Green Party leader Elizabeth May will be on the outside looking in during televised federal leadership debates and it’s something the party’s candidate in the Macleod riding says is evidence of a larger problem in Canadian politics.
“There’s absolutely no reason to exclude her from the debates,” said Attila Nagy. “If she’s excluded, so should the BQ (Bloc Quebecois).”
He argued May should be allowed to participate in the televised leaders’ debates. May participated in the debates during the 2008 federal election, but the consortium of television companies hosting the debates decided she would not participate this time. May lost a subsequent court challenge to get a spot in the debate.
Nagy said it’s evidence the state of Canadian democracy is on the wrong track where the leader of a national party that received 6.8 per cent of the vote in the last election, and has candidates in all 308 ridings, is not allowed to participate, while the leader of the Bloc Quebecois is welcome.
Nagy said Canada’s first past the post system disenfranchises Green voters and distorts the final makeup of parliament. For example, the Green Party received 6.8 per cent of the vote in 2008 and ended up with no seats. Meanwhile, the Bloc Quebecois received 10 per cent of the vote and ended up with 49 seats.
Nagy immigrated to Canada from Hungary in 1989. He is a former Conservative Party member, but switched to the Green Party because he believes the Tories have gone off track. He ran as the Green candidate in the Scarborough-Rouge River riding in Toronto in the last federal election.
Nagy said the economy is the biggest issue for this federal election.
The Green Party released its platform last week, which includes plans to raise corporate taxes to 2009 levels, ending subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels and introducing income splitting for families.
The party would also eliminate income taxes for people making less than $20,000 a year.
“I doubt it provides any net benefit to the government,” he said. “The poor don’t save, they don’t build chateaus in the south of France and they don’t invest in foreign companies. What they make they spend immediately and they spend in the community they live in.”
Nagy said the GST could be raised and one per cent could be given to municipalities to invest back in communities. He said this is something that would benefit the municipalities in the Macleod riding, who could use it for community facilities and infrastructure.
“Those communities should be able to decide what they want to do with it,” he said.
Nagy said he would like to support development of green and sustainable energy in the Macleod riding as well.
“I want more wind farms, I want more of an infrastructure being built in southern Alberta where you could generate your own electricity and sell it back into the grid,” he said.
Nagy lives in Evergreen in south Calgary and he said he lives close enough to the riding to do the job of an MP effectively, but he would be willing to move into Macleod if necessary.
