It's all about E-Me

For all the talk about how self-absorbed Elizabeth May's leadership has been so far, I'm not sure anything can make the case better than the Greens themselves. From their main fundraising page, here's how the party is presenting the options of would-be donors:

Giving to the Green Party is a great way to leverage your money, as the tax credits for donating to a federal political party far exceed those for charitable donations. A $200 donation, for example, only costs you $50. And you can give up to $1,100 each to both the federal party and a local riding association (perhaps Central Nova?).

That's right: rather than trying to encourage donors to build riding associations across the country, the Greens are using their limited fund-raising ability solely to push money toward their leader - who of course is the sole party candidate who doesn't figure to need much financial help in building her profile. (Though in fairness, the recently-deregistered Central Nova riding association does figure to have at least as desperate a need for investment as most Green ridings.)

At best, one could speculate that the Greens are gambling on having a better chance of attracting donations by highlighting the Central Nova race. But even that would be an entirely short-sighted strategy since it's based on the theory that the next election is everything, rather than an effort to actually encourage sustainable and broad-based fundraising for the longer term.

Yet even that seems too generous an interpretation. Instead, it seems more likely that the fund-raising scheme merely matches the party's spending strategy. And indeed it hardly seems matter whether money gets put toward the national party or the Central Nova riding association when it'll all be used for the greater glory of May in any event.