NOW Magazine has a good article on one of the primary disagreements I have with the NDP as it's presently constituted: it's reliance on the support of extractive or otherwise environmentally destructive industries. In this election, the spotlight is on the forestry and paper industries, but not too long ago Hampton was saying that we needed to leave Lambton and Atikokan (coal power plants) online.
I understand Hampton's political pressures-- and I don't want to diminish the economic problems of the north -- but from here it's hard not to see the NDP's committment to the environment as taking second place to propping up old legacy industries because their workers give the NDP lots of votes.
Meanwhile, the Greens have, to put it charitably, a bunch of really bad ideas too. But the difference is that the wackiest of the Green ideas (such as the unsustainable green tax shift idea) is probably impossible in the real world -- as in, it's not going to happen, so the pro-Green points (their school platform among them) remain while the anti-Green points are irrelevant. Doubly so, when you realize that the Greens won't win anything.
I wouldn't be voting Green if I lived in a riding where the NDP wasn't fielding such a lopsided incumbent. (The Liberals and Conservatives, as far as I've seen, just aren't advertising in my riding.) But it's possible for my vote to not count even if I vote for the winning candidate, if that pol is guaranteed victory anyway. So I'm increasingly leaning towards voting Green.
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I'm curious about the mechanics of the Green Party's proposed Carbon Tax (i.e. how it would work, how it compares to similar efforts worldwide - e.g. Norway, how realistic the estimate of raising $4.5 billion via an 8% tax is, 8% of what exactly, and so on.
Also wonder if the 'Location Value Tax' idea has been tried elsewhere and if so, how it went.
In general, tax shifting seems like a pretty plausible plan (reduce income taxes, raise consumption and gas taxes, etc.) but I can see how the Green platform is a bit short of specifics and seems (at first glance) a bit optimistic on the numbers.
You're not the only thinking of voting Green. I'm running into many New Dems in no-hope ridings who are prepared to do the same thing solely based on the education issue.
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