Green party leader Elizabeth May conceded last week that the party’s agriculture policy needs work if it is going to appeal to more farm voters.
She vowed to strengthen it in time for the next election.
At the core of the policy approved at the party’s August convention is a proposal that Agriculture Canada refocus on supporting a conversion of Canadian agriculture to organic production, including a move away from use of genetically modified crop varieties.
“We have a long-term objective of converting to organic,” she said in an interview Sept. 14. “I realize that’s a non-starter for the short term … and use of pesticides in agriculture will continue for some time. So we need, the country needs, a comprehensive policy that gives Canadian farmers the kind of support they need. We have a long-term goal but I realize the need for strong policies during a transition period.”
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May said she will spend time visiting farmers in the coming months, asking for advice on policy improvements. One of her first trips as party leader will be to Calgary at the end of September for the annual convention of the Alberta Green Party.
She said governments and political parties must do a better job to bridge the gap between urban and rural Canada.
She said the Green party considers Canada’s farm families and rural residents a natural constituency for the party’s environmental message.
Polling company Ekos has reported that the most sympathetic audience for the party message is in Western Canada, including across the rural Prairies. In the January election, when the Green party won almost five percent of the national vote, some of its strongest showings were in rural ridings.
“The environmental ethos is at the core of rural values,” she said.
May said the party would put farmers and the rural economy at the centre of its effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stressing compensation for carbon sinks, encouraging wind-generated power and promoting ethanol production from cellulose rather than grain crops.
She said the U.S. push for ethanol production is the most carbon-producing ethanol production in the world because it is part of farm bill spending that encourages as feedstocks the corn and grains produced and harvested with large carbon emissions.
In Canada, the emphasis should be on cellulose technologies using straw or switch grass as feedstock.
May, a former aide in the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and later head of the Sierra Club of Canada, called her first Parliament Hill news conference Sept. 14 to denounce the Conservative government’s environmental record.
