Interim Green leader says last leadership vote not ‘legitimate’
The new interim leader of the Green Party of Canada has something they want to say.
“I don’t actually think that the last vote was legitimate,” Amita Kuttner tells me over coffee, regarding the leadership contest that was won by the now-departed Annamie Paul.
“Enough people didn’t get their ballots.”
In the fall of 2020, Paul won the leadership in the eighth round of balloting with 50.63 per cent of the votes cast — and 2,009 more than her closest opponent, eco-socialist Dimitri Lascaris.
Days before the vote, I heard of complaints. On a podcast I hosted, leadership contestant Meryam Haddad described the Greens’ race as plagued with so many problems that, she said, whether they were “intended or not,” she would “doubt how democratically the next leader” was chosen. At the time, the party refused to say how many complaints it received about missing ballots. Last week, it similarly declined to offer specifics.
It’s clearly too late for what ifs. Paul’s yearlong leadership was marked by infighting, the defection of a Green MP to the Liberals, and legal action between the leader and the party that strained its finances. In July alone, according to a November report to members, more than $100,000 was spent on legal fees and arbitration costs.
That report said the Green Party of Canada is on the verge of bankruptcy and that “the threat of insolvency ... continues to this day.” The party can’t even find an insurer willing to provide its directors and officers with liability insurance, leaving them personally responsible for unpaid wages and taxes if the organization becomes insolvent.
Fundraising stalled as Paul, the first Black and Jewish woman to lead a major federal party, waged battle with the party’s federal council, painting efforts to oust her as fuelled by racism and sexism. For most months in 2021, the party’s expenses exceeded its revenues. It lost nearly a third of its monthly donors last year and a fifth of its members.
In September, as the party announced a leadership review, Paul announced her intention to resign. She had led the party to its worst electoral result in 20 years, capturing only 2.3 per cent of the popular vote, or 396,988 votes cast. (In 2019, the Greens won nearly 1.2-million votes.)
In November, Paul officially resigned and Kuttner, a bilingual 30year-old (now 31) British Columbian with a PhD in astrophysics, was chosen by the party’s federal council as its interim leader. Although a past leadership candidate and a candidate in the 2019 election, Kuttner’s nomination made international news for another reason: they are the first trans person to lead a national party in Canada. (Also, the youngest, and first non-binary and East Asian person, according to the party.)
At their first news conference, Kuttner’s voice cracked. “I know I sound like a teenager,” they told reporters. “But … that’s because I’m going through a bit of a transition.” Their transition is a topic Kuttner discusses openly and unprompted. They’re taking testosterone to lower their voice, and finally feeling comfortable in their shirts, they say, after top surgery. “I’m sure every trans person has a different experience … but for me … I didn’t inhabit my body at all. I didn’t realize this until [2020],” Kuttner explains, picking at their cauliflower pakora. “And the second that I did, it was like this sudden, overwhelming feeling of dysphoria, like terror, of being stuck in that body.”
But, at that news conference, Kuttner shares, there was a moment where they suddenly felt aware of their chest and “able to embody” themselves.
“But I couldn’t think about it too hard because I was like in the middle of an answer,” they say, with a broad contagious smile.
Kuttner was told several times during the 2020 leadership race that the country wasn’t ready for a trans leader, but it’s not what they say they experienced.
Their hope is to spark understanding by sharing their experience. “Isn’t that the point? That we understand each other so we can live with each other, so we get along?”
While Kuttner’s transition continues, their first task has been to focus on rebuilding and listening. To that end, the party sent out a post-election survey on Friday, hoping to better understand and engage its members.
Kuttner also plans to recommend structural changes to the party’s organization. The Greens currently operate in a decentralized fashion, where the leader operates not as a CEO but as one voice among many around the council table.
“I don’t think that disempowering everybody in a leadership role is going to ever lend to stability and being able to function in a way that gets [us] seats,” Kuttner explains. “We are a political party, at the end of the day.”
That struggle is seen as key to many of the problems that plagued Paul’s leadership. But Kuttner thinks there’s a way to do it while still embracing the Greens’ commitment to grassroots and democracy.
Another focus will be fundraising, which Kuttner proudly states has turned around since their appointment.
Donors do seem to have opened their wallets since Paul announced her resignation. More money came in following the 2021 election than in 2019, and the party raised more than twice as much cash in December 2021 as it did in December 2019.
The party made painful decisions last year to cut costs. It went through a first round of layoffs in July, then hired staff back for the election, only to lay off 11 people again in October. Grievances are expected.
The party also ended contracts and renegotiated its office lease. Despite the board saying it is considering “possible termination of the Ottawa office lease in 2022,” Kuttner insists the Greens will maintain a physical presence in the capital. “There is no question of getting rid of it entirely,” they said. “We can just have a smaller office or something.”
Kuttner’s major agenda item, though, is to help ensure a good and clean leadership contest, free of ballot problems and — they hope — with fewer divisions.
Last time, Kuttner says some members didn’t receive ballots “until after the contest had closed,” and others whose contact information was a phone number were never contacted to make sure they received a ballot.
“I don’t know the numbers,” they add, “but they are significant.”
Initially, Kuttner says they were not convinced that the voting errors would have changed the outcome of the race. “I didn’t feel like I wanted to rub it in, to create any more issues here over questioning anyone’s right to be leader.
“But the truth is, I really don’t think the outcome [was fair], since there were so many problems with it.”
The Greens’ leadership race must start within six months of the interim leader’s appointment — by May 24 — and last a maximum of 24 months. Kuttner hopes it’s short, focused and doesn’t lead to too many rounds of voting, so the party can come together more easily afterwards.
Few of the 2020 entrants plan on running again, but Lascaris told me he’s still considering it. Kuttner won’t. They are still soured by their experience in the 2019 federal election, running against NDP star candidate Svend Robinson, whom Kuttner says bullied them. “Whether he intended it or not, he was abusive.”
Robinson denies the allegations and told Kuttner they should apologize to him.
If the government falls before summer, Kuttner has said they’ll run as a candidate but otherwise, they’re unsure.
“I don’t feel like I can go into a partisan fight on a personal level while I’m this [physically] vulnerable,” they said.
Instead, Kuttner is relishing leading in this interim role.
“I believe in the importance of the party as an effective tool, and I want to help them mobilize to get to that point.”
Kuttner plans to recommend structural changes to the party’s organization. The Greens currently operate in a decentralized fashion, where the leader operates not as a CEO but as one voice among many around the council table