Green Party losing popularity, fad status gone

CANADA/ENVIRONMENT - The Green Party of Canada, which boasted 6.78% of the popular vote during the October 2008 election, has dropped below 3.2% according to a new poll by Nanos Research.

The Green Party of Canada was founded in 1983, but in 27 years they've never won an actual seat in parliament. The only seat they've ever had was when independent MP Blair Wilson joined the Green Party in August 2008, but he was defeated in the election 2 months later before he even got a chance to sit in parliament as an official Green party member.

Since that election the Green Party has wallowed in a trail of disappointment because of their inability to even get their leader, Elizabeth May, elected.

Plucky Elizabeth May, whom might remind you of your mother or grandmother, may be a good leader of her party, and she might be fiery and able to hold her own, but Canadians don't seem to be interested in her beyond the 6.78% of Canadians who voted Green back in 2008.

FACT: Green Party membership is down over 60% since 2008.

FACT: The Green party is in debt and cannot afford many ads this year, relying instead on the internet.

And we should note WHY some Canadians voted for the Greens in 2008.

"I am voting Green because I want them to become an official party," was the common refrain of Green supporters during 2008. This idea of wanting the Greens to become an official party was repeated again and again, begging the question of whether their supporters even knew what the Green Party's platform was beyond environmentalism.

Well, to be blunt, they don't have much of a platform beyond that. Their idea of health care is basically to keep throwing money at Canada's healthcare system and hope that fixes the shortage of doctors and personnel. (What actually should be done is more scholarships and grants to help people go through university for medical fields.)

And on the economics side the Green Party wants to create more green jobs. Yeehaw, no brainer there.

What you realize in the wake of that election and the increasingly status of the Green Party is that they were just a fad.

I am sorry Elizabeth May, but your party was nothing more than a fad driven by voters under the age of 30. (Author's note, I am friends with Elizabeth May on Facebook so there is a small chance she will read this and be none-too-happy.)

And while the Green Party (and their supporters) like to claim they got 10% to 14% support in polls, the fact that they got only 6.78% of the popular vote suggests that during this election they will do even worse.

Polling at 3.2% suggests that is either the hardcore refuse-to-die never-say-quit supporters who will show up on election day and have a choice to make...

Do they A, vote for the Green Party and throw their vote away.

Or B, vote Liberal and actually vote for a party that can defeat Stephen Harper and end 5 years of Conservative corruption?

And to make matters worse Elizabeth May has been shut out of the televised election debates and is whining about it worse than Preston Manning (ah, that brings back memories). The last thing Canadians will vote for is someone who whines about their situation.

THE GREEN PARTY IS FINISHED.

Its time for Canadians to look to the future by changing the Conservatives and Liberals into more environmentally friendly political parties. Change them from the INSIDE.

We'd argue that the Liberal Party has seen the light and changed its ways. The Conservatives need to be defeated and cut off from their dirty oil money before they will see the error of their ways. The question now is how Canadians will vote and whether they will finally end 5 years of Conservative corruption.

Gas Prices to Soar in Summer 2011

CANADA - Economists are scrambling to try and get an accurate picture of how high gas prices in Canada will go.

Some economists think gas prices might go as high as $2 per litre.

Others say that it is unlikely gas prices will go that high.

But lets have a current look at the gas prices across Canada...

The average price of gasoline in Toronto on Wednesday was $1.28 per litre, up 24% compared to the same day one year ago.

Its worse in Montreal, $1.39 per litre, also up 24% compared to last year.

In Vancouver the price of gas is $1.35, up 25% compared to one year ago.

And what is causing this?

#1. Growing Demand due to the growing economy. More jobs = more people out there buying cars, going on vacations, traveling farther to get to work, etc.

#2. Revolutions in the Middle East... Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Revolutions are spreading like wildfire and its led to a shortage in oil exports from the region.

#3. The closing of several strategic refineries in eastern Canada. Blame Stephen Harper for that one. They're building new oil refineries in Alberta, basically stealing jobs from the eastern provinces and sending them to Alberta, but the rest of Canada will have to suffer higher gasoline prices while we wait for the new refineries to be built.

#4. Soaring demand for gasoline in China and India, causing oil prices to keep rising as more Chinese and Indian people buy cars.

#5. The Summer Driving Season is coming... with warm weather comes more and more people just going "out for a drive", along with vacations, road trips, etc.

#6. Speculation from the Stock Market. Basically investors jumping in there and jacking the prices up farther than they need to be.

