I don’t know how everyone’s feeling about yesterday’s court decision on including Elizabeth in the debates but I hope nobody is letting it get them down. The fight is not over. We have rallies planned in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Hamilton. These are win/win rallies for us because even if they don’t help get us in the debates they will help rally people to our cause.

There’s still a chance to break into the debates but even if we don’t get there that doesn’t mean we can’t still win this campaign; getting in the debates would help us but this campaign is about getting votes, not about getting in the debates.

If on average every riding can chalk up 1,000 more votes than in 2008 and we elect a couple of Green MP’s we will have won this campaign, debates or no debates. Those are realistic goals that we can all do something about locally.

Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 3:00 pm

In a repeat of last year’s highly successful event, acclaimed concert pianist Shaya Petroff will be performing an intimate concert at his home at 245 Banbury Road, North York as a fundraiser for the Don Valley West Green Party.

The minimum donation per guest is $100 (2011 tax receipt will be issued for the full amount of your donation).

As there is limited seating for this event, please RSVP to Alan Gray at agray58@rogers.com.

The Network Consortium is trying to silence Canadian democracy again this election by trying to keep Elizabeth May out of the Debates. Let’s send a message to the Networks that they can’t keep the Canadian People quiet. Sign the petition here http://demanddemocraticdebates.ca/petition.php and let’s give Canada the debates it deserves.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th March 2011

Did you hear it? The clamour from western governments for democracy in Saudi Arabia? The howls of outrage from the White House and Number 10 about the shootings on Thursday, the suppression of protests on Friday, the arrival of Saudi troops in Bahrain on Monday? No? Nor did I.

Did we miss it, or do they believe that change is less necessary in Saudi Arabia than it is in Libya? If so, on what grounds? The democracy index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit places Libya 158th out of 167, and Saudi Arabia 160th(1). At least in Libya, for all the cruelties of that regime, women are not officially treated as lepers were in mediaevel Europe.

Last week, while explaining why protests in the kingdom are unnecessary, the foreign minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, charmingly promised to “cut off the fingers of those who try to interfere in our internal matters”(2). In other parts of the world this threat would have been figurative; he probably meant it. If mass protests have not yet materialised in Saudi Arabia, it’s because the monarchy maintains a regime of terror, enforced with the help of torture, mutilation and execution.

Read the rest of this entry »

Georgina Wilcock, the Federal Green Party candidate for Don Valley West is hosting a meeting at Locke Public library   3083 Yonge St (SE corner of Yonge and Lawrence) at 6: 30pm on Tuesday Feb 8^th 2011.

Emily Munro from Cities 8-80 will be speaking about greening of our city, drawing on examples from other cities.

After the talk we would like to hear YOUR ideas and feedback about growing the Green Party within the riding.

Hope to see you there.



Greens support a Guaranteed Annual Income. Read more about the Dauphin experiment.

During the GAI experiment, Dauphin had a dramatically lower rate of hospital admissions than similar communities in Manitoba.

• Its high-school dropout rate fell and stayed down for a generation.

• It had fewer accidents, serious injuries, arrests and convictions.

• Consultations for mental illness declined.

• And, contrary to policy-makers’ fears, people in Dauphin did not stop working or reduce their hours to get “free” money from the government.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/920145–goar-anti-poverty-success-airbrushed-out

We are organizing an event on Feb 8 at the Locke Library (Yonge and Lawrence) we will have a speaker from 8-80 Cities.  All Green Party supporters in Don Valley West are welcome!  We want your input on how we can move forward to strengthen the Green Party in our riding.

Disaster at the Top of the WorldBy THOMAS HOMER-DIXONAboard the Louis S. St-LaurentSTANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with ice at this time of year two decades ago are now expanses of open water or vast patchworks of tiny islands of melting ice.In 1994, the “Louie,” as the crew calls the ship, and a United States Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, smashed their way to the North Pole through thousands of miles of pack ice six- to nine-feet thick. “The sea conditions in the Arctic Ocean were rarely an issue for us in those days, because the thick continuous ice kept waves from forming,” Marc Rothwell, the Louie’s captain, told me. “Now, there’s so much open water that we have to account for heavy swells that undulate through the sea ice. It’s almost like a dream: the swells move in slow motion, like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.”

By Jeffrey SimpsonFrom Friday July 2nd, Globe and Mail The annual report required by all signatories to the original Kyoto Protocol is depressingWhen the Harper government has something it wants everybody to know, it sends the Prime Minister to make an “announcement,” gathers a gaggle of ministers to nod their heads at the words of their sage boss, issues press releases and, if necessary, buys newspaper and television advertising to trumpet itself.When, however, the news is bad, well, standard procedure is either not to release the information at all, or to post it on a website without telling anyone, hoping the news will pass unnoticed.Such was the case this week when quietly, of course, Environment Canada posted on its website the embarrassing news about the government’s expensive and largely futile measures to combat greenhouse gas emissions.Try as it might, the government could not put lipstick on a pig. The numbers were there, stark and depressing, in an annual report required by all signatories to the original Kyoto Protocol. The bottom line: The world is right to consider Canada a climate-change miscreant. See here (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-numbers-say-it-all-canada-is-a-climate-change-miscreant/article1591592/) for rest of article.