Canada’s wilting Greens

Last weekend Canada’s Green party held a policy convention and confirmed leader Elizabeth May as its leader going forward. May and the Green party leadership changed the party’s constitution to remove term limits for leaders, sidestepping an internal challenge from Green candidate Sylvie Lemieux.

Lemieux wanted a leadership contest, claiming that under May’s leadership the party has seen 25% of its members leave since the last federal election.

May performed poorly in the election, despite winning the right to participate in the televised debates she was unable to lift the party above a 6.8% share of the popular vote or win a single seat. She was criticized by her own party for suggesting voters support Liberals candidates where Conservatives were vulnerable, a move that combined with then Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s agreement not to run a candidate against May made it appear as if the Greens were simply a fringe extension of the Liberal party rather than a stand-alone entity with its own policies and beliefs.

All the signs point to further disappointment for Greens whenever the next election comes, May is no longer the fresh face on the national scene and by moving her attempt to win a seat from one coast to the other appears desperate and opportunist.

Two other problems facing the Green party are a fading public confidence in the claims about global warming in a post-Climategate world and the lack of seriousness in the party as a whole. May presided over a publicity stunt by appointing ex-NHL player Georges Laraque as one of the party’s two deputy leaders. His qualifications for the post are that he watched a movie and turned vegan. When he was appointed he had been a Green party member for only 6 months.

Canada’s Green party’s popularity peaked at the 2008 election, but as Lemieux points out, the party has lost 1 in 4 members since that time and May’s behavior is unlikely to attract many more before an election is called. At the weekend’s policy meeting she called the Conservatives a threat to democracy with no trace of irony for having just secured her own leadership position by changing the rules.

Australia and the United Kingdom both elected their first Green party MP’s this year and in similar circumstances where the overall election result resulted in a coalition or minority government.

Canada’s Green party and Elizabeth May must look at these foreign successes and long for the same, but it is unlikely to happen at the next election, or any election while Elizabeth May leads the party.