CONGRATULATIONS TO THE GREEN PARTY OF CANADA
Jim Harris' Election Eve Victory Speech

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of voters all across Canada who have cast their ballots for Green Party candidates. You are the force that will drive change in Canadian politics and all the other parties in the coming months and years. You will force all the old line traditional parties to address the issues we have been talking about for 20 years.

Thank you to our thousands of Green Party volunteers across Canada who have toiled so tirelessly in this election.

Thank you to the organizing team that did such a fantastic job ensuring we had the first ever full slate of Green Party candidates - one in every riding. Thank you to the media team and the strategy team with your fantastic execution.

And thank you to the 308 women and men across Canada who stood up and spoke the truth.

Six months ago no one would have predicted that we would be where we are tonight:

BC broadcaster Raif Mair one of the most popular talk show hosts in Vancouver endorsed the Green Party a few days ago. The Ottawa Citizen endorsed our Ottawa Center candidate David Cherneshenko over Ed Broadbent,

We have seen over 580,000 voters cast their ballot for the Green Party in this election.

• The Ekos poll that came out two days ago showed the Green Party was the second choice of 11% of Canadians - so our party has triple to quadruple the growth potential.
  
• In 1988 the Reform Party won 2.1% of the vote or 276,535 votes and no seats. The following election in 1993 the Reform Party won 52 seats. The Green Party has just won more than double what Reform did in 1988 - and we will win seats in the next election!

On the televised leaders debates:

• 76% of Canadians - some 17 million voters felt we should have been included in the televised leaders debates.
  
• I want to thank the thousands and thousands and thousands of Canadians who registered their protests with broadcasters about the unfairness of five unelected, unaccountable network executives felt they had the power to exclude the voice of the Green Party despite the fact that we were running in every riding, despite the fact that we were running more than four times as many candidates as the Bloc, despite the fact that we attract more youth support for our party as a percentage of our vote than any other party,
  
• Newspapers from coast to coast to coast ran editorials arguing for our inclusion in the televised leaders debates including the Cape Breton Post, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Province, and Victoria Times Colonist.
  
• Countless columnists including Peter Desbarats the former Dean of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario argued for our inclusion.
  
• Support for our inclusion came from all party lines Senator Mira Spivak, Liberal MP Denis Mills, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, Quebec ADQ leader Mario Dumont, and Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Keith Norton.
  
• And Edward Greenspon, the Editor of the Globe and Mail wrote a letter from the editor talking about the Green Party's coming of age and reporting that the editorial board voted 9 to 1 with three abstentions to increase coverage of the Green Party.

Finally we have had endorsements of our positions from surprising quarters.

• Pentagon, which in a secret report said that the global climate change posed a larger threat to US national security than terrorism. Now when you have the Pentagon saying your issues are front and center you know you have arrived! (By the way while the Pentagon has endorsed our position, the Green Party does not endorse the Pentagon).

For the actual leaders debate it was a huge disappointment, Canadians were turned off and tuned out. In the end less than 10% of Canadians could bear to watch the two hour fiascos.

Canadians in this election were angry, cynical and disillusioned and they have good reason to be. Because if there were two words I could use to characterize this election it would be anger and fear. This has been one of the most negative campaigns in Canadian history. This is leading to the anger and cynicism with politics in general. The election has been about attack ads, and the raw pursuit of power - rather than talking about issues and solutions to the problems Canadians face.

But I am proud of the Green Party's campaign:

We didn't spend one nickel on negative attack ads. We have been talking about the issues. We have been positive. And electors have been grateful.

We have been talking about creative, constructive solutions, like creating "green collar" jobs. Denmark and Holland now collectively export $10B of wind turbine technology and have created 12,000 jobs.

I just picked up my Toyota Prius today - a hybrid car which uses only 50% of the gasoline of a traditional vehicle by reclaiming energy from braking that would otherwise be lost. But why is it only Japanese car companies that are making hybrids? We would like to create "green collar" jobs right here, right now in Canada.

Canadians are hungry for change. In 2000 more people did not vote than voted for the winning party - some 39% of Canadians didn't cast a ballot - 8.2 million Canadians - and when you ask them why it's because they didn't see their values and their ethics reflected in any of the old line political parties.

Young people don't see the point of participating in election. In the last federal election only 24% of first time youth voters (those between 18 and 22) bothered to cast a ballot. Why? Because they don't see their values and their ethics reflected in any of the old line parties. I find it particularly ironic that the Green Party which has more youth support than any other party as a percentage of our vote was excluded from the televised leaders debate and then commentators wonder why youth don't vote.

I want to close by talking about our electoral system. Imagine five parties running in every riding and they each get 20% of the vote. But one party gets one more vote in all 308 ridings it would have 100% of the seats in Ottawa with the same percentage of popular vote. Would you call that democratic? And the other four parties with 80% of the vote would not have a single seat. Would you call that democratic?

Tonight we won over 580,000 votes while the Bloc won 1.7 million - they got 54 seats and we got none. We had one-third of their vote and by extension if we had one-third of the number of seats they do we would have 18 MPs. How can anyone call our electoral system fair?

How our system works is the problem. Up until this election you first identified party you most despised and then worked to figure out who has the best chance of beating them. If you vote for the bad to keep out the worse - a if you vote strategically - a if you vote for the lesser of three evils - a you will always be left with bad government.

Canadians want change. Real change. New direction. New vision. Hope. Positive campaigning.

Until we change the system we will always get what we have always got. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The problem is with the electoral system. Fair Vote Canada knows that. The Law Commission of Canada knows that.

It is the system that is the problem. Until we change the system we cannot expect any better.

The electoral system we propose the mixed member system. The Law Commission of Canada proposed that two thirds be elected with our current system with larger ridings and one third from lists. So tonight, with 4.3% of the vote we would have 13 MPs.

We are proud in this election that we were the only party promising to implement a system of proportional representation that would double the number of women in parliament.

We are the only party that has been talking about health, not just health care: we believe in investing more in the health care system but the number of cancers are predicted to double in Canada in the next 50 years. Don't you think it would be a good idea to remove the source of carcinogens from our environment rather than just treat cancer once we get it?

We are proud of our efforts in this election.

We are thankful to the almost 600,000 Canadians who responded to our message of hope and positive campaigning style.

The 308 candidates from coast to coast to coast did us proud in this election.

We are excited about the future.

And in just 6-12 months we may be at the polls again. So we will take the next 48 hours to celebrate!!

And then we will begin preparing for the next election when we will again run a candidate in every riding. And this time the broadcasters will not dare exclude our voice - and we will see our vote more than double, triple as it did in BC when Adriane Carr was included in the televised leaders debate in the 2001 provincial election.

And so thank you!

Jim Harris
Leader of the Green Party of Canada
www.greenparty.ca

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