Green Party rated best on reform proposals

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Elizabeth May's Green Party scores best of the five major parties on promised government ethics reforms, advocacy group Democracy Watch says.

Rated on their platform promises to make government more accountable to Canadians, the Greens got a B- and scored the best in three of the five areas Democracy Watch rated — efficient government, citizen-driven government and general accountability.

Gilles Duceppe's Bloc Québécois followed, scoring best in ethical government and open government. That earned them a C- overall.

Michael Ignatieff's Liberals were awarded an F and have the distinction of getting the worst grade in all five areas. Stephen Harper's Conservatives and Jack Layton's NDP also got an F.

Duff Conacher, head of Democracy Watch, said the NDP grade was surprising, because the NDP has pushed for accountability reforms in the past. Those reforms were largely missing from their platform, however.

"For some bizarre reason, the NDP decided not to set out their proposals for democratic reform, ethics reform and government accountability reform in their platform," Conacher said. "This is most bizarre, because a major theme of their election campaign has been that people should elect NDP to fix Ottawa."

The Conservatives had the best grade in 2006, he said, with 60 measures set out to clean up government.

This time, however, "the Conservatives are way down and have essentially abandoned that whole area of making pledges in any significant way," Conacher said.

"All the parties except the Green Party have failed to address high voter concern about democracy and trust issues," he said.

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