One has to hand it to the Green Party. They have become very strategic and it is paying off for them.
Party leader Elizabeth May decided early on that she was going to run against Peter McKay in his Nova Scotia seat of Central Nova. It is not an area one would expect great gains for the Greens. Downtown Vancouver but rural Nova Scotia.
She signs a reciprocal agreement with Stéphane Dion. The Greens will not run a candidate in Dion's riding and the Liberals will not contest May's.
Along comes the Atlantic Accord and equalization battles leaving Peter Mackay (heir apparent to the Conservative throne) weakened and battered. The result is an interesting race.
Than just days before the election the Green Party announces that a former Liberal MP, Bard Wilson, had defected to their cause. Armed with a one member caucus, May demands to be permitted to take part in the televised national debates. In the 2006 campaign, the broadcasters barred the Green party's former leader, saying the party did not have an elected member of Parliament.
Yesterday evening the consortium of five national television broadcasters – CBC, Radio-Canada, TVA, Global and CTV released a statement indicating that May would be excluded from the debates because the other party leaders said they would not participate if she was in.
So for the first two days of the campaign, the Green Leader running in rural Nova Scotia has been front page news. The Bloc Québécois says leader Gilles Duceppe would have participated in the Oct. 1-2 debates whether or not May was included.
The Green Party will launch a legal battle today.
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