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| Mike Schreiner, unattributed, c/o Wiki Commons. |
A couple notes about how I've organized this interview.
I generally try to have a "light touch" in editing the actual interview in these sort of talks, but in this one I've had to do a little more than usual because Schreiner can sometimes have something of a "telegraphic" conversational delivery. I suspect that when he gets a chance to explain something that he is really engaged with but rarely gets a chance to talk about he hasn't developed an especially polished way to do it. But that's OK, most interviews you read anywhere are edited to make things clearer for readers, and I think that I've managed to retain what he meant to say.
One comment I've gotten about these sorts of interviews is that they are as much about me as the person interviewed. I thought something of an explanation might be useful.
When I interview someone I want to hear what they really think about a subject---at least as much as I can get them to say. To this end I never try to "cross exam" anyone. When I start an "on the record" interview I tell the people I won't try to play "gotcha" and make a fuss about an honest slip-up in regard to some basic fact or twist in language. I also tell people that if they say something by mistake that they don't want recorded to just say so and I'll make sure it doesn't end up in the blog.
I do this because I want to put the person I'm interviewing at ease and to really get close to what they really think---as opposed to just hearing what they think that I want to hear. This is a big problem with politicians who I feel sometimes have lost the ability to actually say what they believe because they spend so much time trying to package their "message" and avoid a "gotcha" quote.
The price that these people have to pay, however, is that when the final blog comes out I try to check their statements against the public record. That's why I put so much research into checking out the statements of interviewees, why my blog posts are so long, and, why I write so many long interjections into the conversation. Just because an important person says something it becomes newsworthy---but that doesn't make it factually true. It's an unfortunate problem that most journalists have lost track of this distinction between being "newsworthy" and "factually true". I'm trying to "push back" against that idea with this blog and I make no apologies for that.
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Hulet: Just because you are an American who has moved here, I'm interested in hearing what differences you've noticed between Canada and the US. In particular, what do you think we could learn from the Americans?
Schreiner: I'll answer as someone who came here, fell in love with Ontario, became a Canadian citizen, and, has no desire to ever leave---.
If there's something we could learn from the US example it's related to why I chose the Green Party and became a green entrepreneur. I think I was inclined to do so because the US political culture and government often does such a horrible job of solving social problems that people are forced to figure out ways to do things on their own. So when it comes to activism and social change, there's a more entrepreneurial spirit of social change in the USA.
In the 1960s in addition to the civil rights and anti-war movements there were groups of people addressing things like poverty, housing affordability, neighbourhood revitalization, etc. This kind of entrepreneurial, social activist tradition doesn't exist as much in Canada and that's probably one of the reasons I gravitated to the Green Party. I see the GPO as being an "entrepreneurial endeavour" for social change.
Hulet: Sort of like Saul Alinsky's ideas about community organizing---.
Schreiner: [He gets animated.]
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| Saul Alinsky, by Pierre869856, c/o the Wiki Commons. |
Alinsky is a great example.
Bye-the-way, a lot of people may not know this but Barak Obama comes out of the Saul Alinsky movement. He was an Alinsky-inspired organizer in Chicago. I have both Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals on my bookshelf. And they have tattered pages from being well-read.
We don't have as much of that community organizing effort in Canada. You were involved with that sort of organizing when you did your local currency project in Guelph.
Hulet: Quite a few things, actually.
Schreiner: Walmart, OPIRG---you've been doing a ton of that work in Guelph. I would say that Guelph has more a culture that is supportive of that than any other place in Ontario. There're a lot of communities in Ontario that don't have the same sort of community organizing---I call it the "social entrepreneurial" approach. I am starting to see more of that here but we still don't have near the same degree of that type of activism happening here as in the 'States.
Hulet: Guelph is the exception that proves the rule because a lot of that activism came out of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) at the U. of Guelph.
Schreiner: Absolutely, yeah.
Hulet: Created in the USA by Ralph Nader.
Schreiner: So much of the great stuff that's happened in Guelph came out of OPIRG. That includes things like co-op housing, the campus Co-Op, some of the solar, green energy stuff.
Hulet: The wet-dry.
Schreiner: Yeah, tons of stuff.
I would say Guelph's OPIRG chapter is one of the most vigorous and vibrant PIRGs in Ontario. Historically. Of course, over its history it has ebbed and flowed.
