Elizabeth May returns to Ottawa with one seat, one-half the number of seats the Greens held when Parliament was dissolved for the election campaign.
With the Greens’ share of the national popular vote having declined; with her claims that the Greens would win 5-15 seats in the House of Commons and hold the balance of power gone up in smoke; with her claims that the Greens would win four seats on Vancouver Island shown to be nothing more than hyperbole; with her candidates in the two seats the Greens actively targeted in the months leading up to and during the campaign – Victoria and Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke – defeated (a distant second in Victoria and even further back in the rear view mirror in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke); May says these results are all because one televised English language television debate never happened while she conveniently fails to mention that she was included in the McLean’s televised English language debate.
Meanwhile, the NDP wins all the other seats on Vancouver Island and, after devoting your headline and 11 paragraphs of your front page coverage to Ms. May, you find it in your journalistic heart to add two paragraphs addressing Randall Garrison’s re-election in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke (where he increased his margin of victory tenfold over the second place candidate from 2011) and three paragraphs to Murray Rankin’s re-election in Victoria (where he increased his margin of victory from his byelection win and did so without a Liberal candidate in the race).
Just an observation…
Rob Egan
Saanich