Okay, so there wasn't that much picking involved:
Toronto businessman and entrepreneur Mike Schreiner is the new leader of the Green Party of Ontario.
Mr. Schreiner was the only candidate running to replace outgoing leader Frank de Jong.
He was confirmed to the position Saturday evening at the party's leadership convention in London.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontarios-greens-pick-mike-s...
The businessman and entrepreneur has found his natural libertarian home, prepared for him by the ongoing conservative, Jim Harris.
Did you read what sort of entrepeneur he is George?
Mike Schreiner, vice-president of Local Food Plus (formerly Local Flavour Plus), a non-profit organization promoting local sustainable food systems ...http://www.thestar.com/article/244022
Clearly he's evil!
Mike has been an active member of the Green Party of Ontario for the past six years, developing the 2007 election platform, serving as GPO Policy Coordinator from 2007 to 2009. He is 40.
But he did not run in the 2007 election. A resident of Toronto, he followed John Tory to Haliburton- Kawartha Lakes- Brock to run in the by-election in March, and had a little more luck than John Tory: while Tory drove his party's vote down from 24,273 to 14,576, Schreiner took a fourth place 3,475 to a third place 2,352 as every party but the Liberals lost votes.
I wonder why he didn't run in 2007?
"I’m going to propose that we do a Community Engagement Program where Constituency Associations go out into the community and do something like support the local BIA or organize a Buy Local campaign or a Clean Up The River campaign."
We need to demonstrate concretely on the ground that we as a party are doing things to benefit the community. We have to reach out to people who are not yet members of this party. The nice thing is I’m already getting quite a few requests to speak at events that aren’t Green party events. It’s going to take just picking up the phone and talking to business leaders, community leaders, NGOs, heritage associations, and opening a conversation with them. It’s going to take every single person in this room to engage and commit to that kind of activity.
Not so different from from Andrea Horwath said.
John Ogilvie was the Green Party candidate in 2007 in Carleton--Mississippi Mills, and ran for Deputy Leader in 2008. He is not impressed:
The by-election campaign that Mike ran in Haliburton received support from the entire GPO, and substantial funding. But it still managed to earn less than 7%.The 2007 general-election Green candidate won 8%, about a thousand votes more than Mike. And he did this with a fraction of the party support Mike received.
Mike is a nice guy, but not a man who can “inspire and engage”, based on Haliburton. If he has any self-respect, he’ll withdraw his own candidacy until the party can organize a proper, open leadership race.
Mike, with no previous political experience, was quietly selected to be leader in 2008 by party insiders. He takes good pictures, is meek, and will follow orders going into 2011.
Seven people ran for deputy leader (male and female) in Spring 2008, including myself. But not one of these seven people ran for leader a year later.
Smart people don’t bang their head on the wall. The GPO insiders wanted Mike, now they’ve got him. But there are probably seven top GPO people who will be missing from the next GPO campaign.
Way to go, guys.
Mike is a cipher. He has no organic support in the party, the way Frank did. Mike ran once as a parachute, and did poorly, despite many party appartchiks propping him up.
Mike can talk about Obama all night long (the same way Elizabeth talks about democracy). But he has been put in place by people who have no interest in grassroots politics.
I love “organizing” and “team building” personally. As a tech CEO, that’s was kinda my job description. It’s something I understand.
This ain’t it.
Isn't it remarkable what you can find on Google?
FM:
"Did you read what sort of entrepeneur he is George?"
I'm going to rush right out and sign on, FM, confident that Harris is not working the strings.
Mr. Schreiner is promising to be the party's first full-time leader; Mr. de Jong worked part-time as a Toronto-area schoolteacher.
...and he expects to be funded by public subsidies in his new job, too.
Thanks for the links. My immediate question was: Who is this clown?
The reports of him being a 'successful entrepreneur and businessman' led me to try to find out what his great success was at, and all I can come up with is Local Flavour Plus (or Local Food Plus, depending on the source) - a non-profit. And apparently not a particularly successful one, as I've never heard of it before, and it's based right here in Toronto. I have a hard time acknowledging the ability to suck up to the government for grants and funding as entrepreneurialism and business acumen.
Mike Schreiner is also supposedly a 'food consultant', but it seems that his only qualifications as such are from growing up next door to Dorothy and Toto on a farm in Kansas. That's correct - on top of his dubious record of 'business' success, he's a Yanqui trader.
