repeating of stories about women who can't get on streetcars.
So, to sum up the rant, I don't like people who think it's their right to label other people. the Greens are, by any objective measure, a pretty progressive party and if some bleeding-heart type doesn't like the way one guy voted, that says more about him and his Bush Doctrine view of the world than about them. The municipal implications are legion, given how fired-up things have been.