I have written about the Ontario Greens (2017 https://redheartbluesign.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/ontario-greens-out-loo...) and Federal Greens (2020 https://redheartbluesign.wordpress.com/2020/10/07/green-party-turns-over...) in the past, both time I hinted at optimism for the party, but that optimism has been greatly diminished.
The last few weeks has presented us three provincial elections, British Columbia New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and a fourth underway in Nova Scotia and as well we are under a constant threat of a federal election taking place at any time.
The biggest surprise I had watching as the results came in was the lack of success the Greens has in NB and BC. New Brunswick held onto their two seats as did the BC Greens, though a third seat was lost due to a tactical error by the BC Green Leader (more on that in a bit). In Saskatchewan the Greens didn’t win a seat and earned 1.8% of the vote. So I pondered the question, ‘why can’t Greens breakthrough in an election, any election? In the midst of Canada’s climate action struggles, what is holding the Greens back?
The best results Greens have had in an election was 2019 in PEI when PEI Greens were the official opposition with 8 of 27 seats. In the 2023 PEI Greens lost 6 seats and were displaced by the PEI Liberals as the opposition, the Liberals won 3 seats, one more than the Greens.
In the recent New Brunswick election, Greens went into the election with three MLAs and after the counting was done was left with two.
In BC, the Greens held two seats but could have had three. The Green Leader gave up running in her riding of Cowichan Valley to run in the electoral district of Victoria-Beacon Hill on Vancouver Island. Had leader Sonia Furstenau stayed in Cowichan Vally the Greens might have notched three MLAs in the legislative house. The tactical mistake cost their leader her seat and gave the NDP the slim one seat edge in the seat count in the legislature.
Back to the question, why can’t greens breakout and gain a substantial seat count and closer to forming government or opposition? What is wrong with the Greens?
In an era when climate is a top three issue in most jurisdictions, municipal provincial and federal why are the Greens, the climate action party languishing in the polls and in the seat count in legislatures? What is it about the Greens and their message that voters are not hearing?
Across Canada the Green seat count remains low. Federally, two, in BC, ON and NB two each, PEI has three and there are none elected elsewhere in Canada. 11 seats across Canada. What is preventing that Green breakthrough?
Perhaps a recent email from Elizabeth has an answer. They don’t know what they want to be. In the email sent to those on the Green Party of Canada mailing list, May suggests that the Green Party is a strategic vote, wait what?
Being a strategic vote suggests a party prevents another party from gaining power, so how does voting Green become strategic? That might be the case where Greens run second or third in a riding, but that would be the exception and not the rule. Federally, Liberals claim to be a strategic vote for NDP supporters to prevent Conservatives from taking advantage of a split of votes on the left. That is a strategic vote that works and has results.
For now though, Greens cannot be a strategic vote, they just are not strong enough and for May to think that means she doesn’t get it.
The Green Leadership issues are holding the party back, trying to be more than an environmental party is not working. The Deputy Leader Jonathan Pedneault resigned from the party only 5 months ago. Former Annamie Paul resigned following the 2021 election but was hampered by a revolt in the party over Israeli – Palestinian conflicts. The divide left the Greens with its worst vote turnout in several elections.
Paul’s resignation left the door open for May to return as leader. With May back as leader the party went back to 2019 in 2022. The re-election of the May/Pedneault ticket didn’t move the party forward as leaderships normally do.
To be successful and credible the Greens need to consider how their climate action plans interact with economics, foreign affairs, defence and healthcare. They have not been successful in doing that and it is the cause of not being able to unlock greater electoral success.
In Part 2 I’ll look at several options available for the Green Party and give my ideas, free of charge to the Greens to consider.
Comments
Great question. The answer from my perspective, as a former Green, is the following:
1. Strategic Voting: Every election in a first past the post electoral system when voters vote against who they don't want rather than who they do want, the result is that the Greens lose upwards of 50% of their voter support on election day. Fear being the main driver.
2. A very weak ground game. For reasons I don't want to get into in public, the Green Party is very weak on the ground in almost every riding. When I ran the 2007 Ontario GPO campaign where we tripled our vote, we supported all the candidates in the province providing them with the very basics to succeed. This isn't the case any longer. Even though the party has 10x the amount of money, they concentrate it in a few ridings to try and win them. They've used this failed strategy for close to 20 years now without much success as you point out. My strategy worked better because I believe that in order for the best Green Party candidates to get elected, voters need to be talking about Green Party policy and ideas in every corner of the province or country.
3. Environmental and climate change issues fall to the wayside during tough economic times. This is especially true when climate change deniers, like Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre spend all their time and a whole lot of money spreading misinformation about it and a carbon tax.
4. One of my 2007 election campaign slogans was: "There is only one Green Party if you want real change." The idea behind it was to separate the Green Party from the other progressive parties on environmental issues. Of course they never continued with it and fail every election to prove the obvious: If the other parties were real green parties they would call themselves the Green Party. They had the chance, they never did. Why? Because they are not environmental parties. They do not understand sustainability and what the steps are to achieve it without causing the economy serious problems.
A revenue neutral carbon tax is a Green Party policy the LIberals stole. But, like usual, they failed to implement properly or to even explain the benefits to Canadians. Because they don't know. They don't have a real plan. It's all posturing. If you want Canada to become sustainable, the Green Party is the only choice because they are the only party that spends all day and all night, every single day of the year, forever, thinking about this problem. No one spends as much time or energy into solving the sustainability challenge.
5. Fundraising > The Greens suffer from an inability to raise adequate funds to take on the bigger parties. They just don't have enough money to reach every voter once, let alone multiple times.
6. Too many political neophytes > Too often complete novices become candidates. People who have not spent the requisite amount of time to learn how political campaigns are run. Even the volunteers have little idea what they are doing.
7. Unlike the other parties, the Green Party does not use a Geopolitical data tool to analyze daily campaign activity. While they start strong, they are unable to adjust the way the other parties do half way through a campaign. Which is one of the reasons they drop back in the final two weeks of almost every campaign.