By using Mastodon instead of X for one and focus more on informing Canadians about electoral systems.
She needs to step aside, and have a solid person step into the leadership role.
The last person they had come in more publicly, was the black jewish pro-palestine lesbian lawyer disaster, who had zero leadership skills. When you hear moderates considering right-leaning opinions on DEI, the green party’s leadership issues are unfortunately a case in point, and very easy to use as a demonstration of the negative aspects of promoting equity above competence. So in getting the next leader, they need to have someone that’s competent / able to lead the party, above all else. And they need to be able to stand up there without May holding their hand like a toddler. Not the right look for a “leader”.
In terms of growth for the party, that’s a real challenge unfortunately, especially given its recent leadership disarray. In traditional models it sits sorta left of the NDP. If you graph out where people are on the ‘spectrum’, the centrist parties get the majority of votes for appealing on centrist issues – fringe parties on the left / right get a smaller wedge to occupy in general, and they’re all somewhat pushed in various directions by the big centrist parties. The liberals have moved further to the right with Carney’s current approach, appealing to more conservatives in general to try and bolster their numbers. The NDP “should” have an opportunity to gobble up more of the left side of the spectrum – Greens too, potentially.
So, honestly, I think the greens would get the biggest boost by playing to their traditional core ideologies, updated a bit to filter out the more fringe elements. Go big on environmental stuff – highlight all the fire devastation lately, and put together clear plans to help people on that eco-disaster front. Acknowledge that climate change is going to get a lot worse, and put forward infrastructure plans to respond to what’s coming. Support the energy sector, including solar developments and nuclear advancement as generally lower polluting options (the party is historically wishywashy on nuclear due to fringe elements, even though most green-movements have since realised its a lot less damaging than other forms). Campaign to turn climate issues into a clear wedge issue, and stake out a strong position as a party known as being eco-focused.
And also, as alluded to above, they’d need to downplay components involving equity stuff. Equity is important, and should still be a concern of politicians, but it shouldn’t be a primary focus nor a constant campaign topic. They should also limit how explicitly/overtly they tie themselves to FN-specific interests, as that’s likely to alienate more non-FN. If they were a right-leaning party, one move to get more votes may even be to explicitly come down hard on FN concerns to gain that vote: like declaring ‘shared exclusivity’ a court-originated perversion of the government’s intention with regards to aboriginal title, with a claim that forcing the courts to align with the ‘exclusive’ intention would simplify land disputes in areas like BC and encourage development/growth (using things like the cowichan claim in Richmond, contested by other FN groups, to drill that home). The greens aren’t right wing, and shouldn’t go that way in their policies, but at the very least they should avoid the topic as much as possible as their stance isn’t likely to appeal to the majority, especially as the green position’s often been crafted to try and appeal to the FN minority demographic. But that’s a big part of the shift they need – moving away from demographic based minority special interest chaos, towards big, overarching, “good for everyone, so everyone should vote for us” things like “not having your shit burn in a forest fire” and “being able to breath outside during the summer”.
You vastly underestimate how many Canadians do not give a fuck about the environment. In this country, you elected elected bonding with pickup owners.
The oil lobby has strong propaganda. Even when Albertans ardently support the industry they later get laid off by automation.
Oil is not culture. It’s just an energy source we need to stop using when we have solar.
No, I don’t. My take on the greens isn’t about them winning a majority, but about them trying to rebuild their party after suffering numerous years of eroding support. At a time when an eco-oriented platform would’ve been persuasive to more voters, the green party imploded with DEI stupidity. It still hasn’t recovered, and in my view likely never will.
A practical approach to eco issues, like I’d advocate them to take, isn’t the same as a what a typical ‘green’ approach was 50 years ago. Back then, they could pretend like the world was going to get together and try and to ‘stop’ climate change. Now, it’s practically a given that the environment is going to get worse – Trump’s presidency, and the roll back of eco protections we’re seeing in the states / globally, means that Canada taking onerous austerity like steps to try and limit our country’s footprint is misguided. A government party that puts forward costed, practical and broad-stroke plans to mitigate the impact of climate change will find favour amongst a subset of the population. And at this point, that also means developing things “in house” more, as international politics is increasingly volatile, and likely to continue on that trend in part because of climate change related issues (resources becoming more scarce).
The green party isn’t really viewed, from what I can tell at least, as an eco-friendly / sustainability oriented party anymore – hell, they can’t even sustain their own leadership structure / renew it with a new generation, they just keep falling back to May. If a company were so poorly managed that the CEO kept having to come out of retirement to try and fix things, you wouldn’t put much faith in that company’s ability to function long term. It’s also a condemnation of May’s leadership ability, in that she’s failed to get a successor for so long.
First, she needs to quit.
But the party needs to replace her not with some star from outside of the party, but rather someone who’s been in it for a long time and really understands how it works. That’s been a big problem with it from the day May became leader.
Second, the person that replaces her needs to really understand what the role that the Green Party could actually fill in Canada. It isn’t to become the government. And it’s not even to be a ‘ginger party’ like the NDP. It needs to be the party that works to raise the consciousness of ordinary Canadians. By that, I mean they should educate people about how government really works, and why we need to deal with the Climate Emergency.
A political party can accomplish a lot without actually winning elections. It has a huge head start with fundraising due to the tax write-offs the govt offers. And organized Electoral District Associations can act like lego blocks that the party can use to mobilized public actions regionally, provincially, federally—and even internationally.
The problem with the Greens is once they start gaining any traction, some outside ‘famous person’ pops up who wants to join by becoming the leader and get elected to Parliament. At that point, every other aspect of organizing ridings and raising people’s consciousness gets thrown away so the party can strip it’s gears getting Peerless Leader elected. This eliminates the ability of the party to grow or do much else other than stroke the ego of the leader. That’s exactly what happened with May was made leader without having ever been a member of the party.
Elizabeth May has worked very hard for the Green Party and as a member of Parliament. But she doesn’t understand the role that the Greem Party should be filling and because of that she’s really damaged it—probably fatally.
They need to create a new party and drop the environmental green branding. Then they need to brand as the party with the highest levels of education, which is a pretty low bar.
And they need to stop their stupid infighting, which just established they could not be taken seriously. They need to keep promoting actual smart costed policies, which is not being done in CDN politics, not just negativity, we have the PCs for that.
The left and right need to move more to the center.
