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“I have gotten so many invitations to talk to different groups in Windsor,” said Glovasky-Ridsdale, a 47-year-old IT employee at the Windsor Essex Community Housing Corporation. “I’ve felt people really do want to hear what I have to say, what all the parties have to say.

“We’re ready to answer some of the hard questions,” Glovasky-Ridsdale said. “I’d like to show (voters) the Green Party has concrete plans. It’s not all about hugging trees. It’s more than that. What’s on a lot of people’s minds is jobs and the economy. We have ideas on jobs and the economy.

“It will give a lot of people another option.”

Said Schreiner, who is running in Guelph, “It’s really less about the Green Party and more about the people of Ontario and the fact that they have a democratic right to hear what the main parties’ platforms are and what they would do for our communities and for Ontario.”

Steve Green was one of the people who called for the chamber to include the Green party in the debate here.

“Part of a fair and open political debate includes hearing all voices,” he wrote in a letter to the chamber. “We can learn from those we don’t traditionally listen to…a little friction can be the start of a fantastic idea or conversation.”

More than 233,000 people voted for the Green Party in the last election in 2014. That’s almost five per cent. The party qualified for a per-vote subsidy from the government, just like the other three parties, bolstering the argument that taxpayers should be able to hear the Greens face off against the others in a public forum.