I often wonder who that scowling fellow is with his arms behind his back, perpetually pacing outside the Spring Garden library. You know, that bald guy with beetle brows and stucco pants.

Pa was forever quoting him, even on his deathbed when he croaked these last words: “Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.” I was so numb when Pa kicked off that I failed to appreciate that profound quote from Mr. Stucco Pants until this week when I discovered that a former Green Party leader named Joan Russow and three high-profile colleagues had quit the Greens to join the NDP. Russow’s three colleagues sent blistering, bellicose letters to party members last October explaining why they were quitting. They accused the new Green Party leader, Jim Harris, of acting like a dictator.

The letter from party secretary Karen Etheridge of BC complained that the Greens were becoming more a party of the right than of the left. “There is increasingly more emphasis placed on ‘fiscal responsibility,’ opposing the labour ‘agenda’ and support of business, and less upon social justice, democracy and realistic environmental solutions. The party is reflecting less of my core values, and taking on more ideas that I oppose.” In her letter, federal council chair Gretchen Schwarz of Quebec wrote she was joining the NDP because: “I no longer believe that the Green Party of Canada will realize the vision that I had hoped that it would.

As the party’s philosophy continues to shift further and further to the ‘right’ of the political spectrum, I become further and further alienated from it.” The third letter from BC organizing chair, Julian West blamed Jim Harris for starting fights within the Green Party and making West a scapegoat: “I am resigning from council effective immediately. After I am gone, Jim will still be a sorry excuse for a leader, and people will see this and, without the scapegoat around, will themselves begin to question Jim’s leadership. Or else they won’t. I don’t really care.”

Over a phone line from Toronto, Jim Harris tells me he was elected Green Party leader just over a year ago. He says the high-profile resignations were “strictly a personality conflict” adding, “the people who quit the party were involved in obstructionism.” Harris acknowledges he was once a Tory worried about government deficits until he realized in the 1980s that the planet was carrying a crushing ecological debt with more species going extinct every hour. “So I shifted from being a fiscal conservative to being an ecological one.” When asked about his political philosophy, he says the terms “right” and “left” are irrelevant. “We say we are fiscally responsible, socially progressive and committed to environmental sustainability.” Harris is a 43-year-old motivational speaker who conducts seminars and writes books to help business leaders focus on change, “innovation” and “creating learning institutions.” He co-authored The 100 Best Companies to Work for in Canada—a bestseller that sold over 50,000 copies.

In the coming federal election, Harris says the Green Party plans to field candidates in every riding. If the party can attract at least two percent of the overall vote, it becomes eligible for hefty public subsidies under a new political financing law passed last year. Michael Oddy, who plans to run for the second time as the Green Party candidate in Halifax, says the party hopes the new financing law will result in a substantial increase in funding so that Greens can continue to press for sounder economic and environmental policies. Oddy will be running against the NDP’s Alexa McDonough who tells me that while she would never scoff at smaller parties playing a role in politics, elections are about winning seats in Parliament and not just about raising money. Besides, she says, the NDP itself has become a lot more green in the last few years. Oh yes, as old Mr. Stucco Pants said, politics is exciting and dangerous. With federal election talk in the air, the Greens and the NDP are marching off to war.