TORONTO — While other party leaders fired up their campaign buses, Green Party Leader Frank de Jong launched his campaign yesterday on two wheels, pulling up in front of Queen's Park on his bike before embarking on a 100-kilometre ride to Guelph.
Decked out in green riding wear, he even stood briefly for a photo op in front of the NDP's idling orange tour bus meant to cart around reporters trailing Leader Howard Hampton.
"Howard Hampton likes to say he's green," Mr. de Jong said afterward. "But there are few things that he actually does that are green."
The seatless Green Party, once again excluded from televised leaders' debates, desperately wants to woo ecologically minded voters away from the New Democrats, who in the past have been quick to bristle at criticism from the upstart party that they are pale green at best.
Some say the NDP's ties to the labour movement limit the policies it can endorse on the environment. Activists have attacked the NDP's policies on the future of the forestry business as too close to what the industry - and forestry-worker unions - want.
Mr. de Jong and his aides highlighted Mr. Hampton's plan to reduce the cost of electricity for mills and factories. Instead of subsidizing energy-intensive industries, the Green Party, Mr. de Jong said, would shift the tax burden from income and other taxes to levies on environmentally damaging activities, and then let the "invisible green hand" guide the market toward sustainability.
Mr. Hampton has made a point of taking a hybrid Ford Escape SUV on the campaign, but the media will still trail behind in a diesel-fuelled bus.
Still, the NDP says that by jettisoning the second bus - and buying emissions credits for the gas the one bus does guzzle - it will save 24 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions over the course of the campaign. (The food served on the NDP's media bus is, according to bumph handed to reporters, largely local and leans toward the organic.)
Mr. de Jong, an activist and schoolteacher who has been leader of the party since 1993 took his bicycle on the subway to the west end of Toronto before heading out for the 100-kilometre ride to Guelph.
The Green Party Leader said he is confident that growing support for the party will translate into seats at Queen's Park. He pointed to the party's candidate in Guelph, Ben Polley, and its representative in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, Shane Jolley, as those with the best hopes going into the campaign.
Mr. de Jong says he will do the rest of his campaign tour in a Volkswagen Golf that has been retrofitted to run on 100-per-cent vegetable oil.
Leaders' schedules
Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty:
8 a.m. Speaks to students at Charles H. Hulse Public School in Ottawa
11:15 a.m. Roundtable discussion with students at I. E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay
7 p.m. Speaks at a campaign event in Markham
Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory:
9:30 a.m. Media event Marriott Eaton Centre, Toronto
12:15 p.m. Speaks to Oakville business leaders' luncheon
2:30 p.m. Canvasses with Oakville PC candidate Rick Byers
5:45 p.m. Attends Kitchener-Conestoga campaign office opening
7:30 p.m. Attends 154th Wellesley fair opening ceremonies
NDP Leader Howard Hampton:
8 a.m. News conference with NDP candidates in Richmond Hill
12:15 p.m. Campaign event with Nickel Belt NDP candidate France Gélinas and Sudbury NDP candidate Dave Battaino in Hanmer
6 p.m. Campaign event with Thunder Bay-Superior North NDP candidate Jim Foulds and Thunder Bay-Atikokan NDP candidate John Rafferty in Thunder Bay
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