The Greens should use their scheduled August convention in Sidney to start demonstrating to Canadians they’re more than a one-person party.

Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May has shown herself in the year since she won her seat to be a media-savvy political dynamo.

The Green leader has been ”punching above her weight [as] a single MP and she seems to be getting a fair bit of air time,” Ekos president Frank Graves observed earlier this month.

His polling firm, in a June 21 to 26 survey among leaning and decided voters, found Green support had jumped to 9.5 per cent nationally from 3.9 per cent at the time of last year’s election.

Meanwhile, a mid-June Angus Reid poll put national support at five per cent.

But both polls agree that British Columbia — Elizabeth May’s new home base — is the province where backing is strongest for the fledgling political force.

Ekos had B.C. support at 16.3 per cent; it was seven per cent in the Reid poll. Greens also are surprisingly strong in Atlantic Canada, where Ekos had them at 11.1 per cent while Reid recorded 10-per-cent support.

Greens appear to understand that, in a Parliament where Stephen Harper has a majority, their only real power is derived from the weight of influence.

The party has done a remarkably good job in that regard over the past year.

How many Canadians, before Greens came on the scene, were aware that oilsands companies are receiving tax breaks of about $1 billion annually?

The party has been effective in leading a campaign, along with New Democrats, against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline through B.C.

Greens also have railed effectively against the Conservatives’ recent omnibus budget bill, labelling it the Environmental Devastation Act, and collecting 37,000 names on an anti-Bill C-38 petition.

May has worked tirelessly to make Canadians aware that fully 30 per cent of the bill was devoted to environmental measures, with changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

As time goes on, the party’s message is likely to have greater resonance because, as Greens note on their website and voters have recognized: “Around the world, the force and frequency of severe weather events has woken up even the mainstream ... media.

“Fires, floods, tornadoes, heat waves are wreaking havoc on agriculture and running up the bills to the insurance industry.”

May wrote recently in the Ottawa publication, The Hill Times: “The evidence of the climate crisis is all around us.

“We are sabotaging our children’s future, but what does it matter as long as the bitumen flows?”

But, politically, Greens face a couple of huge challenges in their bid to become more mainstream.

One is on the fundraising side, resulting from the Conservative government’s 2011 move to gradually end the per-vote subsidy to political parties, worth $1.9 million to Greens in 2010; they raised just $1.1 million in direct donations that year.

Another challenge: convincing Canadians that Greens represent a better electoral option than the NDP which is offering a political menu that overlaps with the Greens when it comes to social and environmental policy.