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Greens’ Paul makes last-minute visit to party’s B.C. stronghold

JUSTINE HUNTER KAREN HOWLETT

Leader travels to Southern Vancouver Island after rarely campaigning outside of her Toronto riding

Green Party Leader Annamie Paul waited until just before election day to visit her party’s most viable seats.

Southern Vancouver Island has been a stronghold for the Green Party since Elizabeth May became its first elected MP to sit in the House of Commons in 2011. Ms. May and Paul Manly, its only incumbents, are both seeking reelection.

After rarely campaigning outside of Toronto, Ms. Paul spent Saturday in British Columbia. She succeeded Ms. May as leader less than a year ago, and has been treated as a liability on the hustings.

Ms. Paul has inherited a difficult task: to lead the party to the kind of breakthrough that defied the efforts of Ms. May, one of the country’s best-known advocates for the environment.

The Green Party had its strongest showing in the previous federal election, winning three seats in Parliament in 2019 and more than one million votes across the country, which amounted to 6.6 per cent of the popular vote. Ms. Paul’s assignment in the 2021 election was to do better, to finally lift the Green Party beyond fringe status in an election campaign in which the party’s central platform – fighting for the climate – is a major issue for voters.

Instead of momentum, Ms. Paul’s brief leadership has been marked by internecine battles that have made even the fight to secure herself a seat in Toronto Centre a longer shot.

Ms. Paul has said racism and sexism were behind a plot from within the Green Party to oust her as leader.

“First woman of colour, first Black person and first Jewish woman elected to lead a major federal party – it was never going to be a walk in the park,” she stated in mid-June, in the midst of the leadership fight.

The party’s New Brunswick MP Jenica Atwin defected to the Liberals in June, citing Ms. Paul’s remarks over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the other federal party leaders were preparing for the possibility of a fall election, the defection precipitated an internal crisis that left Ms. Paul fending off a threatened non-confidence vote.

The party’s finances were drained in legal fees resulting from the infighting as well, leaving little money to run a national election campaign.

On Monday, during one of her last campaign events before the polls closed, Ms. May stood at a roadside rally, reflecting on Ms. Paul’s challenging campaign.

“There’s no question that her own leader’s office created the circumstances that led to us losing an MP,” Ms. May said. “So it’s certainly been a struggle because people still want to hear her say, ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t reach out to Jenica and keep her in the party.’ ”

Ms. May said she had offered to make way for Ms. Paul to run in Saanich-Gulf Islands, Ms. May’s own riding and the safest Green seat in the country.

“But she didn’t even really consider it. She said ‘I’m going to stay in Ontario’ and then she narrowed it down to Toronto Centre. So that’s a brave call.”

During the campaign, Ms. Paul explained she was not spending much time outside of Toronto Centre because her presence was not necessarily an asset to her candidates.

Toronto Centre has been a Liberal stronghold since 2004. In a by-election race last October, Liberal incumbent Marci Ien won 42 per cent of the votes. Ms. Paul came second with 33 per cent of the ballots cast.

The Green Party failed to muster a full slate of candidates in this federal election. Only 252 candidates are running in Canada’s 338 ridings and, on Sunday, the party withdrew support for its candidate in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, Michael Lariviere because he would not apologize for comments describing COVID-19 vaccination passports as Gestapo tactics.

The party’s environmental platform promised to boost targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, cancel all new pipelines and oil exploration, accelerate an increase in carbon pricing and ban the sale of all passenger vehicles with internalcombustion engines.

But even here, the Greens did not enjoy a unifying moment. Andrew Weaver, climate scientist and former leader of the BC Green Party, endorsed the Liberal’s climate plan instead. “The federal Greens do not have a climate plan, to be perfectly blunt,” he said.

An internal report of the federal party released during the summer concluded racism and transphobia are significant problems within the organization that it has failed to effectively manage.

The leaders’ debate earlier this month – the only one held in English during the five-week campaign – gave the beleaguered Green Leader a spotlight she has lacked. Ms. Paul took on Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet on issues of racism and challenged Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s feminist credentials, naming former women he has driven out of politics.

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2021-09-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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