Post-Election Questions: The Greens

Seldom has a political party considered an election a success while posting a result like the Greens'. Elizabeth May's party lost 40% of its votes and vote share, fell by 60% in the number of seats where it ranked among the top two parties, and watched its vote share stay the same or decline in 294 out of 308 ridings - actually performing worse than the Libs by all of those standards.

That said, the Greens did succeed in their primary goal of getting May elected - and by an impressive margin at that, as May finished over 10% ahead of Gary Lunn in Saanich-Gulf Islands. But the election outcome raises a question made all the more difficult by the shifts among the other parties:

Just how much is one seat in Parliament worth?

The good news for the Greens is that the resources available to an MP should indeed make some difference in their ability to connect with Canadians. By earning a place which allows her to participate in Parliament, May has gained plenty of formal ability to play an active role in Canada's governance over the next four years. And the constituency funding available to all MPs will ensure the Greens will no longer need to absorb the cost of building a connection between May and her riding out of their own pocket.

Here's the bad news, though. While the Greens have managed to win at least the basic provisions for a single MP, the odds of their getting any more than that look remote at best.

At the moment, May is making a pitch that she ought to be allowed to sit on committees, take a regular place in question period, and generally hold the privileges of an official party in the House of Commons despite being well short of the number of MPs normally required for that status. And under some circumstances, she might have been able to make those types of arguments successfully.

But the Bloc's drop in seats complicates matters significantly.

After all, we now have a majority government whose recent campaign across most the country included regular declarations that Bloc MPs couldn't legitimately play a full role in governing Canada, and indeed some promises framed around an explicit desire to kill the Bloc as a party. So we most certainly can't expect the Cons to be willing to make any accommodations for a party which ranks ahead of the Greens in the standings.

That being the case, it would come as a major shock if the Cons are any more generous with May. Which means that she'll likely be limited to MP resources rather than winning any of the privileges normally associated with official parties.

And in the meantime, there will be plenty of rebuilding to do in order to push the Greens back toward the 2008 support levels which presented at least fighting chances in multiple seats - particularly now that the NDP seems to have won over at least some portion of the Greens' previous support.

So it's far from clear that the Greens will gain as much as they've been hoping from their first-ever election of an MP. And there's reason to wonder the Greens will be as happy with Monday's election result another cycle down the road.

[Edit: fixed typo.]