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From Green to orange
64 Plays4 years ago
Progress Alberta speaks with the only person to provide even a halfway amount of drama in Alberta during the last federal election – Michael Kalmanovitch. He was the Green candidate for Edmonton-Strathcona who, just days before the federal election, threw his support behind NDP candidate Heather McPherson the only non-Conservative elected to parliament in Alberta. We talk about why he did it, what the Greens can learn from this and what's next for the Green part as Liz May steps down. Also, should Progress Report host Duncan Kinney run for leadership of the Greens? Email him at duncank@progressalberta.ca and let him know.
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Transcript
Introduction to Ricochet Podcast Network
00:00:00
Speaker
Did you know that Progress Alberta is part of a national community of leftist podcasts on the Ricochet Podcast Network? You can find the Alberta Advantage, 49th Parahel, Kino Lefter, Well Reds, The Progress Report, Lefi Sales, Out of Left Field, and Unpacking the News, as well as a bunch of other awesome podcasts at Ricochet Media or wherever you download your podcasts.
00:00:35
Speaker
Friends
Introducing Michael Kalvanimich
00:00:36
Speaker
and enemies, welcome to the Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa Skigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, here in Treaty 6 territory. And this week we have one of the more interesting characters from the last federal election in Alberta. His name is Michael Kalvanimich, and he's here to speak with us today.
00:00:54
Speaker
Michael you you provided us with one of the only kind of noteworthy bits of drama in the federal election here in Alberta considering it was almost a sweep I believe it was 28 out of 29 seats or whatever it is. There
Campaign Decision and NDP Support
00:01:07
Speaker
was only one seat in Alberta that didn't go conservative and that was here in Edmonton in Edmonton Strathcona and you were the Green Party of Canada candidate and
00:01:17
Speaker
in Edmonton Strathcona. And in the final week of that campaign, you put out a statement where you say, you said you're ending your campaign and you asked your supporters to throw their support behind the NDP candidate, Heather McPherson. Heather McPherson ended up winning in Edmonton Strathcona, again, the only rioting in Alberta to not elect a conservative. And I want to get into that. And I think in your action too, there's something that we can learn
00:01:42
Speaker
about, and something that we can apply to the upcoming, uh, federal green party of Canada leadership race, something that like no one is actually talking about.
Environmental Activism and Business
00:01:50
Speaker
And, and Liz may is finally stepping down. So Michael, welcome to the progress report. Thanks very much for having me on.
00:01:57
Speaker
So Mike, you've, I've moved to Edmonton 10 years ago. I ran into kind of Earth's General Store, the place that you run pretty soon after I moved here because I was living in Edmonton, Strathcona. I was in the neighborhood and I ended up there. I was, you know, bicycle commuters, people, I think, recommended I go there and
00:02:18
Speaker
And it was nearby my house. And I think you were involved with the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters too back in the day. Since 86. Yeah. And you've been around a long time when it comes to environmental activism in Edmonton. When did you start this struggle? When did you start your work? And why did you do it?
00:02:36
Speaker
because somebody had to and I didn't think there was enough bodies and voices happening on the social justice and environmental justice, equity, discrimination. I work on all of them and I started the store as a platform.
00:02:54
Speaker
because when I was doing workshops back in the 90s, 1990, people would come to the workshop, but they also wanted to get the products that I was talking about and everything like that. So I created the store, but the store is a soapbox. The store allows me to talk about
00:03:13
Speaker
those things that are important, social environment justice and on my social media as well as in the store. So big thing about the store is you have conversations quite often when you come to the store and you can get exposed to that. It's not like just going to superstore and blah. You go up and down the aisles. You don't see another human being that can service you and you have a
00:03:36
Speaker
You know in non personal interaction with the checkup person since 1991 you've run Earth's General Store in Edmonton It's this kind of weird wacky wonderful start everything from like Castile soap to composting worms to just straight-up groceries and regular supplies that people need And as you said you started it as an opportunity to create like a bit of a community space and I think it is kind of views that and it's it's
00:03:57
Speaker
It is like one of the kind of weird, awesome, unique parts about Edmonton. So let's get to the political end of things. So when did you decide to get into electoralism? When did you decide to run for the Federal Green Party? Probably April
Green Party Candidacy Question
00:04:11
Speaker
or something like that of 2019 that I decided that I was going to launch into that. And why?
