National Post (National Edition)
Contentious Green leadership race is down to the wire
DESPITE MULTIPLE CONTROVERSIES, BATTLE FOR TOP JOB PROVES TO BE A LIGHTNING ROD FOR PARTY MEMBERSHIP
MY VIEW AND THE PARTY'S VIEWS ARE SOLID ON THIS .... ANYONE WHO IS RUNNING FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF THE GREEN PARTY OF CANADA AND WHO HAS EXPRESSED ANTI-SEMITIC VIEWS, THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO RUN. — ELIZABETH MAY
After having gone through a pandemic, several disqualified (and then sometimes re-qualified) candidates, a controversy surrounding misallocated campaign funds and accusations of anti-Semitism, the Green Party of Canada is set to elect its new leader to replace Elizabeth May this Saturday.
By 7:30 p.m. ET (if all goes well), the Green Party will have a new leader for the first time since May took over the party's reins in 2006.
The race features eight candidates vying for the party's top job: Meryam Haddad, Courtney Howard, Amita Kuttner, Dimitri Lascaris, David Merner, Glen Murray, Annamie Paul and Andrew West.
Though each campaign is distinct, all candidates agree on certain policy promises, such as instituting a form of universal basic income and — unsurprisingly — a slew of environmental proposals to combat climate change and better protect or rebuild Canada's ecosystems.
“While they all share Green values, these contestants offer divergent political views, and unique experiences. Each would lead the party and govern the country differently,” executive director Prateek Awasthi said in a statement in September.
In the 2019 federal election, the party elected a record three MPs to the House of Commons while gathering 6.55 per cent of the vote, a three per cent increase over the 2015 election.
No public polls exist to determine who the frontrunners are for this leadership race. But if fundraising and donor numbers are any indication, the final tally will come down to human rights lawyer Paul and Montreal-based lawyer Lascaris.
Paul, a Black, Jewish woman who has worked as an advisor for the International Criminal Court and founded a series of non-profits, considers herself to be one of the race's more centrist candidates who wants to move the party into Canada's political mainstream.
In her platform, she advocates for making post-secondary education free, “dismantling systemic racism in policing” by redirecting some of police services' funding to community services, and withdrawing from the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States.
Her main opponent, Lascaris, describes himself as an “eco-socialist” who thinks the party's success in the next general election goes through a more marked shift to the left.
In a blog post last July, Lascaris explained that means that government should guarantee all of Canadians' basic life necessities: “housing, education, health care, food security and access to the information they need to exercise fully their political rights, all of which must happen in a framework that preserves the health of our planet,” he wrote in a post last July.
Though mostly overshadowed in the media this summer by the COVID-19 pandemic, the WE Charity scandal and the Conservative Party leadership race that concluded in late August, the Green leadership race seems to have been a lightning rod for the party membership.
The party's latest numbers show that the number of members nearly doubled since the 2019 election, hitting 35,000 in early September. A spokesperson was not able to provide more recent date on Friday.
This leadership race has also seen its fair share of newsworthy moments and controversies.
This week, the party was forced to admit that it had mistakenly withheld 35 campaign donations worth nearly $10,000 from Murray's campaign due to a “misreporting” error.
Throughout the race, the party also disqualified or barred multiple candidates from running before reversing course when the decision was appealed.
Over one week ago, Haddad was kicked out of the race after retweeting an ad that was critical of the B.C. Greens and supportive of another political party.
But she was reinstated less than one day later after she argued that May had done nearly the same thing one year earlier.
At the beginning of the race, frontrunner Lascaris's candidacy was rejected by the party's vetting committee in late May due to “public statements on a number of issues.”
Though the party 's Leadership Contest Authority did not detail the issues, Lascaris was widely criticized for an “anti-Semitic” tweet in 2018 accusing two Jewish Liberal MPs of being more loyal to Israel than their own country.
Though race frontrunners Paul and Lascaris agree on many policy decisions, their views on Israel differ strongly. During the party's convention in 2016, Lascaris successfully moved the resolution to support the “Boycott, Divest, and Sanction” movement — colloquially known as BDS — against Israel.
During her time as leader, May never seemingly officially abided by that resolution.
In separate interviews with Global News published this week, both May and Paul said they thought Lascaris's opinions on Israel should have disqualified him from the race.
“There is no question that the Green Party has work to do in addressing racism, anti-Semitism, systemic discrimination in all its forms,” Paul told Global News.
“My view and the party's views are solid on this: to the extent that anyone who is running for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada and who has expressed anti-Semitic views, they shouldn't have been allowed to run,” May added to reporter David Akin.