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24 - The Oakville Beaver, Friday January 26, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Environment concerns boost Green Party interest By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Oakville is starting to see green. With environmental issues becoming harder and harder to ignore local environmental groups are noticing a surge of interest. "I think people get concerned when, even in our own local area, winter doesn't start until midJanuary or the number of smog days keeps increasing and increasing," said Nolan Machan, CEO of the Oakville Green Party. "They're actually physically seeing the change in the environment and they're actually seeing it with their own eyes. It's becoming tangible," he said. Ron Toufar, the Oakville Green Party's media coordinator, believes this trend of renewed popularity started after the 2006 election when Green Party candidate Laura Domsy received 2,872 votes. "I think that when she ended up winning five per cent of the votes in Oakville people started to take notice because she'd never been in a debate, no one knew who she was. Obviously there was a group of people in Oakville who felt their voices weren't being heard politically," he said. Besides election results Toufar says he is seeing more and more people who want information about the party and it's concerns. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May "I run the newsletter and we've gone from an initial seven people to like 150 people, who we're now sending our newsletter to," he said. "We're hoping to double that and double the number of members in Oakville over the next month." A visit by Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, scheduled for Monday for a fundraising dinner and a luncheon with the Oakville Chamber of Commerce has done nothing to ease Oakville's green interest. "We've sold out all 200 seats for the dinner and I believe they're at 180-190 for the luncheon with the Chamber of Commerce," said Toufar. Oakville Chamber of Commerce president Stephen Sparling agreed the chamber's invitation to the Green Party showed a rise in its status. "Their financing is a little more stable now and their platform, which is an environmental platform and a fiscally responsible platform, it resonates with people," he said. Environmental issues are resonating with Canadians to such an extent now that all major political parties are trying to become champions of them. Machan chalks up Stephane Dion's winning of the liberal leadership to making environmental sustainability one pillar in his three-pillar approach to bringing Canada into the 21st century. "If this was five years ago would he have won?" said Machan. "I think the answer would be no. I think they would have gone for Michael Ignatieff because that would have been more the style, but all of a sudden there is a really strong environmental stance on those issues." Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not proven immune from this trend. He recently replaced Rona Ambrose as Minister of Environment with John Baird, who has embarked on a cross country tour trying to convince Canadians the Conservatives are serious about environment issues. "He had to release Ambrose and bring in one of his top people Baird and try to position that as major development," said Machan. "Why is he doing it? Because the electorate is demanding it." Although slightly upset that other parties are stealing the Green Party's environmental image, Toufar says that if they act on their environmental promises he'll be happy. "As a person and not as a Green Party member I don't care as long as these things are being done," he said. As a party member though, Toufar says Green Party representation in the government will help keep the environment a front and centre issue. For this reason the party is preparing to pick a candidate to run for the next federal election. "We're forming a search committee for a candidate. We have two candidates that have come forward and we're looking to get four, five or six that we can have come and talk to us at an executive meeting," said Toufar. "We'll make sure it's an open meeting and really get to know the people before we throw all of our energy and all of our resources, small as they may be, behind our candidate because this time around we definitely think we can increase our support here." While the Oakville Green Party prepares for the next election local environmental group Oakvillegreen rides a similar wave of renewed interest. Oakvillegreen president Liz Benneian said the group's environmentally educational movie screenings draw great interest from the community. "The first time I showed `End of Suburbia' I had no idea how many would show up because this was two and a half years ago and nobody was really talking about peak oil and the coming energy crisis," she said. "We had almost 200 people at the first screening." Oakvillegreen's affiliate group Ground Breakers, which plants trees, bushes and flowers for the community, has also experienced growing popularity. "When I started it again about two and a half years ago there were about 12 people who did the first planting. The planting we did last year, the final planting of the season, was at Donovan Bailey Park where we planted 400 trees and bushes and we had 95 people helping," said Benneian. "I think it just goes to show you that people are concerned and they want to be able to do something but they may not know what to do. That's where the local environmental groups can come in because we have programs, we have plans, we have information and we can help them get involved." 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