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Because Schreiner comes from out-of-town, I think he's mixed-up work that the Campus Co-Op and a couple other groups have done with OPIRG's legacy. That's perfectly understandable. But just to set the record straight the big "legacy items" from it are probably the Speed River Project and the Wet/Dry facility. The former project naturalized the parks on the sides of the Speed and Eramosa rivers, plus did some remediation work on the small creeks feeding into both. In the latter case, OPIRG basically sold the Wet/Dry to the city and convinced it to take that leap instead of buying either a solid waste incinerator or just opening another landfill. Other projects included things like organizing an anti-Apartheid campaign and administering the first government program to retrofit homes for energy efficiency---but those tended to be issues with a more national or international focus.
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Hulet: I have noticed that a lot of people look at activism and say that it's not a good thing. I am kinda surprised by that. I had always seen the people leading these movements as being heroes---like Saul Alinsky.
Schreiner: [He laughs.]
It's much more accepted in the United States. It's something of a two-edged sword. I would rather have a caring enough government that provides healthcare for people and provides housing and more public goods and services than one which doesn't. But in the absence of one that does, there is a more fertile ground for activism.
Hulet: We got single-payer healthcare because of people like Tommy Douglas going around little villages and small towns giving talks in classrooms and church basements.
That history gets lost. Instead we get what I call "the small-'l' liberal fallacy": that the solution to every problem is education. That suggests that no one actually has to do anything that involves much effort or confrontation because future generations will know better than we do and all improvements will come naturally---like ripe fruit falling off a tree.
It would be helpful if there was some appreciation that politics doesn't begin and end with voting, or even buying a membership in a political party.
Schreiner: Oh yeah! I would say that my philosophy of politics is that voting is just one little act in a whole realm of political actions one can do. One of the things that used to drive me crazy was how dismissive some journalists were about me prior to being elected because "Oh! You don't even have a seat in the legislature. How can you make a difference?"
I'd rattle off issues and they'd respond "How does anyone even know?" and I'd say "It's a lot of hard on-the-ground organizing work inspiring people and putting on pressure". And the Liberals, Conservatives, or, NDP, or some other party that has more power eventually takes it up and it becomes law or a new policy, or a new line item in the budget---they may get the credit for it. But there were a whole host of political acts that had to take place before that ever happened. I think that that's not appreciated enough in our political culture.
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Hulet: As a business man and a politician, what do you think about the fiduciary obligation of a business? And the limited liability laws?
Schreiner: If I had my way we would rewrite corporate law in Canada and "B" corporations would be the norm, not the exception.
Hulet: Could explain what a "B" corporation is?
Schreiner: The "B" stands for "benefit". We have more in Guelph per capita than any other community in Canada---that's another wonderful thing about this city.
So "B" corporations basically look at social, environmental, and, financial sustainability and integrate all of them into the decisions they make.
Hulet: The triple bottom line?
Schreiner: The triple bottom line.
Under Canadian corporation law you have to maximize shareholder value so everything is based on the fiduciary responsibility of management to shareholders.
The challenge of not having something like a responsibility to the community and the environment in official corporate law is that you have to find another way to work them into the business. And the "work around" we do now is to create a third-party certification system. This can cause problems, however, because individual shareholders and potential investors may find that they either are not interested in following a triple bottom line.
To cite one local example, the Woolwich Arms is registered as a "B" corporation. (It's not just the one pub---the entire "Neighbourhood Group" of restaurants and pubs.)
Hulet: Oh, so it's a corporation. I thought it was just a single owner or partnership.
Schreiner: No, it's owned by shareholders.
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| Bob Desautels at the bar in the Woolwich Arms. Image from the University of Guelph website. Used under the "Fair Use" copyright provision. |
So Bob Desautels [founder of the Neighbourhood Group] had to buy out a couple shareholders before the business could resister as a "B" corporation. I think he said that publicly---.
Hulet: [I checked with Desautels on my own to make sure he was happy with this part of the interview.]
Schreiner: Perhaps this will become a private member's bill for me. One of the things the Green Party of B.C. is pushing now is to change corporate law to be able to publicly incorporate as a "B" corporation. A number of American states have already passed laws that allow business to do that.
