Canada is expected to have another Federal election in October 2025. Green party leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault launched their national campaign almost two weeks ago. Cortes Currents interviewed them in Ottawa (via ZOOM) yesterday morning. They will be coming to the Maritime Heritage Centre in Campbell River on Saturday, March 2.
“We’re less than 18 months away from a general election. It’s crucial that voters get a chance to engage and ask questions to Elizabeth and I about where the party’s key priorities are. It’s crucial for us to also get a pulse of what the key issues are for voters from coast to coast,” explained Jonathan Pedneault.
“We’ve been traveling extensively since the leadership race ended (on Nov 19, 2022). It’s a great opportunity for the party to test a number of messages on housing, on affordability, and on the climate. Last year we saw some of the most dramatic impacts of climate change ever to have been seen in Canada – with the wildfire season, the storms in the Atlantic and with a continuation of an extremely dry summer in British Columbia. I think it’s top of mind for a lot of small communities across Canada.”
“The key objectives of the tour are for us to get to know what’s on people’s minds and to share where we’re at as a party. We are really kickstarting our electoral readiness process ahead of what is going to be an extremely important general election.”
Cortes Currents: The Green party often does surprisingly well in polls taken prior to elections. A Nanos poll taken during the 2015 election showed that when the second choices of respondents were factored in, the Green party could potentially reach 27.7% of the electorate. During the 2019 election, 338Canada’s projections showed them leading in four Vancouver Island ridings throughout most of the campaign. In both cases, the Green party was not able to transform this potential into seats on election day.
What could make the next election different?
Elizabeth May: “Voter turnout, and voter turnout means citizens feeling engaged and empowered. That is the strategy, and we will win more seats on Vancouver Island and certainly that will encourage people who are dispirited.”
She went on to illustrate her point with statistics from ridings where the Greens have won, adding that if 75% of the electorate turns out this election, they will take North Island-Powell River from the NDP.
Cortes Currents: Some of your actions, such as appointing forest defender Rainbow Eyes (from the Fairy Creek logging blockade) as the Second Deputy Party Leader, will be popular on Cortes, Quadra and some of the other Discovery Islands, but the population centre of our riding is Campbell River, where people tend to be more Conservative. Won’t this just give more votes to the NDP? Our riding has swung NDP or Conservative for the past 30 years.
Elizabeth May: “To your point about Rainbow Eyes, she’s amazing. If young people don’t think there’s anyone to vote for because politicians are all of a certain stripe, we’re all wearing suits and we don’t put ourselves on the front line – Rainbow Eyes proves the opposite. So does Jonathan Pedneault.”
Cortes Currents: Prior to entering politics, Pedneault worked with organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in some of the most war torn parts of Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and, most recently, the Ukraine.
Elizabeth May: “Jonathan went in to the Gulf of St Lawrence areas and to the Magdalene Islands in the immediate way of Hurricane Fiona, the same way he used to go into areas where people have been massacred in the immediate wake of human rights assaults.”
Cortes Currents: Those audio clips were actually taken from later parts of the interview. Elizabeth started out by making some references to Cortes Island.
Elizabeth May: “I just wanted to say I really enjoy Cortes Currents. I don’t know why I hadn’t come across it in the past. It’s really excellent and I didn’t hear about it untill you sent me some background for this interview. The writing is good, but the artwork is really stunning. Who did the watercolour for the housing article?”
CC: My colleague De Clark has a computer program she uses to do that.
Elizabeth May: “It’s so amazing to think there’s people like you and De on Vancouver Island that I haven’t met yet.”
“I’ve never been to Cortes Island. Hollyhock Retreat Centre invited me once, and I was all set to give a workshop, and then they canceled it.”
“The last truly great citizen climate campaigner in Canada is Tzeporah Berman. I know Tzeporah has done lots of stuff up in Cortes over the years. Tzeporah Berman and Stand.earth do great work. Activism and citizen movements are what we need. We don’t need new forms of citizen bureaucracy that don’t actually believe you can accomplish anything. You need people like Tzeporah who know you can accomplish miracles.”
