The Green Party don't do themselves a whole lot of good

The Green party's main goal, as one can easily infer from the name, is to protect the environment. However, a case could be made that in fact this environmentalist party, at its essence, makes difficult what it purports to strive for.

This contradiction stems from the Green Party's very essence. At its core, the Green Party is a single issue party. Most of their supporters do not support them because of their masterful ideas for health care, or superior policy on crime, or Afghanistan. The focus of the Green Party here in Canada is solely the environment, and that becomes an impediment for the very protection of it.

Why? Well, as a single issue party, the Greens draw away from the multi-issue parties many of the environmentally minded political individuals. As such, this reduces policy making with an environmental focus in these parties.

The greater waste is that the Green party splits the environmental vote. An environmentally conscious voter is presented with a dilemma. Vote for the Greens, who will never be able to implement their policies, or for another party that could form government, but has a weaker environmental policy.

All in all, what the Green party as a single issue party becomes is an advocacy group, a political lobbying party. This is a rather ineffective way of getting the policies you deem necessary implemented. Wouldn't it be more efficient to work from within the Liberals or the NDP?

If that approach were taken, those two parties would develop tougher environmental policies that could get implemented, instead of getting wasted by a party that will never have the power to implement them.

Furthermore, the Greens make themselves a weaker bloc than they could be. The Green party inherently creates division within the environmental bloc. Instead, if they moved in great numbers to either the NDP or the Liberals, they would be more united, and have a lot more clout.

Although it may seem to be the environmentally righteous thing to vote Green, you really are delaying the implementation of policies that would help the environment.

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