"Elizabeth May has won the Canadian Green Party?s first seat in the Canadian Parliament. The NZ Greens offer her our heartfelt congratulations on such an extraordinary accomplishment. We wish her the best in holding the Conservative Party to account.
Canada (Ottawa), beautiful country, and great people. One certainly has an appreciation for the complexities of its domestic politics, and how proud Canada's country's foreign policy used to be through UN peacekeeping and human rights leadership.
This result comes on the back of a wave of Green successes in Britain, Australia, Germany and France. I believe the tides of change are coming and we?ll start making genuine progress on the many critical global issues facing our world.
That said, the wonderful Canadian result also highlights how deeply flawed their first-past-the post electoral system is. If they had a fair proportional system that provides for representation that matches the amount of support they have - they would have 13 seats in Parliament.
In the 2008 election they had almost a million votes but no representation in Parliament. That situation is intrinsically unfair. It undermines the fundamental tenet of democracy - that people have someone to represent them in decision-making.
We believe it is vital that MMP is retained in New Zealand in this year's referendum and that we do not return to the unrepresentative FPP system. MMP makes sure that a party's share of power is directly proportional to the share of votes it wins, and there's no chance of an unfair and undemocratic outcome.
Anyway, congratulations again to Elizabeth May.
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