Elizabeth May launched her candidacy to take over the leadership of the federal Green Party on Wednesday, saying she wanted to rebuild the party and make it an influential political force, especially in the fight against climate change.
May, who left the Greens leadership in 2019, is running on a joint ticket with Jonathan Pedneault, a crisis expert who has investigated abuses in war zones including Afghanistan.
Kicking off their campaign Wednesday in Sidney, B.C., each pledged to appoint the other deputy leader if announced the winner, and both promised to enshrine the co-leadership in the party constitution.
May, one of two Green MPs sitting in the House of Commons, said the party “is in complete disarray, and I bear some responsibility for that”.
“I made mistakes and I apologize for them. The last two years have been difficult for all of us,” she said.
Only two MPs representing the party won the last federal election – May on Vancouver Island and Mike Morrice in Kitchener, Ontario. – after a campaign beset with infighting and sniping against Annamie Paul, May’s successor at the helm.
Paul resigned after the election, saying the experience had been one of the worst of his life.
Amita Kuttner, an astrophysicist from Vancouver, took on the role of interim leader with a mission to “heal” the party.
They said the party still had work to do to ‘get its own way internally’ and should support its MPs and its next leader.
“To prove that we are a serious party ready to govern, we must act together internally and align ourselves with our own values,” they said. “It requires good governance, operations that work and the leader and MPs are fully supported to do their jobs.”
Pedneault said he would take on the role of growing the party through fundraising and membership drives, and said he would “not look back.”
“The leadership race will be an attempt to show that the color green is a positive color,” he said.
He said he didn’t feel overshadowed by May, an established figure in Canadian politics, or “didn’t feel like a junior partner at all.”
“We learn from each other,” he said in a joint interview with May.
The MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands said she was persuaded to run for leadership in April when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a report saying it was a time “now or never” to avoid a climate catastrophe.
She said being party leader, rather than just an MP, would give her voice more resonance when talking about the urgency of cutting emissions and other environmental issues.
May said now is the time for the Greens to grow as a parliamentary force. She said she hoped “other concerned MPs” would consider crossing the floor to join them.
Her remarks will be interpreted as a thinly veiled invitation to Jenica Atwin, the first Green MP elected outside British Columbia, to join the Green Party. Atwin, who represents Fredericton, New Brunswick, made the switch for the Liberals last year and criticized Paul’s leadership.
May said the Greens were also a natural choice for NDP voters disappointed by Jagmeet Singh’s trust and supply pact with Trudeau.
The NDP has pledged to support the minority Liberal government on key votes such as federal budgets through 2025, in exchange for action on policies such as dental care.
May said the NDP-Liberal pact is an “election opportunity for us.”
She said she got the idea for a co-leadership from other green parties around the world, including in Europe. The model would show that for the Greens, the leader of the party is not a ‘boss’ or a ‘dictator’, she said, and ‘the highest authority is our members at local level’.
Community organizers Anna Keenan and Chad Walcott also joined the race on a joint ticket, saying people felt cynical about Canadian politics.
In their launch video, they said the time had come for a new era in Canadian politics. “Can we not imagine a world beyond capitalism? We think we can,” Walcott said.
Sarah Gabrielle Baron, who ran as an independent against former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole in last year’s election, and Simon Gnocchini-Messier, a federal civil servant who ran for the Greens in Hull- Aylmer, Quebec. both work on individual platforms.
Baron said “fear-based thinking is a spiral that can take the human family to some pretty dark places.”
“The Greens don’t think that way. Greens bring joy to everything we do,” she said, adding that as a leader she would oppose nuclear devices in all their forms.
Gnocchini-Messier said it was time for the Greens ‘to get back to our roots’.
Green Party members will use a ranked ballot system to choose the new leader in two rounds of voting in October and November.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 31, 2022.