Cortes Currents: Elizabeth May, her husband John Kidder, Co-leader Jonathan Pedneault and Rainbow Eyes are all coming to the Maritime Heritage Centre on Saturday.
This interview began at 6 AM PST, on Monday.
Elizabeth May: “John and I live in Sidney. He just got in from Vancouver last night, so he’s not in the room with me, but it’s fair to say his heart is in the southern Interior of BC. His bioregion is ‘desert.’ My bioregion is the forested islands around the Salish Sea. That’s where I’m happiest, unless I’m on Cape Breton Island, a forested island abutting the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I’m an island person. ‘Desert’ is a new experience for me, but John’s got a farm in Ashcroft. That’s where he hangs out a lot. I don’t get there very often.”
“Neither of us like driving at night anymore.”
When they come to Campbell River, “Jonathan, my husband, John Kidder, and I will be at Mark De Bruijn’s house overnight.”
Cortes Currents: Elizabeth has known de Bruijn for years. He is a member of the local Electoral District Association and was the Green candidte during the 2019 election.
Elizabeth May: “Sunday we’re rolling down to Seedy Sunday, the big fair and display that will be happening in Nanaimo. We’ll be hanging out in Nanaimo on a Sunday night.”
That was around the time that she noticed the list of Cortes Currents’ questions posted in the chat window. One of them was ‘how could the Green Party transform its oft cited potential into seats?’
Elizabeth May: “Yes, we absolutely intend to win more seats across Canada, and certainly Vancouver Island.”
“Do you mind if I throw in a question, (laughing) which would be ‘how did I ever get elected?’ Amazingly enough, it’s coming up on a 13-year-anniversary as the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands, but it’s easy to forget how I got elected.”
“I was running against a sitting member of Stephen Harper’s cabinet. Gary Lunn had been the Member of Parliament Reform Alliance Conservative over 14 years or so and the riding had been Conservative before then. The only left type person who was ever the MP for Saanich Gulf Islands was Lynn Hunter and she just did one term (1988-1993).”
“The day after the election of May 2nd, 2011, Gary Lunn told his supporters ‘we didn’t do badly. Don’t be discouraged. We got almost as many votes as we always get, It’s just there was this huge surge in voter turnout.’”
“Stephen Harper’s majority government came in that day. They elected more MPs than ever, so you can hardly say I knocked off a Conservative cabinet member because the Conservatives had a bad day.”
“There was this big surge. National voter turnout on May 2nd, 2011 was 60%, in Saanich-Gulf Islands it was 75%. That’s what made the difference, it took convincing all the people who were disgusted, discouraged and had given up. For years, the majority of the voters in Saanich-Gulf Islands had voted for someone other than their Conservative MP, Gary Lunn. They’d voted Liberal. They voted NDP. They voted Green. They stayed home. When they all got together and voted, they elected Canada’s first Green MP.”
“Now, we’re going to do it again, and again, the same kind of thing. It was the highest voter turnout in BC that elected Andrew Weaver the first time. When David Coon became the first Green elected in New Brunswick, it was the highest voter turnout in a New Brunswick riding. When Peter Bevan Baker won the first time in Prince Edward Island, voter turnout was over 90 percent.”
“The media has this fixation on ‘where do you steal your votes from? Are you going after the weak NDP’ or this kind of nonsense?”
:We don’t steal any votes. The secret to Green success is giving people something to vote for. The enemy of us winning is people being too afraid to vote for what they want and voting out of fear of what they most fear.”
Jonathan Pedneault: “I have to agree with Elizabeth, voting turnout is essential not just to the party, but also to democracy in general. We’re seeing this ongoing trend of people participating less and less in our public debates and in our politics.”
“In the past I think the party, in genera,l has underinvested in communicating its ideas. We have a very strong message on housing, on inequality and on the environment. Yet somehow, with too many people, we continue to be seen as a one issue party that only has policy solutions for the environment. That is not the case.”