What's nice about that is if you incorporate from day one as a "B" corp according to the official law of the state, then as an investor or share-holder, you are required to to follow the triple bottom line approach and cannot simply change your mind at a later date---like you can when you just decide to register with a non-governmental third party, like the Woolie has. I would love to see "B" corps become the basic type of corporation in Ontario. But for now, making it even an option that has stronger legal standing would be nice.
[Schreiner laughs.]
It would be BETTER if it was mandated that you HAVE to do it that way! But we are a long ways from that. I do think that at least having "B" law on the books here would at least allow the Woolie, Grosche, Lucky Iron Fish, and other "B" corps in Guelph to incorporate as "B" corps instead of just doing the "work around" of registering with a third party.
This would prevent potential share-holder disputes and help bring in additional investors because it can be hard to attract capital investment and if they do---because they are now only registering as a "B" corps. That means that at some future point investors can demand that they cancel their "B" corp registration and just focus on maximizing shareholder value. This means that on one hand some investors may put money in under false pretenses and intend to eventually get rid of the "B" Corp registration, or, someone could invest in good faith believing that they are buying into a "B" Corp, but then find out it changes to a normal corporation afterwards. If a company could incorporate as a "B" Corp from square one, all this ambiguity would be removed.
For these reasons alone most "B" corps are sole proprietorship or maybe two-person partnerships---not multiple investors, which limits the growth of these types of businesses.
Hulet: I suppose it would be easier to find investors if they had standing under the corporate legal system.
Schreiner: Absolutely! The other challenge once you've found investors is the point where 51% of the shares decide that they want to maximize profit instead of thinking about social and environmental issues.
Hulet: Are corporate charters a federal or provincial responsibility?
Schreiner: It can be both. You can incorporate by either the federal or provincial regulations.
Hulet: So presumably this is something you could write up into a private member's bill.
Schreiner: Oh yeah. I've already sketched-out what the bill would look like. I just chose to protect Guelph's water as my first priority.
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I found a website called "B Corp Net" that goes into great detail about the whole "B" Corp movement. It has a directory that allows you to sort out registered businesses according to country and city. Looking at it, I could see that there are 260 "B" corps in Canada, and 10 in Guelph. Going through the entire list for the country the majority of the companies seemed to consist of things like consultants, natural foods distributors, credit unions, craft breweries, and, tech companies. Some of the ones that I use are the Neighbourhood Group (I have been known to have a pint at the Woolwich Arms), Beau's Brewery (I like their Lug Tread ale), the National Observer, and, Bullfrog Power.
I do have some concerns, though. It appears that Danone and Flow Water Inc are also listed as "B" corps. Most people have heard about Danone yogurt, but did you know that the company also owns the following bottled water companies?
- Mizone (China)
- Volvic (France)
- Aqua (Indonesia)
- Bonafont (Mexico)
- Font Vella (Spain)
- Zywiec zdroj (Poland)
- Villacencio (Argentina)
- Villa del Sur (Argentina)
- Salus (Uruguay)
- Hayat (Turkey)
- Evian (all over the damn place)
Flow Water Inc just seems like one of the "little guys" in contrast to the Danone behemoth, but they have their own little charm. Here's what they say about themselves on their website.
No more plastic water bottles. Our package is mostly made of sustainably sourced fibers with a plant-based cap. Flow packs are made from 100% recyclable and +68% renewable materials. We're also B-Corp certified and pretty awesome all around.Personally, I find it extremely hard to call any company selling bottled water "environmentally friendly"---let alone "pretty awesome all around".
But having said that, I am of the opinion that most progressive policy comes about the way someone eats a salami---one slice at a time. The slices that Flow Water Inc are eating right now are the fact that they have to supply social and environmental accounting statements and then accept a "B" corp impact score.
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| A screenshot of the Impact score of Flow Water Inc from the "B" corp registry. |
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| Another screenshot from the Flow Water Inc site. |
As in any sort of regulatory system, it's efficacy all comes down to the standards it chooses to enforce, and, the rigor with which it does that enforcement.
Again, I think that any system that allows for the existence of bottled water companies sets its standards far too low. As for the rigor with which the rules get enforced, I'd suggest that they don't really mean much as long as registered "B" corps can pull out whenever they want.
But when I consider what I've heard from the vast majority of small business people (and the folks who work for them), this "B" corp thing is pretty ambitious. People don't like being "marked". And even existing accounting regulations seem beyond a lot of small businesses---which regularly get into trouble because they find themselves incapable of setting aside enough money to pay their taxes. Any sort of accounting for the community and the environment is going to take a lot of getting used to---no matter how essential it is to the well-being of society.