I don't think that parties get any public subsidy in Ontario. The official parties in Queens Park get money, but there is no money per vote as there is federally - so unless the Ontario Greens manage to elect at least 8 members in the next election, they don't get one red cent.
There's nothing quite so pathetic as watching NDPers desperately digging for dirt on Green Party leaders. I'm sure any minute now, somebody will discover that his cousin's wife's uncle (who was a mechanic doncha know) once fixed Preston Manning's car; thereby proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that this guy is a neoconservative shill whose sole motivation is to woo gullible voters away from voting NDP. After all, everyone knows there are only two kinds of people in the world - neoconservatives and NDP supporters.
Assure me that Jim Harris and henchmen are not background figures here, their ilk have gone to feed elsewhere, and I will take it all back (well, that part of it).
Those who know me can vouch that I have pretty solid NDP credentials.
I say this because I want to point out the criticisms of Mike Schreiner are way off base. I know Mike personally. He is a progressive guy who has channelled his energy into environmentally positive business. He is not a Harris clone, nor an eco-capitalist. Mike is a very sincere and passionate guy. His loyalty to the Greens is misplaced as I have told him personally, but he is sincere in his beliefs and frankly his misjudgements and misunderstanding of the NDP and links with worker organizations.
Local Food Plus (which started as Local Flavour Plus) is in fact a very successful model that links primarily institutional food buyers directly with local farmers. It would be no wonder that many people have not heard of it. It is not a direct consumer/farmer link organization. That doesn't mean the work is not important or successful. In fact the organization has grown to the point where it has spread beyond the Ontario borders.
There will be lots of solid ground on which to critique a Schreiner led Green party. Mike's dependency on shallow political rhetoric without much substantive grounding on a number of issues comes to mind immediately. But denigrating good organizations like Local Food Plus or the sincere work Schreiner himself has done will only turn off people. Schreiner is well-spoken and somewhat charismatic, but let's not delude ourselves that he could hold a candle to the kind of leadership we can expect from Andrea Horwath who I am convinced will move the NDP quite far forward in the next election because her substantive grounding is much deeper and more innate.
Thanks for the insight, BA. Keep working on the guy. : )
There's nothing quite so pathetic as watching NDPers desperately digging for dirt on Green Party leaders.
Who's digging for dirt?
When a party chooses a leader, one would think that at least the politically-obsessed would have heard of him once or twice. I consider myself amongst the politically obsessive. I'd never heard of him. So I googled.
And everything I found made the press releases seem at minimum overblown, with descriptions that, to be kind, stretched the truth. Not what one would expect when a party has coronated a leader.
BTW, it wouldn't bother me at all to be proven wrong. So please, if you can, go ahead.
I don't think that parties get any public subsidy in Ontario.
As much as 75% of political party donations are tax-deductible. We'll all be paying Michael Schreiner's salary as leader of the Green Party of Ontario.
They still need to get those donations in the first place and these days, the Green party (federally and in the provinces) is pretty clearly going no where other than off a cliff. Its hard to get people to give money to a dying party. Schreiner's salary for a year would probably eat up most of the GPO's entire fundraising for the year.
.
The Green Party of Ontario actually does better, by about any measure, than the GPC. But thats a pretty low bar to clear.
From the budget figures I remember, a full time salary for the Leader would be one-third of the budget- which just isn't feasible.
My guess would be that if Schreiner says he will be full time Leader, its on his own dime- probably with the expectation that he can bump up the fundraising enough for a salary. No individual in the GPO, like the party as a whole, has yet to achieve an outcome anywhere near what they think themselves capable of.
I say this because I want to point out the criticisms of Mike Schreiner are way off base.
I'd just like to point out that my criticisms were not of Schreiner himself, but rather the way the Green Party chose to present him (which seems to be only tenuously related to reality).
I had no knowledge of Schreiner prior to reading this thread, and still lack any sense of him as an individual.
What's weird is how this new-GPO-leader business has been off radar to the mainstream print media; other than the Sun, I don't seem to recall it referenced anywhere this weekend and today...
I was more reacting to the criticisms of his involvement with Local Food Plus and the contention that it was not a successful enterprise. There will be lots of ground on which to critique the Greens in Ontario - the comments around LFP though are just simply wrong.
In what way? Are they not a non-profit? Do they not collect grants?