But is this enough to push gasoline prices up to $2?

According to Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at the Bank of Montreal, oil prices would have to reach $215 / barrel for gasoline prices to go over the $2 per litre mark.

We disagree. We think Doug has his math backwards.

Based on the current ratio of $108 / barrel of oil = $1.30 for a litre of gasoline, we can expect that we would only need to see approx. $178 oil to get a result of $2 / litre gasoline.

According to Standard Bank they expect the average price of oil to rise 9% to $120 / barrel by the end of 2011, but they also say that we can expect higher oil prices during the Summer of 2011.

In 2008 we saw $147 / barrel oil, an all time record. Its possible if more problems happen that we could see oil prices go that high again, or even higher.

For example if Saudi Arabia got a full blown revolution on their hands it would really hurt oil exports to the USA, China and India, which in turn would cause a global shortage in oil.

On top of all this is the economic impact of higher transportation costs. The cost of food, retail goods, etc. all go up.

Jeff Rubin, former chief economist and managing director of CIBC World Markets, thinks $2 per litre gas prices could become a reality as soon as 2012 due to soaring world demand, fueled mostly by China and India.

“China alone added over a million barrels a day last year,” says Rubin, author of Why Your World Is About To Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization.

“We’re seeing absolutely no cessation in world oil demand. I think we’re looking at prices by the end of the year testing, and quite possibly exceeding, the $147 a barrel mark we saw in 2008.”

But those higher prices could lead to another recession as more people choose to put gasoline in the cars so they can get to work, as opposed to making their mortgage payments (the same problem which kicked off the liquidity crisis in 2008).

In the meantime check out tomorrowsgaspricetoday.com

Blast from the Past: Hundred Dollar Oil recorded the 2008 oil crisis as it happened. If you look at the oil prices timeline you will note that it only took 4 months to go from

March 11th 2008 - $109.72 USD / barrel of oil.

to...

July 11th 2008 - $147.27 USD / barrel of oil.

So a lot can change in a short time period.

Avoiding a Non-Confidence Vote

CANADA - The following is a list of countries and their leaders which suspended government in order to avoid a non-confidence vote:

1933 - Germany, Adolph Hitler

1936 - Spain, Francisco Franco

1939 - Italy, Benito Mussolini

1973 - Chile, Augusto Pinochet

December 2008 - Canada, Stephen Harper (to avoid being kicked out of office and replaced by a coalition government)

December 2009 - Canada, Stephen Harper (to avoid being kicked out of office over charges of knowing about abuse/torture of Afghanistan detainees)

Evidently Stephen Harper doesn't really believe in democracy and thinks he is above it.

Toyota not at fault for sudden acceleration

CARS - Toyota has won a landmark court case in New York regarding alleged incidents of sudden acceleration, as the first case related to the issue goes to trial and Toyota is found not at fault.

A federal jury in New York, ruled last Friday that Toyota wasn’t at fault for causing a 2005 Scion to suddenly accelerate and crash into a tree. The accident was the fault of the driver, Amir Sitafalwalla. It had nothing to do with the brake system or the floor mat.

The jury deliberated for less than an hour and returned with a not guilty verdict.

“It was all about how the mat came into play and obviously it didn’t,” explains juror Penny Overbeck, 38, of New York, after the verdict was delivered.

Overbeck says that the court went over all the theories regarding floor mats and the electronic throttle control system, but those theories were dismissed as rubbish because of “all the testing Toyota did. They had it all on video. It pretty much explained it.”

Dr. Sitafalwalla, an emergency room physician, claimed that an unsecured driver’s side floor mat caused his Toyota Scion to crash in August 2005.

An expert testifying also claimed the electronic throttle control system could have caused the accident, but later withdrew the statement after admitting they didn't have any evidence.

Thus, if it wasn't the floor mat, and if there wasn't anything wrong with the car's brakes or acceleration... then the only answer left is driver error.

A similar case was dismissed last year when it was determined that a driver in California had been faking it in an effort to get attention.

Following the incidents Toyota recalled 1.7 million vehicles in 2009 for testing to determine if there was anything wrong with the cars.

Toyota is currently the world's largest automaker and sold 8.42 million vehicles globally in 2010, beating even General Motors and other big automakers for 3 years now. It is currently facing hundreds of lawsuits from people claiming they experienced sudden unintended acceleration, lawsuits which Toyota intends to vigorously defend against.