Annamie Paul charts new course for Green party through crowded waters
OTTAWA
Annamie Paul has spent most of the past 10 months holed up in her apartment, just like you.
But the Green leader’s stationary status belies the quick pivot her team is making as they seek to shed the straitjacket of a singleissue party and reposition it at the vanguard of social justice.
Paul, who beat out seven contenders in October to lead the Green Party of Canada, is carving a middle path among members who come in all shades of green. Their environmentalism ranges from market-based mechanisms for cutting pollution to eco-socialism that rejects capitalism as inherently destructive to the environment.
But on the broader political spectrum, Paul’s calls for a guaranteed livable income, universal pharmacare and child care, and free post-secondary education aim to attract voters who sit squarely to the left of Greens of decades past.
Until recently, fiscal conservatism marked a “point of pride” for the party, she said, a way to “neutralize that argument that these green needs are all well and fine but they’re not really fiscally responsible.”
No longer.
“There is no plan for a balanced budget from us,” Paul said, citing a “global consensus” among G20 countries that massive spending is needed to prop up sagging economies.
While that view fits neatly into Liberal justifications for ballooning deficit forecasts, her criticism of how elected officials have handled longterm care is not so compatible.
Perhaps more than any other leader, Paul has zeroed in on the crisis in seniors’ homes, where in Ontario the COVID-19 death toll in the second wave threatens to surpass that of the first.
She has hosted a half-dozen virtual town halls and roundtables over the past few weeks, speaking with epidemiologists, scientists and researchers to root out the best response to the lethal contagion.
Paul, whose father died during the first wave at the care home harbouring Ontario’s worst coronavirus infection rate, is demanding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau create a “rapid-response task force” to curb COVID-19 by improving coordination between levels of government.
She also wants to see Ottawa, in partnership with provinces and territories, move to eradicate private care homes, on top of hiring more and better-paid staff and rethinking shared rooms.
“For-profit long-term care absolutely needs to go,” she said.
Private homes in Ontario were more likely to see extensive COVID-19 outbreaks and a higher number of deaths, indicated a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in August.
But 108 days after taking the reins, Paul still struggles to be heard above the din of daily politics.
The Greens’ rollcall of three MPs, including former party leader Elizabeth May but not Paul herself, means the party does not have official status in Parliament, leaving them little time on the floor.
Their polling numbers have barely budged beyond six or seven per cent since the last federal election in October 2019, said Abacus Data CEO David Coletto.
Though nearly one in three Canadians say they would consider voting Green, a major hurdle remains the fierce competition for left-leaning voters.
“You’ve got, obviously, the New Democrats who are trying to occupy that kind of space that includes both an environmental agenda and one that’s built around social justice and achieving equality,” Coletto said in an interview.
“The Liberal party, while not as aggressive on some of that rhetoric ... is also in that space.”