So while I'd like to see more being done, it might be that the size of salami slice that the "B" corps are forcing their registered businesses to eat is all they can handle right now without choking. But that is the sort of discussion that we hire politicians to work through. All I can do is report it.
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| Andrew Weaver, leader of the Green Party of BC. Original image from BC Greens Media Kit, cropped by Bill Hulet |
In May 16th of 2019 a bill titled "Business Corporations Amendment Act (No. 2), 2019" received Royal Assent and became part of the laws of British Columbia. It was sponsored as a private member's bill by Andrew Weaver, leader of the Green Party of British Columbia.
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I was at an event a couple nights ago where a bunch of "communication experts" were talking about how to talk more effectively to people about the climate emergency. Frankly, I was tremendously underwhelmed. The message I got was that it's necessary to pander like crazy to people and not piss them off by telling them something that they don't want to hear. When I commented that we need to build indie media in order to fill the gap left by the collapse of newspapers, one bright bean opined that nostalgia for journalism is misplaced. He saw the future of news as being in Instagram. When I asked him how you could possibly do any proper news stores on a site devoted to pictures, he asked me where I'd got this (obviously to him) bizarre fixation on hard news.
Well, that's one end of the continuum. (The end that gets the grants and advertising dollars---it seems, though.) If you disagree, why not subscribe to the Back-Grounder? (Thanks Al for being so awesome!) It doesn't require big bucks, and it's easy to do through Patreon or PayPal. In exchange, I promise never to "dumb down" what I write.
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Hulet: It's always a question of allocating time---.
Schreiner: Yeah, yeah. And how the legislature works is I can introduce as many private member's bills as I want but I can only put one on the order table. Private member's bills are debated every Thursday---there're three every Thursday---and they are chosen by lottery. Everyone who's not a cabinet minister gets to present their private member's bill. So on average you get to bring forth one a year.
Hulet: Presumably you'd want to lobby the other parties to increase the chances.
Schreiner: Yes. You want to bring forward something you think the other parties will support.
There're two different approaches to private member's bills. First you want to make a political statement and you don't care if you get support from other parties. The other approach is that you want to get the thing passed even though less than 5% ever pass. So you write on what you think will get all party support.
So my first one is one that trying to do both---and I may fail at both.
[Schreiner laughs.]
But you never know. So because I know water is such an important issue in Guelph, I'm trying to extend the same protections that currently apply to the Oak Ridges moraine to the Paris Galt moraine.
And because a previous Conservative government brought that legislation in, I'm making the case that I'm just trying to take good Conservative legislation and let it protect the Paris Galt moraine too.
That got us off on a tangent---.
Hulet: Yes. but it was a good tangent.
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As a matter of fact, Schreiner was successful in getting the Paris Galt moraine protected under the same legislation that protects the Oak Ridges one. His private member's bill passed and is now law of the land: Bill 71, Paris Galt Moraine Conservation Act, 2019.
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Hulet: What got me started on the Guelph-Back-Grounder was a bit of disappointment about the general knowledge of people about things. One of the worst examples I can think of right now occurred years ago when Stephen Harper was elected with a plurality of the seats and there was talk of the other parties forming a coalition government. It seemed to me that he was consciously trying to confuse voters into thinking we have a presidential system. He was saying "voters voted for me, therefore this idea that the other parties could form a coalition and run the government---that's just lunacy, it would be a coup d'etat!" And a lot of people just bought it because they didn't know how a parliamentary system is supposed to work.
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[The actual words that I could find Harper saying---as cited in a Globe and Mail article---were "“Stéphane Dion does not have the right to take power without an election”. I did find a quote from Harper's Revenue Minister, Jean-Pierre Blackburn---in Canada.com---who used the phrase:
"We're realizing that no matter what we had come out with in the economic statement, their game plan was set. It's a kind of coup d'etat," Blackburn said."]&&&&
What do you think about the general knowledge of voters? I understand that you aren't going to say that they're a bunch of ignoramuses, obviously.
[Schreiner chuckles]
But do you think we could do a better job of teaching civics? At public schools, for example.
Schreiner: I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity to put something out on the record. I received 10,000 more votes than Doug Ford did. So for everyone who said that they voted for Doug Ford---technically, technically---I received 10,000 more votes than he did.