“We’ve not, as a party, invested enough resources into communicating that boldly and proudly. I think now we’re getting to do that and hopefully this will be increasing before the election. The party has an opportunity to really demonstrate and position itself as a boldly progressive party that has the answers to this moment in time, which I think is a moment in time that causes a lot of anxiety and a lot of anger for many Canadians.”
“There’s a desire for change.”
CC: The latest polls show that if there was an election today, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party could win a massive majority
Jonathan Pedneault: “Now we’re seeing this desire for change translate into support for the new kid on the block, who’s actually not that new and has been in parliament for several years and has participated in governments that have been cutting the budget on housing and social services and the environment.”
“Poilievre presents himself as a champion of the middle class or low income Canadians. It’s very sad. They’re very good at presenting that story, but it’s completely void of any truth. For decades Conservatives have been implementing policies that have been harming small communities and people who earn less, and allowing the richest among us to continue to accumulate and expand their wealth.”
“I don’t see him as a solution to any of the problems that we’re faced with, but Canadians are looking for something new. They just want Trudeau out. Now a lot of people will say, ‘well, if I want Trudeau out, then I have to vote Conservative.’ Our job will be to say, no, there are other options.”
CC: What does the Green Party have to offer North Island-Powell River?
Jonathan Pedneault: “Well, first and foremost: true, effective representation through a member of parliament that isn’t whipped, that doesn’t have to comply, or be one more backbencher who doesn’t read bills when they’re presented and votes according to what the whip has to say. So true representation, real consultation with the community that translates into real votes in the House of Commons. This is one thing that we offer that very few other parties are able to offer because of the system that we operate in Ottawa.”
“We also offer courage in politics and a different way of doing politics. Mike Morrice and Elizabeth May, MPs for Kitchener Centre (Ontario) and Saanich-Gulf Islands, BC), exemplify that in the House of Commons and in their interactions with constituents. I think the candidates that we present throughout the country are committed activists or people from the community to people who in most cases didn’t spend their lives working as extremely powerful lawyers or bankers. There are people who are from the community who care about the community who try to engage the community and want to bring those voices over to Ottawa.”
“I think that’s a critical thing that Is so much needed right now when we are seeing again that politics seems very far away from our daily lives for a lot of people out West.”
“I grew up in Quebec, so Ottawa was always a bit closer geographically. There were lots of members of Parliament from Quebec in Ottawa, but when you’re from BC , I can’t imagine just how far away and disconnected Ottawa might seem sometimes.”
“At the end of the day, the voices of people out West and out East and up North are drowned in the decisions taken by politicians who come from Toronto, Montreal or the other big cities”.
“A Green MP can bring forward some things that are more difficult for the members of Parliament of mainstream status quo parties to bring forth because they have their own agenda and they’ll ram it through and they’ll threaten their MPs if they vote against a specific bill, or they won’t give them the space to talk.”
“So being able to have efficient, effective representation that can talk to housing in more rural areas. How do we face the climate emergency and what’s coming, especially in smaller communities, food and water security and sovereignty. How do we encourage, create and incentivize this circular economy, an economy that’s closer to home?”
Elizabeth had some final thoughts about elections.
“There’s five parties in parliament and fortunately, none of them have a majority government. Any majority government would be what’s described by political science academics as a false majority based on the perversions of our ‘first past the post’ voting system. So a minority of the voters deliver 100 percent of the power to a party and a party’s leader.”
“Greens represent the opposite of all of that in terms of Jonathan and I as co leaders. We don’t have power in the party. The Green leader never has had.
It’s not just Greens federally in Canada, it’s also the brilliant Green Party of British Columbia led by Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olsen.”
“Their election will come up before ours.”
“Greens doing well anywhere help Greens do well everywhere.
“We draw great encouragement from the fact that we just won two (provincial) by-elections.”
“We didn’t make national news, but the Greens in the riding of Kitchener Centre, Ontario just elected their second MPP under the Ontario system. (They’re not called MLAs, they’re MPPs.) Amidst all this hype and buzz about ‘how popular the Conservatives are’ and ‘how Pierre Poilievre’s coming in’ and ‘it’s inevitable that he’s going to take it,’ on November 30th Green candidate Ashlyn Clancy, received more votes than the Liberal, Conservative and New Democrat votes combined. It’s not as though the other parties gave that riding a pass. Jagmeet Singh was going door to door. Other members of the NDP provincial legislature were going door to door.”
