Speaking

In this Canadian federal election, the major parties have connived with the national broadcasters to prevent the inclusion of Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the televised “debates” that have become such an important feature of modern elections. The official fiction is that because the Greens have no seats in Parliament, they are not a national party – though they are running candidates in every riding, and won 7% of the vote -- nearly a million votes -- in the last election.

To counter that fiction, Elizabeth has been holding rallies from coast to coast – and on Saturday I spoke at the one in Halifax. I'm not a Green – Elizabeth would say, with a smile, “not yet” -- but a member of the New Democratic Party, Canada's social democratic party, which forms the provincial government here in Nova Scotia. If you'd like to see my five-minute speech, click here:  http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca/silver-donald-cameron-speaks-elizabeth-may-rally-democracy

By sheer coincidence, my eldest son, Dr. Maxwell Cameron, also spoke to the same point -- but in a very different context.  He is a political scientist at UBC. Here's his video clip: http://www.fairchildtv.com/news_headlines_ad.php?headlines_iid=3158

I do a lot of public speaking -- please remember that, if you're looking for a speaker! -- and speaking generally involves air travel. That troubles me. I do buy carbon credits to offset my emissions, and I always manage to amortize the emissions over several projects by doing a variety of things at my destination -- picking up material for columns, doing new Green Interviews, networking and so on.

But the better solution would be to do the speaking without any travelling -- and the Prince Edward Island Department of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Rural Development recently gave me a chance to try that. We recorded the third of three sessions on a separate video camera, and posted that session on this site, so that participants from all three occasions could see it on the web.

That means you can see it, too, and I'd love to have your feedback both on the technique and on the content. To see the presentation, just click here: http://www.thegreeninterview.com/silver-donald-cameron-speaks-about-econ...