Hulet: There was a significant vote split in his riding?
Schreiner: There was, there was.
He won by a lower percentage than I did---it was a much tighter race. I'll just put that out there.
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I'm afraid that Mike got his percentages wrong here. I did some quick research on line and it turns out that Doug Ford got 52% of the popular vote with 19,000 votes in Etobicoke North, whereas Mike Schreiner got 45% of the vote with 29,000 votes in Guelph. This paradoxical-looking vote didn't come about because of the relative populations of the ridings: 111,000 in Etobicoke North versus 115,000 in Guelph. It was instead because of the relative size of the electorate: 62,000 in Ford's riding versus 86,000 in Schreiner's.
For those of you who don't know, the "electorate" are the people in a community who are allowed to vote. The only explanation for the 24,000 person disparity between Guelph and Etobicoke North that comes to mind is the fact that landed immigrants cannot vote in provincial elections. I looked at the statistics Canada census profile for Etobicoke-North and the latest numbers show that 58,000 people who live there call a non-First Nation, non-official, language their "mother tongue"---which presumably would mean that they are immigrants. So I think a fair extrapolation is that compared to Guelph a much large percentage of the population of Doug Ford's riding are immigrants who have not yet received Canadian citizenship, and that's why Schreiner got a lot more votes, yet received a smaller percentage than Ford.
I consider this an understandable mistake---no harm, no foul.
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I think people are bombarded with so much info and so many things going on in their lives that they are incredibly informed but not everyone is going to be incredibly informed about everything all the time.
I don't know how to perform surgery but I know how our electoral system works. Actually there are a lot of doctors who can perform surgery but don't know how our electoral system works. It's a sign of the complexity of the society we live in.
That being said, I do think we could do a much better job of teaching civics in schools---especially so of the basic mechanics of how government works. It makes you realize how much of our knowledge is driven by access to media because most people think our political system in Canada works much more like the US system than it does.
A lot of people have a much better understanding of how a presidential system with three clearly and obviously different branches of government operates and they don't realize how a Parliamentary system works, or, that we really do have three separate branches of government in a Parliamentary system.
Technically, cabinet is the executive branch of the government. So if right now you're a Conservative member of the legislature, and you're not a member of cabinet, you're part of the legislative branch that is there to hold the executive branch accountable. But unfortunately in our system---especially in Canada---there's so much party discipline that there's no accountability from back-bench MPs or MPPs for the governing party.
That's why during Question Period questions are allocated based on a roster of MPPs who are not in cabinet so that's why the Conservative party gets to ask themselves questions. That's because theoretically those back-bench MPPs---even if they are members of the ruling party---are not part of the government. They are part of the legislative branch that is supposed to hold the government accountable.
People don't realize that because they see U.S. television where they see Congress, the House, the Courts. In other Parliamentarian systems---the United Kingdom in particular---you see a lot more back bench MPs asking "their own government" tough questions and/or voting against government policy. Much more than in Canada which has a much higher level of party discipline.
Even basic mechanics like that people don't understand. And because of that lack of understanding they've forgotten that the Premier and Prime Minister hold that position based on the confidence of the legislature. So if that person has the confidence of the majority of members in that Parliament, it doesn't matter whether your party has a plurality or even a majority of seats or not.
People don't realize that and in practice it's not how it works anymore. I think the country would benefit if it had more minority governments. Coalition governments have passed what I think are some of the best pieces of legislation in Canadian history: healthcare being one of them, the flag being another, social security, some of the better labour laws. But for some reason in Canadian political culture---it's not like this in Europe---people have an aversion to coalition government.
Hulet: Well, traditionally we had one party that would never form a government if there wasn't vote splitting.
Schreiner: Yes, that is true.
Hulet: If you want to get out into "the ozone layer" there are lots of different ways to reign in party discipline. I believe in Israel, for example, the Parliament has secret balloting.
Schreiner: Wow. That would really change things.
I think that there are some easier things we could do. One would be to not require party leaders to sign off on nomination papers. It used to be that the riding association would make that decision.
Hulet: That certainly would be an issue in Guelph's last provincial election.
Schreiner: Yeah! That's true.
[Schreiner laughs]
So that's created a lot of party discipline.