00:04:22
Speaker
I had seen the climate issue, the climate crisis, the climate emergency. It's here, and I felt that it was not being addressed very well by the new Democrats, nor by the liberals, and definitely not from the conservatives.
00:04:41
Speaker
And so I saw the only viable option was the Green Party. So I submitted my application to be the candidate for Edmonton Strathcona as a Green Party candidate. And so would you have chosen to run for the Federal Greens if Paige Goresack had won the nomination for the NDP in Edmonton Strathcona? And just for context for people who aren't aware, Paige Goresack was like a
00:05:06
Speaker
I want to call her like a insurgent, she ran an insurgent campaign, like an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez like campaign against Heather MacPherson, who ended up being the eventual nomination and, and Gorsuch was much, much more the insurgent and, and was much more kind of had radical politics compared to MacPherson, who was kind of the chosen one by Linda Duncan. And it was a close thing. The nomination contest, I think was only decided by 17 votes. Yeah. 17, 19 votes. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
So with that context, if Paige had won and someone who was kind of very much, very much stridently kind of, uh, wanted climate action, would you have chosen to run for the federal greens? Definitely not. I would have voted for her. You would have voted for Paige. Okay. And then that's, you know, kind of interesting context, right? So how did you, how would you describe your time as a candidate? Was there lots of support from the greens? Were you on your own?
Green Party Critique and Strategy
00:05:54
Speaker
Like, can you describe the process of like being a green party candidate?
00:05:57
Speaker
Well, the Green Party is not a very rich party. And also they see, you know, stronghold of Alberta and certain other places being, you know, token runners, you know, page. They kind of often, you know, it's actually a paper candidate. And a lot of times they just run a paper candidate, which I'm totally against.
00:06:23
Speaker
I'm against them just wasting the resources on running 300, what is it, 338 candidates across the country. They should be saying no. We should be only running in there where it's significant for us to move some agenda forward or that we have a chance to win.
00:06:41
Speaker
If not, then we should mobilize to get out to forums and challenge those people that are second to them in, say, for example, climate action and push those people, make commitments to do better. But you were running a campaign, right? You were going to events. You were knocking on doors. You had volunteers in literature, right? Yeah. But at some point you've made the decision, right? Like five days, I think, before
00:07:09
Speaker
The election, October 16th, you put out this statement, I'm gonna quote from it right now. I ran this campaign with the goal of winning the Edmonton Strathcona riding, but based on polling projections, it has become clear that success is unlikely under our first pass the post system. My goal has never been personal political power. My goal has always been policy change. That is why I'm ending my campaign effective today and calling on supporters to consider voting strategically for the candidate and party with the next best climate action plan. I believe that candidate is Heather McPherson of the NDP.
00:07:39
Speaker
Why did you put it that statement and what was the reaction you got after you put it out? Well, I put it out that morning. But do note that I was actually asking people to support the second best climate action platform. It was not so much Heather MacPherson themselves or the NDs. It was just that they happen to have the second best climate action platform or policy.
00:08:03
Speaker
So the reaction by the Green Party was that they they phoned me many times and then finally got through to me I guess just before I was going on stage to make this announcement or to engage in the debate but at that debate or that conversation I was going to announce this thing.
00:08:23
Speaker
So they said, you can't do this and everything like that. I said, I'm sorry. My foot is on the step to go up to the stage. I'm doing this. I had talked to them two weeks before saying that my position was that I thought it would be best if we did this and what do they think of it? And they said, no, you shouldn't be doing that and everything like that. But I had made the decision to do what I did back when I first decided to run back in April. Oh, really?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yes. So the reason why is because why would I do something that would be detrimental to moving the agenda that I wanted to see moved ahead? And so when I announced that I was going to do that, I got a huge amount of flack from people like Linda Duncan and lots of people that were NDBers.
00:09:16
Speaker
that you were going to run for the green. Oh yeah and I was going to spoil the vote and everything like that and like I said and in my statement I said I was running to win. When it looked like I wasn't going to win and that I was put in jeopardy the second best climate action plan then what were my options? My option was to cede to that second best.
00:09:40
Speaker
Okay, I mean, it's logical. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting approach, right? I mean, it's pure, it's very kind of non political almost. But it is the fact that you were going into it knowing that this was your likely course of action is still kind of interesting to me. So ultimately, do you think it made a difference?
