Ontario Greens are doomed for another electoral disappointment in 2025

The failure of Ontario opposition parties to compete with the Progressive Conservatives

At the start of 2025, virtually all major pandemic-era incumbent governments across the Western world have suffered declines in popular support during elections.  Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives appear to be one of the few exceptions, being eager to cynically and selfishly call an early election precisely because they are far ahead of all rivals in terms of popular support.  Perhaps Ford has a special charm and pragmatism that most incumbent government leaders lack, but arguably the disappointing quality of the alternatives has been a major factor contributing factor.

After distantly trailing the PCs in the 2022 election when most Ontarians could not be excited enough to vote, none of Ontario’s non-PC parties appear to have learned the obvious lessons.  They have doubled down on being stale, boring, and lacking in meaty governance agendas.  I have written elsewhere recently on how the Ontario Liberals have sustained a generation-long closure on internal policy debates.  The Ontario NDP still in principle has policy conventions, but it has not called a convention since Marit Stiles was elected as its Leader.  Perversely, the NDP did have a convention scheduled for the 17th to 19th of this month but then cancelled the convention in the wake of the imminent election – as if the imminent election did not make fresh ideas and debates even more urgent.  But I single out the Ontario Greens in this column due to my having the longest experience with them (notwithstanding my absence from them since my expulsion without a Provincial Executive hearing in 2018).

My past predictions about the Ontario Greens’ electoral prospects

Much of my argument will be repeating the content of my January 28th 2022 blog, “Why the Green Party of Ontario will not gain ground in the 2022 provincial election.”  In that piece I predicted that “the Green Party will not make significant progress in this year's provincial election.  GPO Leader Mike Schreiner will be re-elected as Guelph's MPP, and repeat candidates for the party will grow vote shares where the party is strong in Dufferin-Caledon and Parry-Sound Muskoka.  Yet no new Green MPPs will be elected, and that will largely though not entirely be the fault of the incumbent Leader Mike Schreiner.” 

In the election that followed, the Greens gained 30,000 votes in absolute terms compared to the 2018 election, and they were the only party not to lose votes in absolute terms compared to 2018.  I think that this is obviously not “significant progress” considering that the Greens were included in leadership debates for the first time ever, and that the party’s governing elites had long expected that such inclusion would mark a meaningful breakthrough.  The Greens’ 2022 performance looks bad considering that the party achieved higher absolute vote support in the 2014 election, and it looks bad considering that the Greens have never under Mike Schreiner’s leadership achieved even the 8% of the popular vote of the Frank De Jong Greens in the 2007 election.

Some humility on my part is due, though.  While I was correct to predict that no new Green MPPs would be elected in 2022, perhaps I was in spirit incorrect given my skepticism towards the eventual election in 2023 of Aislin Clancy to Kitchener Center, the second-ever Green MPP.  (It can also be seen in my 2022 blog that I was overly optimistic of the Steven Del Ducca Liberals’ prospects, notwithstanding Liberal popular vote share gains in that election.)  I make no predictions regarding Clancy’s re-election prospects in 2025, other than that her 2023 election is not fundamentally a game-changer.  I am unsure of the stability with which the Greens will hold that riding, given that every Green success there has been in the exceptional circumstances of either a missing Liberal candidate in 2021 or a by-election in 2023.  I do expect no Green MPPs besides Clancy and Schreiner to be elected.

I was correct to anticipate that in 2022 the Greens would gain ground in both Dufferin-Caledon and Parry-Sound Muskoka.  This time I doubt that the Greens will gain popular vote share in either riding: in Dufferin-Caledon Laura Campbell is not running again, with a less familiar name running in her place.  In Parry-Sound Muskoka Matt Richter seems unlikely to build upon his 2022 vote share, purely because the Liberals are unlikely to withdraw a candidate last-minute again.  (We shall see in a few weeks if that last assumption holds true.)

I expect broader electoral disappointments for the Greens in 2023, with the same causes as the disappointing 2022 election results, as described below.

How the Green Party of Ontario functions as a dictatorship (repeated from my 2022 blog)

The Green Party of Ontario is not a dictatorship in the sense of an organization where the figurehead gives orders on governance, and his will is obeyed; rather the GPO is a dictatorship where the Leader always gets his way without even needing to ask for his will to be obeyed.  Perversely, the Executive Director is not accountable to the party's elected Provincial Executive, but rather the Executive Director is accountable to the Leader, and the Provincial Executive is accountable to the Executive Director.

Evidence of this power hierarchy is the pattern of promotion that exists within the party: the current GPO Executive Director was picked among dozens of competing candidates despite a lack of managerial experience, but of course as expected in line with her history working as an assistant for the Leader's Office.  Mike Schreiner's Chief of Staff at Queen's Park from 2018 to 2020 was not only the prior GPO Executive Director, but for the summer months of 2018 his newly hired Chief of Staff was still simultaneously working as the Executive Director - stepping down only after supervising the selection process for her successor.

In addition to this pattern of promotion, the recommendations of the Executive Director seem to be rubber-stamped by the Provincial Executive in a non-independent manner.  Seemingly the Director's recommendations for Executive vacancy appointments, for election candidate rejections or approvals, and for membership expulsions are never rejected.  Furthermore, most GPO members voting in party elections for the Provincial Executive have little information about the conduct of their Provincial Executive and therefore would not be able to judge or vote against this apparent lack of independence.

