01 Apr Let May debate

Elizabeth May and I have a long history. In the late 1970s, we worked together in a successful campaign to prevent spruce budworm spraying in Cape Breton. Thirty years later, we fought bitterly over her destructive campaign to delay cleanup of the Sydney Tar Ponds.

May was the most prominent and media savvy member of a group that demanded a cleanup, but condemned every actual cleanup method. Her reckless exaggeration of environmental and health issues in Sydney did wonders for her profile and career, even as it devastated the working-class Cape Bretoners she purported to champion. It really is an ugly story.

But like her or revile her, May is leader of a party expected to contest every seat in Parliament. She commands the support of roughly one in 20 voters. As such, fairness and democracy demand her inclusion in the forthcoming leaders’ debate, much as the prospect makes me wrinkle my nose.

The excuses offered by CTV executive Troy Reeb for excluding May are notable for their evasiveness. The decision follows secret deliberations among news organizations that normally decry secretiveness in the conduct of public business, which this surely is. In a Globe and Mail interview, Reeb dodges every question and offers no persuasive reason for the decision to exclude.

It is typical of May’s eco-narcissism that she would contest this election knowing, as she surely does, that doing so greatly increases the chances of a Stephen Harper majority, with devastating consequences for the environmental issues she promotes. Her unprincipled behaviour does not obviate the democratic imperative of including all leaders in the leaders’ debate.