Things like committee chair appointments. In the legislature if committee chairs were appointed by secret ballot instead of now where the house leader---as ordered by the premier's office---does it. It's all centralized.
Standing orders (the rules that govern the legislature) are done by majority party vote. If that was done by secret ballot that would help. If the allocation of questions was done by the Speaker (elected by all MPPs by secret ballot)---let's say---instead of the party leader's office, that would also help immensely.
There's a whole host of reforms. Actually, Michael Chong has written some of the best work on those sort of reforms----obviously federally-focused, but provincially applicable.
So there are things that could be done to weaken party discipline. I wouldn't want us to go completely to where the U.S. is---where there is no party discipline because the down side of that is that you have lobbies trying to buy off every member of the legislature. At least in our system the really strong party discipline prevents lobbies from buying up the individual MPPs. But I think if we were more like the British system it would help.
Hulet: So some of those tweaks you've mentioned would have some significant positive impact?
Schreiner: Oh, yeah. I think they would certainly reduce the power of the party Whip and the leader's office.
One of the change to the public financing laws in Ontario that I though was significant---and I'll give Randy Hillier, a right-wing Conservative credit for suggesting this idea during my testimony at a committee hearing. As you know, prior to being elected I was engaged in pushing for public funding of political parties. When I was testifying before a committee Mr. Hillier mentioned that if all the per-vote funding went to the leader's office it would strengthen it and weaken the individual members in their Constituency Associations.
That's why some of the money now goes to the Constituency Associations. So in addition to each party receiving funding based on the number of votes they receive, each riding association does as well. So there's a certain amount allocated to each riding. Then that is divided up based on the percentage of vote the party receives in that riding---and the local riding association gets the money.
I thought that was a brilliant little tweak that does put more power into the hands of the local constituency association.
There are multiple little tweaks that could reduce the iron grip of party discipline.
Hulet: That's a good example.
Did you have anything else of a "burning interest" that you want to talk about?
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Schreiner: I'm surprised you haven't asked me about climate change or the clean economy.
Hulet: Well you're in the Green Party---. I think most people know where you're coming from for that.
Schreiner: Because the Back-Grounder is a Guelph-focused publication---. One of the things I find intriguing when I travel across the province and the country, almost every journalist asks me what makes Guelph special and I've thought a lot about that. I'm glad a lot of our conversation today touched on different points of that. I think that the history, the role that OPIRG has played here, the entrepreneurial spirit of this community. the willingness to try things differently, to be a leader instead of follower, the caring and connected nature of this community. The number of artists, people who work in arts and culture.
There's a lot of indigenous history---the meeting of the two rivers. This was the place neutral peoples would meet.
There's a lot of elements that have made this a special place. And it was willing to take a risk and elect a Green MPP.
There's been a lot of committed people working at community organizing over a long period of time. It's certainly not a perfect place---but it's a pretty remarkable place.
Hulet: Guelph's a strange town. It has a very conservative streak and a very progressive one too.
Schreiner: Exactly.
Hulet: I was talking to Karen Farbridge about this with regard to the community energy plan---which in Guelph is kinda aspirational. We have the district energy system that's sort of moth-balled. She was saying that it is "typical Guelph"---we're the first and it stalled. Then the rest of the country is---
Schreiner: Passing us now!
[Schreiner chuckles.]
Hulet: But that's another story---.
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At this point a staffer intervened and it was obviously time to end the interview.
My take-away from all five of these articles is that Mike is a person who has spent a great deal of his life thinking about and working on a wide variety of issues. Greens often get tarred with the brush of being a "right wing party" because they do tend to try to see market-based solutions to many problems. But they are also very much engaged in expanding social services and aren't obsessed with keeping taxes to the absolute minimum.
More importantly, I think the discussion of "B" corporations really does open up a debate about what exactly does it mean to be "right wing". Is a "B" corp really "capitalist" in any meaningful sense of the word? Even under the most radical forms of communism and anarchism there has still been a need to create corporations and syndicates to undertake large scale projects. And again, there has always had to be some form of currency to keep track of the allocation of scarce resources to one project as opposed to another.
Could it be that the real fundamental difference between "progressive", "reactionary", and, "radical" are the goals you choose to pursue instead of the means that you use to pursue them? Decades back the Greens in Germany adopted the slogan "Neither Left, nor Right---just out in front, leading the way!" I'd say that this pretty much sums up what I've seen of our current MPP.
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