00:10:03
Speaker
On the debates, definitely. And I think I really held the conservative and the liberal feet to the fire in every debate that we had. And I think that my presence there was, I wouldn't say I was supportive of the NDs, but I wasn't
00:10:28
Speaker
And I challenged them, you know, but what it is is that in the end I said, you know, and I think in my statement when I was on the stage, I said, well, the Liberals shouldn't get a second term on the performance on the climate action that they've done over the last four years. They shouldn't.
Building a Left-Wing Climate Coalition
00:10:46
Speaker
And the candidate was pathetic.
00:10:49
Speaker
You know, and I said that to her right on the stage and that the conservatives did not, shouldn't be allowed to have that kind of power. They were, they were criminals in, in their intent for the planet. So the numbers are interesting when you actually crunch open, when you actually crack open the like actual electoral numbers. I mean, the green vote went down by 0.3% compared to the last,
00:11:12
Speaker
the last election, the 2015 election, down from 2.3% to 2%. I spoke with folks from the McPherson campaign, and they think that it didn't necessarily have a ton of effect on the doors. Heather McPherson ended up winning the riding by 11 percentage points, more than 6,000 votes. So it is a question of what your action ultimately did, but I think it does offer up
00:11:43
Speaker
a really interesting model of green and new democrat kind of relations and how that relationship should be as we go forward. Like if the climate emergency is real and we have to build an electoral coalition. It's real. The climate emergency is real and we have to build an electoral coalition that will actually move on climate change. How do we fucking do it? Right. And I think the idea, like we're never going to get
00:12:09
Speaker
electoral reform right like Justin Trudeau has burned that bridge he said no he campaigned on it then went back on his promise and really I think the whole idea of electoral reform is dead until the next generation of voters comes up and it's like the 2040s and the liberals are again running on electoral reform so we're never going to get electoral reform if that's the case
00:12:28
Speaker
How do we build a left wing coalition that will meaningfully do and reorder our economy so that it will actually do something on climate change? And I would suggest that one of the things that has to be done is the Green Party and the Democrats have to work together. And one of the ways that they can work together is the way that you've done it, right? Where it's like, okay, I'm not going to win.
00:12:53
Speaker
I'm going to step down. I'm going to throw my support behind the new Democrats. That's one way. Do you think that's a way that we should be doing across the country? No. But with what I did and what you just described there, that's how most leaderships do it.
00:13:09
Speaker
right? It's these back room deals and they do it for their own political betterment. So say for example Bob is second but he could spoil the chance of such and such and things. So they get a nice plum job out of it or a nice appointment as an ambassadorship or whatever. And so those kinds of things
00:13:30
Speaker
We should be running for politics because it's the right thing for you to do, and your goal is
00:13:45
Speaker
Good. I don't know how else to describe it. Good. If you're running so you can get your family to be proud of you or to gain the amount of money and the pension plan and blah, blah, blah, all of those things, that's crap.
00:14:03
Speaker
You know, the climate change, just what everybody out there gives lip service to climate crisis and aren't, and when they get into power, they're running to be elected the second time so that they can, you know, get that nice pension. But here's, here's where I am, Michael, is that like, we cannot meaningfully reorder our society and our economy without political power. Definitely. And political power is about dividing up.
00:14:32
Speaker
you know, the opportunity to do things like that, to exert control over the economy and society. And right now, that's how we do it is through elections, first pass the post. And I think Elizabeth May and the current iteration of the Green Party has proven to be incredibly incompetent at running
00:14:56
Speaker
political party under the first pass the post system. Like they only just started to realize that they have a geographic base of power on Vancouver Island, like within the past couple of election cycles and investing time and effort and training and organizers there. Um, they also have that kind of small pocket out in New Brunswick for some weird random reason. They're, they're a tiny regional party
Green Party's Ideological Crossroads
00:15:17
Speaker
and the idea behind them is popular. Like this is why I would call this May and confident, right? Like going into this federal election,
00:15:26
Speaker
The whole world was talking about climate change, right? Greta Thunberg was on everyone's tongue. We were having rallies of 10, 12,000 people in Edmonton. But Liz May and the Green Party were unable to capitalize on that momentum into any meaningful electoral gains, right? And if that's the case,
00:15:47
Speaker
Why don't we just shut down the Green Party? Like why don't we just, any ostensibly social democratic party should have a good, solid climate change platform, right? Like in the context of a social democratic party, like climate change policy hits all of the things that they care about, right? Environmental justice, social justice, climate justice. Like you said, it was the second best climate change policy in the last federal election.
