Three official parties:

1. The Liberal Party of Canada -- homepage and platform (pdf)

- Liberals seem to have a superficial awareness of the environment, but lack technical understanding. Their platform most emphasizes financial management, which is not surprising considering their leader is a former finance minister. However, balancing the budget isn't really a skill, anyone can do that, if you can't balance a budget you don't deserve to survive. And charts provided are skewed to exaggerate changes, when there weren't really any. Their party history is to remain popular, not make any significant changes, and to maintain a low key (do nothing). One big mistake: They want to support drug trafficking and those who produce marijuana. I will never vote for a government that supports drug traffickers. Ever!

2. The Conservative Party of Canada -- homepage

- Limited platform to 3 or 4 issues. I don't see how anyone could run a country on such a limited platform.

3. The New Democratic Party of Canada -- homepage their issues and factsheets

- Clearly the biggest threat to the liberals. Small wonder: their technical score is far higher than either the liberals or the conservatives. However, historically their party has increased debt and taxes, but this time they seem intent on balancing the budget every year. That puts them on par with the other parties. Their policy on the environment is very thorough, including renewable fuels for transportation (biofuels and ethanol), although they don't mention cellulosic bioethanol specifically. NDP also mention solar energy when Canada has very poor solar resources. These might be two minor technical errors. They also want to phase out coal, which is an abundant resource in North America. Therefore this one idea doesn't seem economically sound, it would seem better to emphasize clean coal technology, and coal liquefaction, rather than to phase it out. They also support health care spending, which is a big part of the GDP. I might suggest privatizing minor non-emergency health care clinics and providing public funding for emergency, serious & chronic, and critical care only. Their tug-of-war with corporations might undermine profitable opportunities, that's not good. But they are willing to ensure corporations don't undermine employment opportunities for Canadians by giving jobs away to foreigners. That's good. Their policy on immigration might be improved to include zero immigration during economic recessions.

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The NDP has a higher technical score. They've got my vote.