Seven Oaks Magazine.

The Green Party of Canada has been excluded from the national leaders’ debates slated for June 14 and 15. Jim Harris, the Greens’ leader, has been leading a vocal protest against his exclusion, citing a full slate of candidates and six per cent support in the polls. For the Greens, however, their credibility might be better served with Harris sitting out the big dance, lest the public become too familiar with their leader’s entirely unconvincing pose as an outsider rebelling against ‘politics as usual’.

I’m sincerely reluctant to weigh in against Harris and Canada’s Greens, long a place for the disaffected to register a “protest vote”, a repository of resentment, however vague and undefined, against the ravages and injustices engendered by global capitalism. But even a summary look over the Greens’ new leader and their centrist political rhetoric makes clear that a vote for the Greens is anything but a “protest vote.”

Proudly boasting a platform that is neither “left” nor “right,” the Green platform isn’t likely to make the rich and powerful lose any sleep.

“The Green Party will put an end to hallway health care, we will lower taxes on income, profit and investment to promote increased productivity and job creation,” the party leader explains, sounding pretty similar to another Ontario politician named Harris.

While the Liberals and Tories are busy raiding Jack Layton’s platform and stretching the limits of our collective gullibility by campaigning left — see Paul Martin’s child care promises, recycled from 1993, and Stephen Harper’s new-found love for Québec, opposition to private health care, etc. — Jim Harris appears much more comfortable leaning right. Early in this campaign, Harris, who is running against the NDP leader in the Toronto-Danforth riding, joined the chorus of ‘respectable’ voices castigating Layton for asserting Paul Martin’s responsibility for the increase in homeless deaths that resulted from cuts to social housing.

Harris has made his career telling the corporate world what they want to hear, becoming renowned as a corporate management consultant and ‘motivational speaker’ on the lucrative business conference circuit. He has lectured widely, giving workshops to executives on topics such as “customer retention and delight,” “paradigm shifts”, and “strategic planning.” His company’s website (www.strategicadvantage.com/) includes personal endorsements from dozens of corporate executives and managers, ranging from the Royal Bank and CIBC, to Mobil Chemicals Ltd, to something called the CEO Network of Canada.

Now, for the sake of full disclosure, Tony Robbins and his infomercial ilk have always made me queasy. But simply put, Jim Harris is a huckster, the antithesis of the anti-politician, and someone with limited green credentials, to say the least.

Indeed, Harris has been called an eco-capitalist, and he doesn’t seem to mind, never tiring of stressing that he’s a “fiscal conservative.” In fact, he first became politically active in the Progressive Conservative party, concerned about government spending in the late 70s and early 80s — a ‘concern’ shared by Mulroney (and Thatcher and the recently departed Reagan) that spearheaded two decades of neo-liberal attacks on the hard-won rights of working people.

Somewhere on the corporate lecture tour, after four years of “travelling the world” post-university, Harris discovered the planet’s ecological crisis, and in 2003 he became the leader of the federal party, whose hopes have never been higher. The new electoral funding reforms — among Chrétien’s parting shots to the new Martin-led Liberal party machine — will mean funding for the Greens: $1.75 per vote if they can clear the two per cent threshold.

Criticism of Jim Harris’ ‘green’ vision should not be taken as disparaging of the environmental movement as a whole. Quite the opposite. Green political parties have emerged in this era of increasing awareness of ecological crisis and of social democratic, Communist, and Socialist parties worldwide growing increasingly pliant in the face of neo-liberal rollbacks — if they haven’t been in government implementing the attacks themselves, as epitomised by the loathsome Tony Blair regime in the U.K.

The answer to this weakness of progressive politics, though, is certainly not to embrace the tired rhetoric of ‘neither left nor right’ and the dangerous, green repackaging of corporate rule as promoted by pitchmen like Jim Harris and the new eco-capitalists.

The idea that Harris' Green party outflanks Layton's NDP to the left in this campaign is dubious at best, and seems to be negated by Harris' own statements. That, coupled with an NDP that's pushing hard its own green platform, would seem to limit the vote-getting potential of the Greens. But the lack of awareness, and outsider status, fostered by the snub in next week's televised debates, just might help keep some protest votes Green. That would be unfortunate; the party's real platform should be publicised and more widely understood. Because a vote for the green 'third way' - Jim Harris' desired paradigm shift, if you will - is no protest vote at all. Its recycled Blairite accommodation of corporate rule deserves to be rejected by all those struggling for social justice and environmental sustainability.