Anonymous asked: Every time I see a story about the Greens taking the economically conservative side in a dispute, I always wonder why they're so conservative compared to most major Green parties around the world? Greens in the US, UK, Germany, etc. all seem to be at least firmly centre-left or even further to the left, whereas ours are definitely not.

awkward-teabag:

fueltransitsleep:

allthecanadianpolitics:

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I can’t speak to the provincial parties, but one of Elizabeth May’s first major political roles was a policy advisor to the Minister of the Environment in Brian Mulroney’s first Progressive Conservative government

More and more libertarians and conservatives have also been joining, which the Green party encourages, because they’re the party where right-wing people who don’t want to be called a Conservative go to join. Especially in Canada, being a Conservative or Tory is stereotyped as older white people or well off young white men. It’s not true but that’s how people perceive them and how the media stereotypes them.

There’s no small amount of people who are right-wing but despise being called conservative (see: any number of think pieces about how being called a Conservative or Republican is as bad a slur as any number of racial epithets), so to get away from that they turn to the Green party. The Canadian Green party benefits from the Green parties in other countries in that it is assumed they’re left-wing and serious about environmental protection because they use similar names and imagery. But they’re really not much different than the BC Liberals who are actually Conservatives in all but name.

Canadians like to see themselves and Canada as a hard left-wing country, so both parties and voters capitalize on that by adopting progressive names for parties that really are anything but. Voters get to feel good about being “liberal” and voting for the Liberals or Greens while actually voting right of centre, and politicians get elected and don’t face pressure to actually do anything their party supposedly stands for because there’s the unsaid agreement that they don’t have to and “anything is better than capital C Conservatives.”

(Also speaking of BC Liberals, the leader of the BC Greens, prior to taking over leadership just before the last election, worked for the BC Liberals and directly with Christy Clark. A number of Conservatives have been jumping ship to the Greens because they know people are naive and will more likely vote for them under green than blue, even if they run on the exact same platform and throw a dozen million in funding to environmental consultations here and there over their full term).