Cortes Currents: Less than a month after that, the Greens retook the riding of Borden-Kinkora on Prince Edward Island, which they had lost to the Conservatives in the provincial election of 2023.
Elizabeth May: “We have two provincial elections in 2024 that really matter: in British Columbia and New Brunswick. Those are our provincial cousins and we have no legal or financial ties to them.”
“Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olson have shown brilliant leadership in BC. So has David Coon, leader of New Brunswick Greens, with Megan Mitten and Kevin Arsenault. I predict quite confidently that by the end of 2024, we’ll be looking at significant seat gains.”
“The opportunities for Green voters to make a difference, first in British Columbia and New Brunswick, are important. We need to inspire all those people who want to know ‘where’s the alternative?’ We have an alternative. You don’t have to vote because you’re terrified of Pierre Poilievre becoming Prime Minister. You don’t have to stampede to vote for something you don’t want because you’re afraid something is really going to be disastrous. You can vote for what you want.”
“In British Columbia there are a lot of voters who, if they’re not disgusted with the NDP government yet, they’re just not looking around. The increase in greenhouse gases from fracking, breaking all the promises to protect old growth forests, applying UNDRIP and reconciliation in a way that is so paternalistic and colonial it makes you gag. Read about what happened to the Pacheedaht and their agreement with the B. C. government. They said, ‘okay, we’re going to give you money, but we’re going to have to approve your weekly allowances as if you’re a small child.’ It’s absolutely outrageous. Read Adam Olson’s blog taking apart the Pacheedaht agreement with the BC government and the ways in which it violates every concept of UNDRIP.”
“So here we are. It’s February 26, 2024. We’ve got roughly a year and a half, before Canadians go to the polls. Before then, I promise you that our campaign vision is focusing on where we can convince voters that their vote makes a difference. that’s in British Columbia, and that’s in New Brunswick . That’s encouraging people who are feeling discouraged. Get out and vote, and don’t think your options are a binary choice, like poor voters in the United States looking at Biden or Trump.”
“No one in Canada gets a ballot that says Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, Jagmeet Singh, Elizabeth May, Jonathan Pedneault. You’re not going to find that ballot anywhere because it doesn’t exist. If you want to find a ballot with Justin Trudeau’s name on it, you better go to Papineau. If you want to find a ballot so you can vote against Pierre Poilievre, well you’re going to have to go to Carleton. You see my point.”
“The main media messaging is simplistic and as if they’re covering a horse race. It’s not a contest between leaders. In every riding, every voter gets a choice.”
“In British Columbia, before the next federal election, we have a chance provincially to send more Greens to Victoria. Then in the federal election, we will send more Greens to Ottawa so that our parliament reflects, as Jonathan said, ‘the braver, more honest approach of Greens in legislatures, which is to tell voters the truth.’”
“We can’t sugar coat the climate crisis, but we can offer solutions and that’s our job. Our job is to inspire public trust in the process of democracy, which is hard right now. Inspire faith in citizens themselves to take their own future in their hands and not allow pundits and polls and other politicians to manipulate them into not voting, because voter suppression is a real thing. It’s done. It’s why they do attack ads, to suppress the vote. We have to do the opposite.Where other parties do ‘rage farming’, we have to do the opposite. I’m not sure what to call it. Is it ‘love farming?’ Is it ‘hope farming?”
Green Party Leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault will be at the Maritime Heritage Centre’s Rotary Hall, in Campbell River, from 3:30 to 5:30 PM on Saturday, March 2, 2024.
Links o f Interest:
- Elizabeth May comes to Campbell River: Why Greens matter (May 8, 2023)
- Articles about , or mentioning, the Green Party of Canada
- Articles about, or mentioning, Elizabeth May
Top image credit: Jonathan Pedneault and Elizabeth May – Courtesy the Green Party of Canada
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