There's been a lot of action on the green policy debate front this spring, and the Green Party has been busy filling out its slate, especially in Ontario.

• Bruce – Grey – Owen Sound, ON was their best riding in the 2006 General Election (the link takes you to a pundit query showing the party's best ridings by percent of the vote), as well as yielding a strong 2nd place finish for the Greens in last fall's Ontario provincial election. Not surprisingly, the nomination here was contested and the riding has been visited several times by federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Three-term Owen Sound city councillor and Bruce Nuclear employee, Dick Hibma, was the winner this past Thursday, and will face off against two-term Conservative M.P. Larry Miller.
• Their second-best Ontario riding in the last federal election (and 7th best nationally) was Ottawa Centre, ON, which selected professional facilitator Jennifer Hunter as their new candidate in early April, to take on first-term NDP M.P. Paul Dewar, following the previous withdrawal of former candidate and deputy leader David Chernushenko.
• The following week, a long awaited contested nomination was held in Ottawa West – Nepean, ON, the riding currently held by Environment Minister and first-term Conservative M.P. John Baird, where the president of a local airborne allergen testing firm, Frances Coates, won the right to represent her party as leader Elizabeth May looked on.
• One week later on April 22, Fort Erie french teacher Shawn Willick won an Earth Day nomination contest to represent the Greens in Niagara Falls, ON, against Justice Minister and two-term M.P. Rob Nicholson.
• Next door in Niagara West – Glanbrook, ON, retired elementary school principal Sid Frere became the Green candidate after another contestant withdrew, and will face two-term Conservative M.P. Dean Allison.
• Another former teacher, Marnie Mellish, is running in Burlington, ON against first-time Conservative M.P. Mike Wallace.
• And Stefan Dixon, who teaches with the Toronto District School Board, is switching hats from provincial to federal candidate in Scarborough Southwest, ON, the riding being vacated by retiring Liberal M.P. Tom Wappel.
• Adrian Visentin, the president of a portfolio management company that looks after the investments of high net worth individuals, is returning as the candidate in Vaughan, ON, after running there for the Green Party in 2006 and the Canadian Alliance in 2000, and thus faces his third rematch with long-time Liberal M.P. Maurizio Bevilacqua.
• In Sarnia – Lambton, ON the former 2000 candidate, retired hospital Clinical Microbiology manager and current lay chaplain with the Unitarian Church, Allan McKeown, is also returning to carry the party colours (not David Core as reported in Wikipedia), against first-time Conservative M.P. Patricia Davidson.
• And in the Toronto riding of Beaches – East York, ON it will now be Zoran Markovski, an IT worker at generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Apotex, representing the party against long-time Liberal M.P. Maria Minna, and not David McMillan who had been nominated a year ago.
• Finally, the long election window has cost the riding of Lanark – Frontenac – Lennox and Addington, ON its Green candidate, Chris Walker, against three-term Conservative M.P. Scott Reid.

Elsewhere in the country:

• A fourth riding in New Brunswick is now nominated, where two-time New Brunswick Southwest Green candidate, teacher Erik Millett, is returning to run for the Green Party this time in Fundy Royal, NB, against two-term Conservative M.P. Rob Moore.
• Moose Jaw student Larissa Shasko will make her second outing as Green candidate in the riding of Palliser, SK, now represented by two-term Conservative M.P. Dave Batters.
• Wild Rose, AB, the Greens' only second-place finish in 2006 and the home of retiring Conservative M.P. Myron Thompson, has a new Green candidate, with Alberta Environment Network executive member Lisa Fox replacing Sean Maw, who had previously been nominated.
• British Columbia Southern Interior, BC has a new Green candidate in Andy Morel, a former Parry Sound hospital administrator now working as a home renovation contractor and kids' cross-country ski instructor in Rossland, who will be facing first-time NDP M.P. Alex Atamanenko.
• And the home of the 2010 Olympics, the riding of West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country, BC, has nominated former North Vancouver Green candidate, computer consultant James B. Stephenson, to replace Silvaine Zimmerman who had previously been nominated in early 2007. Stephenson will probably face first-time M.P. Blair Wilson, who was elected as a Liberal but now sits as an Independent and says he intends to run again.

Finally ... if you do a double-take here you're not the only one, and maybe I buried the lede, but ... STEPHEN HARPER IS RUNNING FOR THE GREEN PARTY IN BURNABY !!! No, no, not the Rt. Hon. Stephen J. Harper, P.C., M.P. (Calgary Southwest), Prime Minister of Canada.

• But Stephen Harper, the personal trainer and former Alberta Baptist minister, is indeed the nominated Green Party candidate in the riding of Burnaby – Douglas, BC, currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Bill Siksay.

Not sure if they have much else in common, or how else to tell them apart, but in his bio the Green Stephen Harper says he "does not wear hemp, and has never hugged a tree" which, from what I remember when I worked down the hall from the other Stephen Harper years ago, probably describes our current Prime Minister pretty well too.

Thus I decided to distinguish their names in the search engine by calling the P.M. "Stephen Joseph HARPER", and the Burnaby Green candidate "Stephen (Grn) HARPER". I'm pretty sure most readers of the Pundits' Guide will be able to figure out the rest.

By my count then, this brings the Green Party up to 134 named or nominated candidates, or 44% of a full slate. Of those, 36 are women (26.7%). The party's biggest gaps right now are in Saskatchewan, Québec, PEI, and Newfoundland. However Ontario and British Columbia are filling out nicely for them.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Greens