00:16:15
Speaker
Is it time for the Greens to just toss it in and say, okay, if the Green Party is never going to go anywhere, why don't we just organize, why don't we broaden the electoral coalition of the new Democrats and see where we go from there?
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't personally, I don't know why there's so much difference between the two as in having two parties. But again, I go back to that the ND seem to have come out of the social justice side, the Greens came out an environmental. The
00:16:49
Speaker
Greens, I think, do have a pretty good handle on social justice, but they're not well known. I did read the platform and everything like that, and I thought it was...
00:16:59
Speaker
I mean, I would disagree. And they're also just really weak on like labor stuff, working, working issues of working people. I think that's just a huge historical blind spot for the Greens and one they've never been able to address. But this, this, this leadership race is happening, right? The green party of Canada will choose their next leader in October of this year. No one has stepped up to the race, uh, to the, to the plate that is interesting or has any type of profile. Like I could literally declare to be leader of the green party. I would have the most high profile
00:17:26
Speaker
of anyone who has even mentioned interest in the Green Party. And I'm some fucking idiot in Alberta with a podcast. I don't think you're an idiot. Jim thinks I'm an idiot. But the Green Party has to decide what it wants to be.
00:17:41
Speaker
Right? Like Liz May has kind of held the party together as just as the Liz May party. But without Liz May around, why? What is the Green Party for? And and when you look to other green parties in other jurisdictions, I mean, I think the Green Party really faces an inflection point here with this leadership race, right? Do they want to be eco socialists or do they want to be eco fascists? And the Green Party in Austria
00:18:02
Speaker
They're currently propping up the right-wing government of Sebastian Kurz, this fucking psycho, right-winger. The Green Party is letting him, they're earning a part of the coalition that is propping up that government. That's fucked up. I think any type of Green Party has to have class politics at its heart. When you look at how climate change works,
00:18:26
Speaker
29 companies or something some ridiculous small number of companies are responsible for 71 percent of global emissions like there has to be class politics in your climate change and And the Green Party just has never really seemed interested in going down that route To be fair. There's hardly any class politics in the New Democrat platform either But that's neither here nor there at the very least there's a core of kind of class politics because it is an ostensible party like
00:18:53
Speaker
What do we what do we do? Like do you want to be the leader of the federal Greens? I guess you got kicked out of the party, but well according Elizabeth I'm still a member, but I haven't got confirmation of that But the way what it is and they still take my hundred dollars a month for me. So very generous. Yeah Still giving money after all this
00:19:10
Speaker
Well, what it is. What party wouldn't have done what they did? A lot of people would have said, you know, like, you know, with me, what I did with the running, a lot of people said, well, you're a failure or you, you know, you didn't go the full nine yards for me, for the voter and everything like that. But it wasn't the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do what I think I did. Yeah. You know, and I think that we need to have people of integrity
00:19:40
Speaker
and a party of integrity. And we have to do the full fucking monty. Michael, I want to thank you for coming, taking the time to talk with us today. I really think that this like, this conversation around the future of the Green Party has not really happened anywhere. So I'm glad hopefully this kind of starts a discussion amongst other folks who kind of care about climate change and electoral politics, because I mean, I still am kind of duty bound to care about electoral politics. If you leave electoral politics to reactionaries, you will get reactionary electoral politics.
00:20:08
Speaker
So again, thank you for coming on the show and and Again, you did a very kind of brave thing I think I think a thing that people didn't expect in during the federal election and Cheers. Thank you. And I hope it sends a message to other people out there that they can do that. What's the best place for people to Support your work follow you. Do you have a Twitter account? You know, where yeah Earth General Store if people are in Edmonton that kind of thing. I
00:20:34
Speaker
So, uh, at Earth's General is a social media platform. I'm also on, uh, Green Michael K on, uh, for my political kind of stuff. Awesome. All right, Duncan. I'm sorry I called you an idiot. You know, for the record, I don't think you're any stupider than I am. Uh, good, good. I mean, this is a post-script addendum to a conversation with Michael Kamanovich because
00:21:00
Speaker
I think what I want you to do is I want you to talk me out of running for the leadership of the Green Party. I think I've thought about it before this, obviously, but I mean, talk me out of it. Give me the reasons why I shouldn't do it. Well, first of all, I mean, if you're gone for a few months on the campaign trail, I'm gonna run this place into the ground.
