The hill Elizabeth May is climbing in her challenge of Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay is so steep that her Green party does not even have an electoral district association registered with Elections Canada in his Nova Scotia riding.It's of course possible that the party is managing to turn some of its recent polling numbers into added volunteers and party structure. But Naumetz' numbers already come after several months of record poll results - suggesting either that the party hasn't figured out how to convert momentary support into feet on the ground, or that it had so far to go that even after running a full slate of candidates twice, it's still working on putting any structure in place in half of Canada's ridings. And based on the number of riding associations de-registered, the Greens look to have work to do just to reassemble the machine which managed to win them nothing more than a few double-digit ridings in 2006.
In fact, Elections Canada records show, the Green party has only 153 riding associations registered across the country, despite its record gains in the 2006 federal election.
The party's fragile position is reflected further in the fact that 19 of its previously existing associations, required to provide financial and campaign support to candidates, have been de-registered for lack of activity.
As a result, there's little reason to think that the Greens have anything approaching the internal strength to turn their current poll numbers into real votes and seats - whether in Central Nova or in any other riding. Which means that any party willing to step aside and let the Greens serve as the only alternative to the Cons is likely doing nothing more than handing a freebie to Harper...while voters looking for a strong environmental alternative would be far better served taking their votes elsewhere.
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