Murray Dobbin has written another piece about the Green Party and I wanted to respond to a few of his comments. The focus of the article is on Elizabeth May and I think the Green Party is lucky to have high quality individuals such as her and David Chernushenko running for our leadership. But I'm going to focus my comments below on some of the subtext in the article.

Jim Harris, the corporate inspirational speaker who has led the party through a controversial three years of ups and downs has announced he will step down after a poor showing the last election.

As I outline in this article I don't think the Greens did poorly in the last election. And the party has polled has high as 9% in recent weeks - we clearly still have momentum.  Moreover, Harris did not state that he decided to step down because the party did poorly - here is his speech with his thoughts on the matter. But Dobbin has presented the information in a way that might make a reader believe that Harris said the party did poorly, and this is incorrect.

Despite the funding, the party received just 4.5 per cent of the vote in the recent election.

We increased our vote total by 80,000 in the 2006 election, an increase of 14.4% from 2004. I think a more relevant number than the 4.5% is how much it cost to win a vote. Even with the funding the Greens spent several times less than the other major parties to win each vote. In 2004 the number was $0.86 per vote for the GPC and $5.66 per vote for the NDP. The GPC is much more effective than other parties at converting the funding we have available into votes at the polls.

It is here that the biggest unknown hangs over a redirected Green Party. While May would probably not replicate Harris's approach of running in every seat — in the process helping elect Conservatives and defeat NDPers — she will minimally want a seat in the House of Commons for herself. Would the NDP, in return for the Greens avoiding ridings where the NDP has a chance, facilitate her election by not running against her?

If not, the NDP could face a more serious dilemma. If Jack Layton's strategy is to replace the Liberals as the official opposition, the temptation for the Greens to replace the NDP as the progressive alternative might prove to be irresistible.

The strategy and accommodations suggested by Dobbin would do everything to help the NDP and nothing to help the Greens. They were tried in a Vancouver election a few years back and did not work. In the long run not running candidates for "strategic" reasons will also reinforce a perception in the public that we are opportunistic and are not serious about getting elected.

Running 308 candidates and giving every Canadian a chance to vote Green and understand our policies is essential to our success. We have run 308 twice - I coordinated the team that did so the first time - and I know we have the institutional capacity to do so again. Our new leader can set new priorities for the party in addition to running 308 candidates.

It is also incorrect to imply that Green voters are helping elect Conservatives and defeat NDPers. I'll write a separate blog article on that topic.