B.C. and federal Green parties face critical leadership choices
Credit to Author: Rob Shaw| Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:39:07 +0000
VICTORIA — The B.C. and federal Green parties are facing critical moments, with both now seeking to replace the charismatic leaders responsible for their mainstream success.
Federal Green Leader Elizabeth May announced her resignation as leader on Monday, after a 13-year term in which she won the party’s first seat, increased its popular vote to more than a million voters and most recently helped elect two additional MPs.
Her departure comes a month after B.C. Green Leader Andrew Weaver announced plans to step down after a leadership convention in June. Weaver won the provincial party’s first seat in 2013, added two MLAs in 2017 and negotiated a power-sharing deal with the NDP that toppled Christy Clark’s Liberal government and installed John Horgan’s New Democrats into power.
Both Weaver and May were the outspoken, boisterous and trusted faces of their parties, helping over several years to legitimize the idea among voters that the Greens were a viable political option.
“Of course, I would say this is a pivotal time for the party,” said Weaver, who has stressed in the past that the B.C. and federal organizations are separate and distinct. “But that’s an exciting opportunity, just like we’re at a pivotal time for climate change and greenhouse gas reductions.
“View these as not glass-half-empty, but as an opportunity for innovation and change.”
Still, the departures of two high-profile leaders carries extraordinary risk, said Kimberly Speers, a University of Victoria professor who studies Canadian politics.
“The Green movement in general in Canada I think is just in an identity crisis, and it’s also in a situation where the future of the Greens may be in crisis,” said Speers.
“You have two Green parties looking for leaders, and where are those leaders going to come from? Are they going to come from the elected people in B.C.? The lone person out in New Brunswick? There’s not many elected Greens to choose from.
“And if it’s somebody from outside, it is going to take a long time for them to build the party and introduce themselves to the electorate as well. I think they both have a big challenge in terms of surviving into the future.”
Within the Green parties themselves, however, there is less worry.
Strategist Jillian Oliver, who has worked on both provincial and federal campaigns, said many of the members now join for their own reasons, and the larger priority to fight climate change transcends any one individual.
“There are so many people that are looking for an alternative, that are passionate about politics and don’t feel they fit in with the other parties,” she said.
Oliver pointed to the growing number of politically experienced organizers who have cut their teeth on Green byelections, provincial and national campaigns, as well as several former Green candidates who’ve won seats on municipal councils in Fernie, Burnaby, Victoria, Squamish and Richmond.
“The tendrils of the party are working themselves into a much more dispersed network and infrastructure which really bodes well for the future,” said Oliver.
The federal Greens will hold a leadership convention in October in Atlantic Canada, where the party has a growing base of support with new Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin and an eight-person provincial wing in Prince Edward Island that is the province’s official Opposition.
There may even be an upside if the federal Greens select an East Coast leader next year, said Stefan Jonsson, the B.C. party’s director of communications.
“One of the stereotypes of the Green party is it’s a B.C. West Coast party,” he said. “To have more leadership coming from another region in Canada, I see as extremely positive for the Green movement across the country because it demonstrates there’s support and interest nationally.”
May has said she intends to run again as the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, which would allow her to keep helping the federal party on the West Coast.
Weaver won’t run again in Oak Bay-Gordon Head. But he said he’ll be around to give frank advice to whomever wins the job. “They have to be offering a vision people can get behind,” he said.
The next Green leaders will also have to face an onslaught of negative campaigning by the NDP, which proved in the 2017 B.C. election and again in October’s federal election that the New Democrat goal is ultimately to wipe the Greens off the map.
“Politics and campaigning is toxic in this country,” said Weaver, who blamed the current first-past-the-post electoral system. “I do worry that the next leader will have to go through that. It’s not very pleasant.”
The NDP in 2017 used its MLAs and union proxies to attack Weaver personally, calling him a bully, a liar and someone unfit to hold public office. In 2019, the federal NDP blanketed Vancouver Island with pamphlets questioning whether May supported a woman’s right to safe abortion services, and attacking her for her willingness to negotiate with the federal Conservatives following the election.
The NDP said it was simply highlighting the different “values” between the two parties, but May blamed the negative campaign for the inability of the Greens to win any additional ridings on the Island. Weaver blamed “the partisan hacks in the backroom. These are the problem people in politics.”
“It is difficult and toxic but if we look at what’s happening, the demographic is changing,” said Weaver. “I think we’re going through a phase now where that works, but just like a pendulum swing in politics we’ll move away from that because people will stop responding.”
The departure of both leaders may also give the parties a chance to evolve their policies beyond the strong personalities of their longtime leaders.
Their replacements, though, will have their work cut out for them.
“It’s going to be a pretty thankless job I think, both parties are building,” said UVIC’s Spears.
“We’ve always wondered if that breakthrough is going to happen next election. It’s probably going to be many elections from now, if at all, for new leaders.”