Local Flavour Plus (or Local Food Plus, depending on the source) - a non-profit. And apparently not a particularly successful one, as I've never heard of it before, and it's based right here in Toronto. I have a hard time acknowledging the ability to suck up to the government for grants and funding as entrepreneurialism and business acumen.
You are wrong on several counts - one there is little if any government funding that I am aware of.
It is an extremely successful organization that has now grown to the point were it is doing some national work. As I said it matches institutional food buyers with local farmers. Most intitutional food is bought through very large companies. who source their food from where ever it is cheap. LFP works to make the connection between local farmers and large food buyers easier for all involved. There is also a certification process that ensures the standards under which the food is grown.
Because you haven't heard of an organization is a pretty poor way to judge whether it is successful or not, particularly if you are neither an institutional food buyer or a farmer.
As I said there will be lots of room for critique of a Shreiner led GPO- attacking and misrepresenting LFP as some sort of government suck tank is not legit.
What portion of an institutions's food does the province expect to be purchased from Ontario growers? (And I take it institutions means mostly long term care and hospitals?)
Zero per cent is required. That is one of the reasons an organization like LFP was created.
I approached Mike as soon as I discovered he was going to be acclaimed about the idea of Greens and New Democrats working together rather than continuing vote-splitting. What I received in response was the same anti-union, pro-business, "we aren't leftists" I get from my other friends in the Ontario Greens, Frank de Jong and Jim Harris.
He may be a nice guy, BA but his rhetoric regarding unions, vote-splitting and the need to build coalitions is absolutely indistinguishable from the past 15 years of Green politics in this neck of the woods.
Content issues aside, "working together to not be vote splitting" would be the kiss of death for Greens.
Its not just that Greens, NDP [and Liberals] are "too disinclined".
This is the real elephant in the room that May does not want to mention, instead giving her disengenuous jag about the NDP being hopelessly partisan.
Cant change my user name so you're getting the real deal here - google me and you'll see my results from 1990. I actually became disheartened DURING the election and was quite happy when the NDP won! I discovered that when a party can't win, they run a kid. Now I chose to run with free will but it was obvious that the red greens were being squeezed out - when somebody is showing up to the office in their BMW but parking around the back out of view, there is a problem...and the little flim flam I was supposed to pull on my taxes to get my deposit didnt work either so I had to suck it up as an underemployed kid. On the pro side I got to say whatever the hell I wanted. That would NEVER happen now.
I approached Mike as soon as I discovered he was going to be acclaimed about the idea of Greens and New Democrats working together rather than continuing vote-splitting. What I received in response was the same anti-union, pro-business, "we aren't leftists" I get from my other friends in the Ontario Greens, Frank de Jong and Jim Harris.
He may be a nice guy, BA but his rhetoric regarding unions, vote-splitting and the need to build coalitions is absolutely indistinguishable from the past 15 years of Green politics in this neck of the woods.
Well I eluded to that in my posts. My concern is not whether he is a nice guy or not (Lots of nice people in other politicial parties) but whether or not the NDP or more accurately NDP partisans on babble were being correct in stuff being used to critique the new Green leader. The issues you raise are germiane and fair game in my book and when I was talking about 'progressive' I was thinking more in terms of social issues, not economic or anything else (not that it was clear in my post, only my head).
You are wrong on several counts - one there is little if any government funding that I am aware of.
It is an extremely successful organization that has now grown to the point were it is doing some national work. As I said it matches institutional food buyers with local farmers. Most intitutional food is bought through very large companies. who source their food from where ever it is cheap. LFP works to make the connection between local farmers and large food buyers easier for all involved. There is also a certification process that ensures the standards under which the food is grown.
Because you haven't heard of an organization is a pretty poor way to judge whether it is successful or not, particularly if you are neither an institutional food buyer or a farmer.
As I said there will be lots of room for critique of a Shreiner led GPO- attacking and misrepresenting LFP as some sort of government suck tank is not legit.
I have not disputed your claims of 'success' for this organization - though since it is still rather 'young' (less than 4 years of operation), I hope that your standard of 'success' includes an allowance for this, as I have made.
I will dispute your claims about government funding however. Not only are they directly funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, but also by the Trillium Foundation, Vineland Centre, and Friends of the Greenbelt, all dependent on government funding themselves.
How is it that someone won a provincial party leadership role by acclamation?
