Prima vera

Well, dear Greens..., unless you have spent the day hiding out in a far flung area of Kathmandu, you have heard the NEWS! The Green Party of Canada is now a Parliamentary Party. We are represented in the House of Commons by Blair Wilson, the MP for West Vancouver -- Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country. This should seal the deal on the national televised debate including the Green Party. You may wonder how such a wonderful thing could happen. I can tell you it all happened very fast. If not for Mr. Harper’s threats of a snap election and speculation he could dissolve Parliament this weekend, we might still be chatting about the possibility. I first heard the idea that Blair might want to come over to the Green Party from a friendly go-between last weekend. Since I was going to be in British Columbia anyway for some Green events and a dear friend’s wedding, I decided to schedule some time with him. The Green Party Executive Director, Jim McDonald, came along and spent hours poring over Blair’s financial records and legal proceedings and Elections Canada rulings -- all the due diligence we needed to do to know if the attacks on Blair’s reputation had substance. We decided the attacks were discredited by the evidence, and, of course, the fact that Elections Canada found only a few technical errors. There was nothing that looked like deceit or dishonesty. And we had a nice family dinner (his wife Kelly is a great cook!). Their son is my daughter’s age and both kids were there. We discussed Green Party policy, searched for areas of potential disagreement and could find nothing. In fact, we hit it off. Somehow the idea of maybe making an announcement sometime later was fast-tracked. While I was at the wedding I received a black berry message that Victoria Cate and I were not going to spend the night with her older brother, his wife and the grand-babies. Nope, we had to leave the wedding before the speeches, and head to the airport for the red eye to Ottawa. Today we held our press conference at the National Press Theatre and have been busy ever since doing interviews. We did stop right after the announcement for a celebratory meal at the Parliament Pub across from the House of Commons. I had to order the special. You see it was “pasta primavera” -- translation “first green”!!