At the all candidates meeting on 6th October, 2008, held at the Hillcrest High School, I used my 2 minutes for an opening statement, not to sing the praises of the GPC, but to read a 4 line poem in praise of Elizabeth May, and to invite the constituents of Ottawa South (and any other ridings) to come to the first meeting of a monthly town-hall type meeting, entiltled "Grass Roots Democracy is Back". In fact, Green candidates from Ottawa-Orleans, Ottawa-Vanier and Glegarry-Prescott-Russell have signed on, and their combined experience and wisdom should make this a dynamic discussion. But we would also invite the incumbent MP to join us without taking over the meeting!

These monthly meetings will act as sounding boards for our citizens on vital issues that touch their lives and livelihoods. A committee of volunteers, as representative as possible of the different ethnic groups, will be struck to organize these monthly meetings, select subjects for discussion, speakers to introduce the subjects over 5 minutes, and to write recommendations to our OS MP, and to hold him (they are all males!) accountable.

For the first meeting we have two subjects already: Animal Rights (proposed by one lady from OS by e-mail) and the second will be: Lessons Learnt form the 14th October Elections.

I hope you will join us. This, I promise you, will be a non-partisan discussion AND ACTION group, even though the creator is very green. You can reach me at (613) 737-4975 or at: candidate@ottawasouthgreenparty.ca, or at: tempuse@rogers.com.

The venue is already booked: St Thomas the Apostle Church at 2345 Alta Vista Drive, near the fire station, with lots of parking available. The meetings will be on the third Tuesday of every month, unless there is reason to change that.

Let us work together, and claim back our democratic right of expression and decision making.
I look forward to seeing dozens of you there.

Qais Ghanem