Despite my interest in seeing Elizabeth May included in the Leader's debates, I have to say that I agree with this comment today by David Suzuki, made directly to Green Party leader Elizabeth May:

I can't wait until there is no Green party David Suzuki, September 2008

Sorry Greens, but my interest is more aligned with Suzuki - the issue is too important to remain in partisan silos. We are on the same side, I just happen to believe the issue is far to important to be dealt with politics as usual. That might seem like I'm in agreement with May, but I'm not, as I don't believe May or any individual political leader can wrestle the political status quo to the ground in a manner that is anywhere near timely enough. A coalition needs to be built.

Clearly when the governing party continues to oppose, and while in opposition always has opposed meaningful action on climate change, its going to take a strong effort to change that agenda. Either the government can change, or the government's priorities can change. With Harper (and Lund and Baird and Ambrose and ...) at the helm, its very clear that the CPC has no intent on attacking climate change seriously, and that in my view is going to put Canada at a very significant disadvantage in this world going forward.

Suzuki dreams of Greens' demise (Sept. 10 2008, The Star)

Just days into the election campaign, the climate change debate is veering onto the wrong track with suggestions that taking care of the environment could hurt the economy, says David Suzuki.

"Let's hope that the economy versus the environment (debate) will not continue, it's not either/or – without the environment there is no economy," Canada's most prominent environmentalist said.

But Suzuki also said he'd like to see the end of the one party that does put the environment at the centre of all its policies.

"As long as there's a Green party, the implication is that the Greens somehow have a stranglehold on this issue; they're the ones that worry about the environment so the other parties can worry about other things. I don't think it's a ghetto subject."

What really matters is that national parties put the environment, and in particular climate change, at the top of the public agenda. We don't have time to wait for the Green Party to grow up, become broad based, and grab substantial power. What we need is a common voice on these issues to ensure that the environment gets top billing whatever the party of power is.

Harper has been trying to set the stage that the environment can't take precedence over the economy - playing on people's growing fears over the economy and price inflation. Its merely the latest gambit of his to deep-six all meaningful environmental / climate-change discussion and policy making.

I do hope Ms. May acquits herself well and that helps lead to a more fulsome discussion of climate change and other environmental issues in this campaign. But scoring partisan points and electing even a few Greens will do nothing towards changing the direction Canada is headed on this issue, and that would be a loss.

Green leader allowed into debates, networks confirm (Sept. 10 2008, CBC)

Green Leader Elizabeth May will be allowed into the federal leaders' debates, Canada's main broadcast networks confirmed on Wednesday. The news came after Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and NDP Leader Jack Layton indicated earlier on Wednesday that they no longer oppose May's participation in the debates on Oct. 1 and Oct. 2.

This election just got interesting.

Winners: Canadians, your voices were heard for a change. Well done. Losers: Jack Layton and Stephen Harper. Duceppe too but he barely counts any more.

From non-broadcast media there appears to be a fairly broad consensus: The Green Party leader should be allowed to participate in the leaders debates.

Networks have lost their journalistic backbone (Chantel Hébert, The Star)

The Green party had a better case for participating in the televised debates of the 2008 campaign than the Bloc Québécois and the Reform party in 1993. Having opened the door 15 years ago to parties that were blatantly not in the running for power, why did the networks not stand up for Elizabeth May in this campaign?

In the 1993 election, the established parties were just as opposed to the addition of new debate players as the NDP and the Conservatives are today. They brought at least one solid objection to the fore and it was the fact that neither the Reform party, nor the Bloc Québécois, could claim to be national parties.

Reform had not yet extended its wings east of Manitoba. Moreover, Preston Manning was not bilingual. In the end, it was decided he would limit himself to an opening statement in French. Lucien Bouchard, on the hand, was granted full participation rights in both debates, a privilege his successor enjoys to this day.

The Green party runs candidates in every province and May is fluently bilingual. Over the past 12 months, the Green score in the national polls has ranged from 7 per cent to 13 per cent. Support for the Bloc Québécois over the same period has never exceeded 9 per cent.

Dion emerges smelling like a rose (Don Martin, National Post)

But as the only party leader to endorse the Green leader's participation, Mr. Dion claims the moral high ground as free-speech defender and polishes his credentials for women voters, even though a stellar Elizabeth May performance risks draining support away from the Liberals.

Let Elizabeth May speak (Former Prime Minister Joe Clark, The Globe and Mail)

Jason MacDonald, a spokesman for the network consortium, is quoted as saying that three parties - those led by Stephen Harper, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe - all opposed the participation of Ms. May in the so-called leaders debate, "and it became clear that if the Green Party were included, there would be no leaders debates."