Usually there's a huge convention, several candidates wooing delegates, lots of speeches, floor-crossings, candidates withdrawing to support others candidates and taking their supporters with them (or trying) and so on.
This guy just had to sign his name and he's the new leader? NOBODY else wanted the job?
Mike is explaining it as follows:
"He said that at a party event he attended in August, there were two other candidates, but they bowed out after considering what the job entails." (http://www.mykawartha.com/news/article/162115--schreiner-leads-green-party)
This is not a reality-based response, unfortunately.
The GPO is - like all parties - full of overly-high-self-esteem people like myself, and a leadership race would have been very interesting. The PCs tripled their membership during their recent leadership campaign, and the NDP probably did likewise.
When the party staff - exec director, CFO, president and secretary - all make it clear that they want one candidate elected, well, smart people don't waste time running. Even if it would have given the race an appearance of legitimacy.
smart people don't waste time running.
Are they going to stay not running all the way around, or just give a symbolic protest to the autocratic top down actions?
Mike is explaining it as follows:
"He said that at a party event he attended in August, there were two other candidates, but they bowed out after considering what the job entails." (http://www.mykawartha.com/news/article/162115--schreiner-leads-green-party)
This is not a reality-based response, unfortunately.
The GPO is - like all parties - full of overly-high-self-esteem people like myself, and a leadership race would have been very interesting. The PCs tripled their membership during their recent leadership campaign, and the NDP probably did likewise.
When the party staff - exec director, CFO, president and secretary - all make it clear that they want one candidate elected, well, smart people don't waste time running. Even if it would have given the race an appearance of legitimacy.
John, it sounds like you're saying the fix was in for Schreiner. That doesn't seem very democratic.
How do you respond to some of the claims about the Green Party made by some here? Such as the Greens are merely neoconservatives with composters. Do you hide your BMW in the back?
I don't drive a BMW, but I sure do drive more than I should..
Despite being considered a conservative Green because I have a business background, I have always leaned NDP, personally. My father came back one night in Montreal in the seventies with blood on his face after a scuffle with scabs during a Millwrights strike.
"Eat the rich" always sounded right to me :-) And I am probably representative of most Greens.
IMHO, the NDP is too closely aligned with the formal labour movement. Greens are progressive people who don't belong to unions. Which puts us in step with the majority of Canadian voters these days.
IMHO, the NDP is too closely aligned with the formal labour movement. Greens are progressive people who don't belong to unions. Which puts us in step with the majority of Canadian voters these days.
But what about the Millwright's strike?
And what about the 170 repressive pieces of labour legislation enacted across Canada since 1982? You either believe in free labour markets or you don't. Imho, one must either shit or get of the pot.
Imho, the Greens are a split the left vote kind of party. And that was made evident when the leader of the GPC recommended their supporters vote Liberal everywhere but Central Nova in the last election. And now E. May has come out with a venomous attack on Michael Byers for suggesting a strategic voter alliance betwen the Liberals and NDP to bring down the Tories.
Imho, the political opinions of some percentage of leftwing GPC voters and those of the party's leaders may not be one and the same.
My opinion of Elizabeth is well known.
The NDP carried the banner for progressive forces from the Second World War until now. Thank you.
But in 2010 it's time for a new progressive force, free of short-sighted and self-serving union interests.
When the federal NDP defends the Oshawa auto plants against restructuring and emission reductions, you've lost me.
Is the Green Party that new progressive force? Maybe. I'm discouraged lately, but life is long.
... didn't know neoconservatives all drove BMWs....
Geez Fidel. Did you listen to the interview? May launched into her standard line about Jack Layton and the NDP to open things up. But she didn't attack Byers, or his suggestion. Actually she rather daintily avoided commenting directly on anything except for specifically endorsing Byer's call for PR.
And if we're going to reheat all the old chestnuts, maybe we could at least stick to commenting on the Ontario Green Party?
My opinion of Elizabeth is well known.The NDP carried the banner for progressive forces from the Second World War until now. Thank you.
But in 2010 it's time for a new progressive force, free of short-sighted and self-serving union interests.
And to heck with those unemployed millwrights!
When the federal NDP defends the Oshawa auto plants against restructuring and emission reductions, you've lost me.
Well youve lost me altogether with this unsubstantiated claim. And with E.May telling people to vote Liberal - the same Liberal party that sold Canada's environment to Exxon-Imperial and marauding transnational enegy companies when in government last- I have to wonder just how green their valley really is?
