The price of attention

One can't accuse Elizabeth May of failing to generate attention as leader of the Greens, and May makes the news again today with her effort to recruiting sitting Senators to her party. But the move appears far too likely to undermine what seems to be an important Green goal of seeking institutional change in Ottawa:

The new leader of the Green Party said yesterday she is talking with "more than one" senator about joining her party.

"I am talking to a couple of friends who are in the Senate to find ways that they may be able to help the party, including whether they can become Green Party senators," Elizabeth May said in a telephone interview.

Ms. May, a career environmentalist who was elected Green Party Leader last month, also said she is solidly in favour of the present unelected Senate even though that is "not yet" Green Party policy...

Senators count in the funding formula used for caucus research money, but it is unclear whether Green senators would qualify as a caucus without a presence in the House of Commons.

Ms. May said she hopes that having Green Party senators would allow her to take part in the daily scrums with reporters outside the House of Commons.

Aside from the benefits mentioned in the article, it's not hard to see how the Greens would otherwise stand to benefit by recruiting a Senator or two. A switch would offer an opportunity for the Greens to participate in at least one formal Question Period, and the seat in the Senate might well offer a close enough approximation to a seat in the Commons to bolster the Greens' claim to appear in televised debates.

But then there's the problem of the principles involved. While the Greens don't appear to have taken a formal position on the Senate in their last platform, at least a few of the party's statements regarding democratic reform suggest some distaste for the chamber. For example, the Greens promised to:

- Create a Government Accountability Act to ensure that all those who monitor government are selected at arms length from those they monitor, and to guarantee transparency and openness for all government activities...

- Reform the appointments system to discourage patronage.

Needless to say, the Senate as currently structured couldn't be much more antithetical to avoiding patronage and ensuring arm's-length selection processes for overseeing bodies. But the bigger problem isn't so much in the Greens' past positions, as in their presumably-continuing commitment to PR in the House of Commons. After all, how credible can a party be in claiming to want to improve the electoral accountability of the chamber which at least faces regular elections in some form, while defending the ability of completely-unaccountable partisan appointees to wield equal power?

It is possible for a party to stick to its principles even when offered the chance for a slightly larger platform. Unfortunately, May's action today indicates that she isn't the least bit interested in doing so...which can only lead to the impression that the Greens are looking less to reform Ottawa's power structures than merely to carve out the largest possible chunk for themselves. And if that perception takes hold, the damage to the Greens as a party supposedly dedicated to doing politics differently will be far greater than the potential benefit of a bit more of the spotlight now.