Amid infighting and challenges to Annamie Paul’s leadership, Green MP Elizabeth May has been mostly silent. May’s return as leader would allow the party to limp through the next election with a known quantity.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 19, 2021.

OTTAWA—In the Green Party mashup, the voice of reason that guided the party for years is steeped in silence.

This week the party executive will be seized with a non-confidence vote on leader Annamie Paul, which needs 75 per cent support to carry.

May’s partner John Kidder quietly resigned from the executive in June before the internal feuding broke into the open following the June 10 floor-crossing of Green MP Jenica Atwin to the Liberals.

Paul publicly defended May’s silence at a press conference last month, claiming family issues prevented the former leader from tweeting a statement of support.

The same code of silence appears to hold true for fellow British Columbian Green MP Paul Manly.

However, news reports also suggested that Paul threatened May to defend the leader publicly, or else there would be consequences.

The infighting has been described by some in the media as akin to the petty politics of a condo board or a book club.

One thing is certain. The damage being done to the Greens on the eve of a potential election is incalculable.

How can Paul run a campaign when her own executive has already made moves to limit party funding for the leader’s local riding race, in downtown Toronto?

Meanwhile, May herself has encouraged Paul to invite recalcitrant Atwin back into the fold and to make a public apology for a staffer’s attack on the New Brunswick MP.

No apology has been forthcoming, and the temperature rose again last week when the party executive began a move to strip the leader of her membership.

The proposed membership revocation only requires a simple majority vote of the executive committee, a much less onerous bar than the three-quarters vote required to oust a leader mid-stream.

The executive has also been reduced in the number because of departures, so it appears as though Paul’s status as leader will not be overturned.

So, the Green team has resorted to the extreme measure of actually kicking her out of the party.

In the midst of pre-election planning, the party could be leaderless and rudderless, leading to the question as to who might replace Paul in the short term.

May is the logical choice.

She spent years as the only recognizable face of the Green Party, in Parliament and across the country.

She has already participated in multiple campaigns, with decent showings at the leadership debates where she was allowed to join.

But the Green Party under Elizabeth May was a nascent party with hope and idealism. Many Canadians wished them well, sharing their passion for grappling with the global issue of climate change.

They would also consider supporting the party in the hopes that it might prod the established parties to move on climate change.

In the past few weeks, climate change has taken a back seat to the politics of Green power, in a way that is very reminiscent of traditional parties.

Back during her tenure, May once posited that her success was largely due to the fact that she was not a politician. Rather, she was a dedicated environmentalist who saw politics as a way of making the changes required to tackle issues.

Back in 1977, May was instrumental in getting Nova Scotia to ban aerial spraying for the spruce budworm.

And she has been working on environmental issues ever since.

But during her 13 years as leader of the Green Party, she was unable to add more than two other members to the House of Commons cohort.

And now one of them has joined the Liberals.

The promise of the Green movement has stalled.

Not only is the current leader facing party expulsion, but the environment has not even played a role in disagreements that, instead, revolve around party members’ contradictory positions on the Middle East.

The return of May would allow the party to limp through the next election with a known quantity.

But there is no way she will be able to convince Canadians that hers is the party to make real environmental change.

The implosion of the Greens has, instead, opened the door for other parties to woo environmental voters.

A May-led party will not prevent an exodus of support. The past two months have sealed the Greens’ fate, with or without a leader.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Annamie Paul could survive by recanting the threats tweeted by her former staffer. But it is hard to see how the internal strife is going to do anything but consign the Greens to the scrap heap of political history.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 21, 2021.

Internal party battles are the ugliest part of politics. And when they spill out into the open, everyone gets hurt.

The current debacle in the Green Party may fatally damage the leadership of Annamie Paul.

She could survive by recanting the threats tweeted by her former staffer.

But it is hard to see how the internal strife is going to do anything but consign the Greens to the scrap heap of political history.

One of the most important jobs of a leader is to keep their caucus happy.

In Paul’s case, she only had three members to worry about and last week she lost one of them.

But instead of standing down and spending some time in personal reflection on what went wrong, she concocted a crazy theory that it was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the anti-feminist, who worked against her to convince Fredericton Green Party MP Jenica Atwin to cross the floor to the Liberals.

Meanwhile, the two remaining MPs did not back Paul when the fight went public, with former leader and Green dean Elizabeth May calling on Paul to apologize to the floor crosser.

After a fiery press conference in which Paul blamed the internal turmoil on racism and sexism within the Green Party national executive, not a single caucus member came to her defence.

According to Paul, it was a busy day.

But the party executive decided that Paul’s only path to survival is to organize a joint press conference with British Columbia Green MP Paul Manly, in which she repudiates attacks on caucus members by her former chief adviser Noah Zatzman.

Zatzman is seen to have played a crucial role in Atwin’s defection, having responded to her pro-Palestinian tweet with a Facebook accusation of anti-Semitism against unspecified Green MPs.

Zatzman vowed in a post on Facebook to defeat them and replace them with “progressive climate change champions who are antifa and pro-LGBT and pro-Indigenous sovereignty and Zionists.”

The substance of his tweet should have been raising eyebrows even before Atwin bolted the tiny caucus.

Most Canadians currently believe that a vote for the Greens is a way of putting climate change at the forefront of the political agenda.

But when it is mixed with antifa and Zionism, the message gets a lot more muddled. And those Canadians who might have cast their ballots in principle for the Greens will likely decide to park their votes elsewhere in the next election.

If Paul cannot even manage a caucus of three, how can she possibly expect to run the country?

Instead of following the advice of elder Green statesman May by trying to get Atwin back into the fold by apologizing, Paul simply dropped another verbal bomb, accusing members of her own national executive of racism and sexism.

Two Atlantic Green national council members resigned last week. In a written statement to The Globe and Mail, departing Nova Scotia representative Lia Renaud said the subject of the national council meeting was “Annamie Paul’s leadership approach and relationship building skills.”

Renaud called the claims of sexism and racism against council members as “just another example of the toxic relationship and work conditions.”

There is no doubt that as a black Jewish woman, Paul is facing the kind of scrutiny that would not have been levelled at a middle-aged white man.

In Paul’s own words, the Green party’s historic vote for her leadership was intended to change the current Canadian gender and race dynamic.

Even if Paul is successful in repairing the recent damage done to the party’s reputation, how will she respond to her own accusations of Green Party racism and sexism?

With an election expected within the next two months, this fight has done irreparable damage to Green chances across the country.

And environmental supporters who previously parked their votes with the Greens will definitely be looking elsewhere.

According to an Abacus poll published last week, the Green Party is sitting at six per cent. The front-running Liberals are at 34 per cent with the Conservatives closing in at 29 per cent.

The New Democratic Party, following a Prairie uptake, is sitting at 21 per cent.

The Conservatives are not likely to benefit from this Green implosion. A fragmented status quo on the left is their path to victory.

The majority of loose Green votes could deliver a majority government to the Liberals.

Atwin’s move could prove prescient.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.