00:21:20
Speaker
I mean, don't underestimate yourself. I think you could do it, but yes, okay, point one. Second, I would say it costs a lot of money. Yeah, that's expensive. A lot of your own money. You'd have to raise $50,000, $100,000 probably to do it on the cheap even, yeah. I mean, the Rockefellers won't even invest money to do this stuff. They're not going to pay for you to run as a Green Party candidate. It's true, it's true. I mean, how hard would it be to win the leadership of the Green Party
00:21:45
Speaker
Like, how many memberships do you think you'd have to sell? How many members of the Green Party actually exist? I mean, fuck. I think you would have quite a long and protracted fight on your hands, even if you were able to secure the leadership. Like, let's consider, like, best case scenario. You go in there, suddenly you're very popular, you're up against a bunch of nobodies, you steamroll it.
00:22:12
Speaker
But now you are in charge of this party, which as we just discussed with Michael, is not by nature a democratic socialist leftist enterprise. It is kind of a centrist party with some environmentalism on top. I think you've identified the worst part of
00:22:31
Speaker
what would, if I did run for the leadership of the Green Party, and that would be having to deal with like Green Party people all the time. Well, you have like a Corbyn experience over there, right? Or politics
Green Party's Future Directions
00:22:41
Speaker
would be very, they would be divorced from what the establishment in that organization wants. But is anyone going to actually run for the leadership of the Green Party? That's going to be like, yes, class politics is good. And like, we're going to have to go to war against politicians, corporations, if we actually want to reclaim any sense of power and any sense of
00:22:59
Speaker
And if we ever actually want to move on climate change, right? Like I just don't see the Green Party producing anyone who's gonna have that kind of politics and I would just rather I mean I could I mean I could run a joke candidacy I could run on the I could run for the leadership of the Green Party on the platformer that I would shut down the old Jason Kenney campaign No, that's my that's for my Senate run well
00:23:21
Speaker
I mean, you have you have kind of three potential paths after this fork in the road for the greens. Only one of them is particularly positive, I think. So you have potentially the greens just they become irrelevant. They they get crowded out by the new Democrats as the new Democrats further embrace Green New Deal style organizing. And as they
00:23:52
Speaker
embrace more of this social justice ecology approach, which I think is very good for the new Democrats, and they should do. Alternatively, you have the Canada Greens go the route of these European Green parties, where they start getting in bed with the conservatives. And that's a very dark timeline. That's the eco-fascist timeline right there. And that one actually worries me quite a bit.
00:24:20
Speaker
The example of Austria is frightening, and I have brung it up a bunch of times with a bunch of different people. That is literally one of the paths that the Green Party can go down.
00:24:35
Speaker
have any type of meaningful electoral resort, I don't trust their politics that they wouldn't just work with the conservatives or the liberals. What if you get a green platform that looks like carbon tax, no immigration, no transit infrastructure, no housing? That could be very awful and very damaging. I could see the Preston Manning's and Jack Mintz's of the conservative establishment being very friendly towards that.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah, that'll be rough. But the third path is someone gets in there and convinces the Greens that actually social justice is an integral component of an environmentalist project. And then that's a dramatic and interesting situation. That's where then the Greens really start pummeling the new Democrats.
00:25:32
Speaker
That one would be pretty wild. I know, I know. But let's, let's wrap this up. Okay. So folks, if you're listening to this, if you've got all the way to the end of this podcast and you're listening to me and Jim actually talk to each other about me seriously running for the leadership of the green party, I want to know what you think.
00:25:46
Speaker
Do you think it's a stupid idea? Let me know. Do you want me to run for the leadership of the Green Party? Let me know. I think that's the best way to end it. Thank you so much for listening and thanks for Jim for coming on at the end here. Goodbye. If you, the listener, like this podcast and want to keep hearing more content like this, the best way to help us is to share it. Talk about it. Word of mouth advertising is the single best thing you can do to increase the reach of this podcast and the more people that this podcast reaches, the better. There are also some really obvious things you can do to help us out too.
00:26:16
Speaker
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00:26:36
Speaker
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00:27:02
Speaker
and you can reach me by email at dunkingk at progressalberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.