Going Green?

These are heady days for the Green Party of Canada.

The media is fawning all over Elizabeth May, the party’s new leader, rumours abound that suspended Tory Garth Turner will become its first MP, and a new poll shows that 28 percent of Canadians agreed with the statement: “I would vote for the Green party even if they can’t win.”

Yet the one sticking point for the Greens is that no one really knows what they stand for other than they are “pro-environment.”

And when you look at their platform, it quickly becomes apparent that the Greens are actually pretty red.

One example, is their cultural program. It’s just old-fashioned cultural protectionism mixed in with statist elitism.

Here’s what they call for:

* Increase support for community arts programs and facilities across Canada by establishing stable base-funding at a set percentage of the federal budget.

* Establish stable base-funding for young artists.

* Protect Canada's cultural identity during trade negotiations.

* Expand support for regional arts festivals that bring new Canadian art to a wider audience.

* Provide stable base-funding for the CBC to provide quality television and radio programming in both official languages.

* Direct the CRTC to reserve more bandwidth for independent and non-profit stations.

* Introduce a law mandating cinemas and video chains to have 20 per cent Canadian content.

In other words, it looks like the Greens don’t care about polluting our environment with “art” no one wants to see.