The rules of the party's internal game for members are therefore simple: behave in line with the direction set by the Executive Director, and you may have a chance at growing your party profile.  Defy the direction set by the Executive Director, and you may be expelled from the party instead.  For the Executive Director, the rules are equally simple: serve the Leader's interests, and you will be rewarded accordingly.  The Leader in turn does not closely monitor the internal operations of the party, but he takes note of the overall performance of the Executive Director in serving his interests and ensuring that he gets his way.

The Green Party of Ontario's policy and governance processes never meaningfully challenge or humble the Leader Mike Schreiner with any correction to his publicly stated policy preferences.  Of course, any legitimate leader will tend to be closely aligned with their party's membership's general preferences, but no Leader is 100% correct all the time in every dispute with every party member, even if the GPO pretends otherwise.

How a party with Participatory Democracy as a founding value evolved into such a centralized top-down institution likely depends upon historical developments that predate my involvement in the party.  But suffice to say, the Green Party of Ontario unlike the Progressive Conservatives, Ontario New Democrats, and Ontario Liberals has minimal history of competitive leadership races.  Despite existing since the 1980s, the GPO has only ever had two Leaders, and therefore minimal history to demonstrate fulsome competitiveness for the Leader's Office, never mind the limited competition for the other roles of the Provincial Executive.

How the GPO's leadership style causes policy stagnation

When I began my involvement in the Ontario Greens in 2012, many senior Greens were still involved in the party whose time within predated Mike Schreiner's leadership, even if former leader Frank De Jong was no longer involved.  Today, few (none?) of those senior Greens would remain, as the Leader has failed to adequately sustain consistently growing profiles of other figures within the GPO.  Even many Greens who joined the party after Schreiner became leader have slowly faded away: I befriended many members who were candidates in the 2014 and 2018 elections, and I recognize few of the current crop of candidates from that time besides Matt Richter, Zachary Typhair, and Christian Proulx.  There are still 6 incumbent Provincial Executives that I know from my past in the party, and just a couple of Shadow Cabinet members whom I am familiar with.

The GPO has not just failed to sustain growing profiles of Greens other than Schreiner himself.  The GPO's anti-democratic governance style inevitably squashes new ideas that could gain the party public attention or growth.  I would know, because for years I proposed many new policy and governance ideas to the GPO and I was subject to the frustrations of all the party's hidden rules as described above.

Anytime I persisted in recurring policy or governance disagreements with party leadership, those close to the Leader became increasingly tense towards me even as my overall number of friends in the party had increased.  And now it would be impossible for current members to distinguish themselves and get themselves nominated for a Deputy Leader candidacy as I had done, as members are now limited to single policy submissions each, the overall number of policy submissions are strictly capped, and Deputy Leaders are no longer elected.

The GPO barely advocates for any major policy ideas that it can call its own.  The GPO has flip-flopped from no longer explicitly supporting abolishing the public Roman Catholic School boards in the 2011 election, to then re-iterating that position in the 2014 and 2018 elections, to then seemingly going back to silence on the issue from 2022 onwards.  The last Ontario Liberal government implemented the GPO's past signature proposal of banning political donations by corporations and unions.  What major GPO policies are left, then, that distinguish the GPO from other non-Conservative Ontario political parties in any memorable way?  Carbon pricing, proportional representation – anything else?

To investigate this question, I tried to look up the GPO Policy Book.  I have been cognizant of long-term decline of the GPO’s internal democracy, but even I was surprised that the Policy Book is no longer publicly available.  All that is publicly available is the GPO Policy Book “Overview”, with the actual meat and substance of policies beyond the titles now only available by request to GPO staff.  (I note that my past submissions for “Affirming Principles of Responsible Government” and “Transforming the Alcohol Distribution System” remain in the Policy Book.)  What are the chances, then, that many of the most ambitious ideas in this document will be in a campaign platform, when the party hierarchy is this cagey about showing membership-passed policies to the few Ontarians who can be bothered to even look? 

At its last convention in Kingston last November, the GPO passed a resolution to reverse its longstanding opposition to nuclear power.  As someone who happens to agree with this policy change, I can still see how this fits into a broader pattern: the longer that Schreiner remains GPO Leader, the more boring and less controversial the party becomes.  The gulf of policy distinction with the NDP and the Liberals is narrowing further and further.  As a result, prospective voters will see this minimal differentiation between the GPO and other like-minded parties, and they will simply vote for the stronger and more viable party or more likely not vote at all.

Concluding thoughts on the future of the Green Party of Ontario

In recent years Ontario politics has become stale with a lack of significant movement in the polls.  The Ontario NDP and the Ontario Liberals have both replaced their leaders but have changed virtually nothing for the better in their internal governance.  Meanwhile the Ontario Greens have suffered a similar internal governance decline to what I have also seen in the Ontario Liberals, but without any replacement of their 16-year incumbent Leader.  In the public eye and in his legislative work, Schreiner is the most pleasant personality imaginable, but his policy message is demonstrably becoming increasingly stale.  There is little reason to believe that the GPO will make progress in 2025 by running on fundamentally the same ideas that it did in 2022.

Mike Schreiner enjoys overwhelming support in the GPO's leadership reviews, but very few voting members understand how he runs the party.  I did not even understand this myself until after six full years of active involvement.  The truth is that underneath Mike Schreiner’s sunny side, the GPO maintains too tense of an atmosphere on his behalf towards any persistent dissent from party members. 

The Green Party of Ontario will once again not grow significantly in the coming election, and the disappointing electoral outcome will be largely the fault of the Leader and those who cynically squash fresh thinking on his behalf.