Some random selections, federal and provincial, on why voters do not trust NDP on Green issues.
http://www.hilltimes.com/page/view/political_reporting-8-17-2009
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politics/2009/04/16/PlatformsCompared/
"NDP: scrap the carbon tax", "Stabilize (i.e. subsidize hydro rates)
"NDP: scrap the carbon tax", "Stabilize (i.e. subsidize hydro rates)
[url=http://www.newser.com/story/38796/hefty-carbon-tax-raised-norways-emissi... Carbon Tax Raised Norway's Emissions[/url]
Greenhouse gases up 15% despite system aimed to curb them
An NDP evangelist quoting the Wall Street Journal? I have lived too long..
From the same article:
Industries deemed vital to the nation’s economy or image were spared the tax or given sweet deals.
John respectfully, neither of those citations meet your comments about Oshawa auto plants, nor indeed unions influencing the NDP....
[url=http://www.eu-norway.org/Climate_change/eu_ets/]Norway to join EU ETS[/url] I guess they had to do something with CO2 emissions soaring under a carbon tax regime since the early 1990's, Do we need really need to repeat the same mistake in Canada with delivering the carbon tax equivalent of slaps on wrists to corporate polluters and Canadians who insist on driving gas guzzlers no matter what the price at the fuel pump? Maybe they just have to get to work whether affordable and efficient public transit exists or not.
And while the two old line parties at both levels of government are doling out billions of taxpayer dollars worth of no-strings attached corporate welfare to US-based car companies, what incentive do they have to make fuel efficient cars that people want to buy?
Our topic was the GPO leadership race, originally.
We will debate these other points in various ridings in 2011 :-)
John, I'm not a subscriber of the Hill Times, but I'm interested in the auto bailout issue. Can you summarize it for us?
Okay my mistake. But I still think the Greens should consider supporting free labour markets in Canada. Without that policy they are just another conservative party, and we already have two of those - in government and phony opposition federally. Carry on.
"NDP: scrap the carbon tax"
It's quite comical how NDP partisans here insist that they oppose the carbon tax on the grounds that it represents market ecology and suggest the neoliberal cap and trade system as the alternative.
Auto bailout:
We had several auto firms collapsing (e.g. GM) but others were doing fine (Toyota Canada).
The GC and ON govt spent $10G to bail out the collapsing firms on the basis that "they were too big to fail".
Same argument used for %*$^ banks. Solvent, successful firms received nothing.
NDP opposed bank bailouts, but supported auto bailouts. Because auto firms are unionized but banks are not :-)
Auto unions have constitutionally-guaranteed votes at NDP (20%?) Which makes NDP spokes-puppet for unions. Which makes an independent progressive movement like Greens necesary.
The Canadian banks did not need bailing out, and the automakers got loans, which they just paid a huge chunk back on yesterday and it is believed they will pay the remaining back ahead of time...
And if only 20% of union workers vote NDP then I guess the other parties that the 80% majority vote for , are even more beholding to the unions than the NDP...and are even more their mouth piece....
We've been bailing out Canada's increasingly deregulated banks since Mulroney. The NDP opposed big bank mergers once prescribed as a fix for Canada's big six banks who just wanted to be bigger in order to gamble bigger and better alongside their US and British counterparts on Wall Street and High Street.
One of the reasons the NDP supported car company bailouts is that car manufacturing and parts assembly is about the only sector of our economy that has seen an increase in productitivity since the neoliberal trade deals were signed. The NDP doesn't like the fact that no other rich country allows a third as much foreign ownership and control of its manufacturing base as Canada does since FTA/NAFTA. What we don't do is subsidize Northern industries in Ontario to nearly the same degree, which the NDP says is wrong. We don't offer any help to Canadian high technology flagship companies like Nortel. Like Avro Arrow was, we can hand it off to US and other foreign interests for a song.
Weakened trade unions since neoliberal voodoo began are not the problem in Canada. Next to the US, Canada has the next largest non-unionized, low skill and lowly paid workforce in the developed world.
If unions were detrimental to economic prosperity, then thirdworld capitalist countries like Guatemala and Honduras and Colombia and Haiti and El Salvador should all be rich by now. Kids in those countries should be in school all day not out working under the tropical sun for peanuts.
