Greens face restart, former leader says
Party needs fresh ideas following ‘abysmal’ 2016 provincial election
The former leader of Saskatchewan’s Green Party says he hopes new leadership gives the struggling party a “fresh start.”
The party garnered just 1.8 per cent of the popular vote in the spring provincial election — a dip from 2.9 per cent in 2011 — and, after fielding a full slate of candidates for the first time in 2011, was only able to attract 58 candidates to run in the province’s 61 ridings this year.
“I’m kind of lost in terms of how we move forward the popularity of the party,” said Victor Lau, who stepped down as party leader late last month after five years at the helm, to spend more time with his family. “The big thing I was so disappointed in was that our numbers, including my own, were so abysmal. We just can’t seem to crack the double digits. I don’t know what else to do. I’m really perplexed.”
Part of Lau’s election strategy in 2011 and 2016 was to recruit candidates in as many ridings as possible. But finding local candidates is a challenge. In ridings where no one was prepared to run for the party, Lau said he asked people outside the ridings to throw their hats in the ring. Roughly 25 of the party’s 58 candidates this election did not live in the ridings in which they ran, Lau said.
Most candidates also spent no money on their campaign. Of the 56 candidates who had published their election expenses online, only 17 spent money on their campaigns and six of those spent less than $100 (by comparison, some candidates running for the Saskatchewan Party and Saskatchewan NDP spent in excess of $40,000).
Of those who had filed their returns, the Green Party’s top spender was Lau, who spent $9,373 in his Regina-Douglas Park riding. Lau took 401 votes, representing six per cent of the popular vote. It was the most of any provincial Green Party candidate, making Regina-Douglas Park one of only four ridings in Saskatchewan in which the Greens garnered more than three per cent of the vote.
Daeran Gall was one of the Green Party of Saskatchewan candidates who opted not to fundraise for his campaign.
“It’s an effort to run a campaign and the Green Party has no real base funding. Even to launch a fundraising campaign takes some money,” said the Saskatoon-Meewasin candidate, who earned 148 votes.
While Gall said some believe it’s important for the Green Party to be an option for voters in all ridings, “it is almost difficult to impossible to really support that level of engagement.” He questioned whether the party would have more success if it focused resources on a few key ridings.
Interim party leader Shawn Setyo said he would support such a move and that “candidates just on paper” did not help the Greens this spring. He said the party should not waste time trying to get candidates in ridings if no one locally is prepared to be a serious candidate.
Charles Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Saskatchewan St. Thomas More College, said he doubts earmarking resources for a handful of ridings will help the party.
“Given how poorly even the leader himself did in his own riding, it’s hard to imagine if they put all their resources in — which, you know, are limited — that it would make much of a difference,” he said.
Another strategy the Green Party could consider prior to the 2020 election is merging with another party. Lau said the Liberal Party of Saskatchewan has floated the idea of a merger in the past, but there have been no conversations about this since the election.
“That might be something that the new executive looks at, approaching that with the Liberals, possibly broaching that with the NDP,” he said.
Under Setyo’s interim leadership, however, the Green brand won’t be given up.
“We are the Green Party. We are not the Liberals or the NDP. We have our own views and if anyone from the other parties feel their views more greatly align with the Green values, then they’re more than welcome to join our party,” he said.
Joe Garcea, a political science professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said the future of the Green Party of Saskatchewan will hinge on whom it can tap to replace Lau as leader in October.
“The big ‘if’ is if they can find somebody who’s willing to be leader, who is reputable and well organized and can mobilize,” he said. “Because without that kind of a leader, then nothing will happen. It will just wither away.”
Despite never garnering significant support in Saskatchewan — something it may never do — the Green Party’s presence has put pressure on other parties to produce environmentally friendly platforms, Garcea notes. That’s both a victory for the party and has hurt its chance of winning votes.
“As long as the other parties are able to articulate an environmentally friendly platform at election time and there are no major environmental disasters and there isn’t a major outcry about what’s happening to the environment, it’ll be highly unlikely that the Green Party will do any better in the near future than they’ve been doing in the recent past,” Garcea said.
But Lau said the Green Party remains popular with the youngest generation — it received 11 per cent of the popular vote in the provincial Student Vote program — and he believes the party’s best days may still be ahead.
“I think there are good times coming for the Greens. It’s just hanging in there for the duration,” he said.