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Last June, Green Leader Peter Bevan-Baker and Joe Byrne, the leader of the New Democratic Party of P.E.I., sat down for coffee.

The two met quietly to discuss the possibility of their parties collaborating in the lead-up to last month’s provincial election.

Byrne had reached out to Bevan-Baker with a proposal: the two parties would each pick two key ridings and would avoid running candidates against one another in these ridings. Byrne hoped this could increase the representation of both parties in the legislature and could help broaden political discussions on P.E.I.

But the proposal did not go very far.

"Peter's response was, ‘we're the government in waiting’,” Byrne said.

“He didn't see it as possible, but he would take it back to the (Green party provincial) council."

Less than a month later, Bevan-Baker sent Byrne an email turning down the proposal. The Greens would be running a full slate of candidates.

Since winning eight seats in last month’s provincial election, Bevan-Baker has said he is willing to work in collaboration with both the Liberals or Progressive Conservatives. Premier-designate Dennis King has also suggested he could collaborate with the Greens and may even offer a cabinet position to the party.

But Byrne believes the decision not to co-operate with the NDP belies the commitment of the Green party to strike a more collaborative tone in P.E.I. politics.

"That doesn't make him a bad person,” Byrne said of Bevan-Baker.

“And it doesn't make the Green party not important to Island politics. It's just, you know, it's not doing politics differently."

It is difficult to tell if a Green-NDP collaboration would have made a significant difference in the election. It is also unclear if the Greens would have gained anything. The NDP failed to win any seats, while the Greens increased its seat total from two to eight.

“The relative strength of the two parties was very, very different.” - Peter Bevan-Baker, Green party leader.

In the months leading up to the election, the Green party was leading in most political polls, while NDP support never rose above seven per cent of decided voters.

The NDP’s Herb Dickieson came the closest to winning a seat in O’Leary-Inverness but lost to incumbent Liberal MLA Robert Henderson by 109 votes. The Green candidate in this riding, Jason Charette, drew 231 votes.

Bevan-Baker acknowledged that the decision not to collaborate with the NDP was based on a belief that his party had a possibility of forming government.

“The relative strength of the two parties was very, very different,” Bevan-Baker said.

"Given that we were planning back then to present ourselves as a government in waiting, I think without presenting a full slate of candidates, we could not claim to be that."

Bevan-Baker said he believes the best time for parties to co-operate is after elections.

"The time for collaboration is not during the campaign process, it's afterward when you sit in the house," Bevan-Baker said.

Both Byrne and Bevan-Baker noted their respective parties have significant philosophical differences.

Although many voters view the Green party and the NDP as being on the left of the political spectrum, both parties have often been bitter rivals in other provinces.

The Greens and the NDP also differ on questions about government intervention in the free market. The Greens generally favour more of a private-sector-oriented economy than the labour-oriented NDP.

Byrne said he is unsure whether a co-operative arrangement with the Greens would have improved the fortunes of his party. But he believes it would have set both parties apart from their Liberal and PC rivals.

"I think what would be different is that people would say that politics can be done differently and it's a work in progress. Would that have changed results? I don't know," Byrne said.

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