That's blackmail. If these three men want to boycott a genuine debate, let them have the courage to do so openly. Let them also explain why, in a year when U.S. party establishments could not shut out an Obama or a McCain, it is appropriate for the Canadian party establishments to muzzle a significant voice for change.

I am not a supporter of any of the existing federal parties, including the Greens. But I am alarmed, and surprised, by how tightly the government now controls Parliament, how easily parties put their own interest ahead of the public interest, and how mean our public debate has become. We have to break that pattern, and one way to begin would be with a more inclusive leaders debate. I urge more Canadians to press these three leaders, and the broadcasting consortium they hide behind, to reconsider their exclusionary decision.

More fun and games in the Conservative "e-campaign". Yesterday it was Pooping Puffins.

Harper had to apologize; backroom staffers tried to blame it on a single web designer and had the gall to suggest that a mouse pointer covered up the offending imagery when the piece was being approved. Do something wrong and then lie about it - now that inspires confidence!

The pooping puffin animation was pulled rapidly but the Dion image remained and the site otherwise remained up yesterday.

Today a subsection on the anti-Dion site, http://notaleader.ca/dionbook/ shows the following:

This is not likely. As noted on Warren Kinsella's blog, if bandwidth was an issue, the entire notaleader.ca web site would be inaccessible.

Digging deeper the site appears to be hosted by Netfirms on a server farm in the United States. The bandwidth is supplied by Cogent, which are known in the industry for cheap high volume bandwidth.

Netfirms hosting plan rate sheet shows a simple business account costing $16.95 having 3,000 GB of transfer. That's three terabytes of data transfer. To put that in context, three terabytes would be equivalent to the contents of almost a million books. The Dion parody is contained in a Macromedia Flash file main.swf which is essentially 1 megabyte in size. Three terrabytes of data transfer would allow for 27,940,817 million downloads of the main.swf file (1,073,698 bytes). Basically one for every person in the country.

Of course they never expect all their customers to use three terabytes of data transfer, monthly, as the industry commonly oversells bandwidth and deals with pesky high volume sites with restrictive terms of use (TOU).

Its marginally possible this particular Conservative site was in breach of a TOU restriction and that is why its currently down. No doubt they got a lot of traffic yesterday from the curious wanting to see their bad taste. However that doesn't excuse them for being down; given their bankroll they could make things right with the hosting provider with a mere phone call.

More likely it was down because the powers that be wanted to have a meeting about the site, thanks to yesterday's gaffe.

Incidentally the Dion image has reacquired the Puffin, sans poop.

Update: I wonder why the CPC media geniuses decided to include this rifle-toting image (links to a video of Michael Ignatieff) on their site:

What with all the gushing over gun-toting Sara Palin in the United States, you'd think they wouldn't want to suggest Iggy and the Liberals are really macho men in disguise.

Yesterday we had a first look at Conservative candidate for Vancouver-Kingsway Salomon Rayek.

While doing some research I'd run across Google's cache of a few letters to various local papers but didn't find anything of sufficient interest to include. After all, a conservative toeing the party line on the InSite safe injection site isn't exactly news. Whatever their personal opinion may be, a junior candidate or MP isn't going to be contradicting big boss Harper or the even less inspiring Tony Clement. Career limiting.

Sean Holman of PublicEyeOnline.com also had a look at Mr. Rayek and did include full copies of Rayek's letters on InSight and other topics. One I was still wrestling with: he'd commented on the Tsawwassen First Nation treaty which is wrapped up in Emerson's "gateway" initiative. I'm not a fan of Gateway but I can't blame the TFN for wanting to seek a deal.

But being president of Delta-Richmond East, Mr. Rayek has also spent some time with its slightly more maverick MP, John Cummings. Cummings has a track record of being critical to many aboriginal policy decisions, particularly those concerned with fishing rights. I make no judgement on these, but its certainly valid to wonder about Mr. Rayek's views and to what extent he may share those of Mr. Cummings.

In another article Holman unearthed a letter to the Richmond News I'd not seen previously. Apparently Mr. Rayek had some, er, communication difficulties in conjunction with a strata townhouse he owned:

[F]or Salomon Rayek, who emigrated from Mexico in 1998, the decision to hold the meeting primarily in Cantonese was offensive. "I've been in Canada for about 10 years, and I have never felt so discriminated against," he said." I was really upset by the situation."

I can empathize with the root problem - after all those pesky political strata councils can be as tricky to navigate as a House of Commons ethics committee. Yet Rayek's public response might have been more measured, or for a seemingly ambitious young politico, perhaps better held in check. After all, almost one half of Vancouver-Kingsway voters are Chinese.