This weekend is my annual blast of meeting, greeting, hugging and chatting with the thousands of people who come to the Saanich Fall Fair. Selfies and Facebook postings scatter across Canada and by evening my email in-box bears notes from friends in Toronto and Nova Scotia who notice their local friends just met me. It strikes me that Canada is rather like a large village.
For the Green Party, social media is key. We can never outspend the other parties, and even on Twitter we know some of the nastiest comments are from accounts that are not “real people” but echo chambers for other parties and corporate interests. (For reference, I just saw a story that 300,000 trolls work for the Communist Party in China.)
But I see the Internet as a place to share ideas and answer questions—just like the Fall fair.