Greens hope to elect more MPs, but numbers aren’t on their side

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OTTAWA – Green Party of Canada co-leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault will be hitting the road in early 2024, with stops planned in all provinces and most territories. And they have many challenges ahead of the next election, including presenting a full slate of candidates.

In 2021, former party leader Annamie Paul was still nearly 90 candidates short of a full slate and saw the party’s support collapse to 2.3 per cent of the vote — its lowest in 21 years.

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Speaking to reporters on Thursday, May was adamant that her party would be running candidates in every single riding. “What happened in 2021 and not running a full slate is to me incomprehensible and will not happen again. We will run a full slate,” she said.

May and Pedneault have been running the green ship in tandem for more than a year now, but the party fell a bit off the radar in 2023. Pedneault failed to win a seat in a Montreal byelection last June, and May suffered from a stroke which forced her to reduce her activities.

But both co-leaders have high hopes for the next election, with May predicting that the Green Party will “surprise people in electing a lot more MPs than we’ve had in the past.”

May pointed to Aislinn Clancy’s “very decisive upset” for the Green Party of Ontario in the recent byelection in Kitchener Centre — a win she attributed to the work of Green MP Mike Morrice, who represents the federal riding of Kitchener Centre, and Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner.

“Aislinn Clancy’s vote was more than the combined votes of those for the NDP, Liberal and Conservatives combined. It’s not like the other parties gave that riding a pass,” she noted.

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Schreiner said after the win that the “Green wave is growing” across Ontario, and May agreed on Thursday that she is seeing a “shift” in the province. “We see seats that are winnable in Ontario today that, two years ago, I wouldn’t have thought we could win,” she said.

May added that the Green movement needs to build on that momentum — and believes that there are more “winnable seats” in Atlantic Canada, British Columbia and the territories. At the moment, there are 11 Green representatives at the federal and provincial levels in Canada.

“It’s about the lay of the land and the context in which we’re now operating,” said May. “The disillusionment factor with the Liberals is huge. The disillusionment factor with the NDP is huge. In my province of British Columbia, there are many people saying they’ll never vote NDP again.”

Poll analyst Philippe J. Fournier cast a shadow on May’s high hopes for many more Green seats in Canada, arguing that the available data simply does not tell that story right now.

“Either Ms. May has some numbers that have not been made public or that we’ve missed, or she is looking at the situation through rose-coloured glasses,” said Fournier, who founded the 338Canada project, a statistical model of electoral projections based on opinion polls.

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At the federal level, the Greens are polling between 4 and 6 per cent, which he said was already the norm — excluding 2021 — and would elect between 1 and 3 MPs if an election was held today. The party currently has two MPs in the House of Commons, May and Morrice.

Three provinces should be holding elections this coming year — British Columbia, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick — but the numbers don’t show a sudden surge of support for the Greens.

Fournier noted that the BC Green Party won 15 per cent of the vote in British Columbia in 2020 and ended up with two seats in the legislature. He said that current numbers show the party is polling slightly below that figure and would end up with the same number of seats today.

Keen political observers might want to take a look at New Brunswick, where the new electoral map might shake things up for Green leader David Coon’s new Fredericton riding. Fournier said that could mean another seat for the party, which currently has three MLAs in the province.

As for the Saskatchewan Green Party, it currently has no seat in the legislature.

Fournier said that the federal Greens remain a fairly marginal political force in Canada. For the party to make gains in places like Victoria or in southwestern Ontario, they would have to chip away at some of the NDP’s support in those areas, he said.

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Already, the Greens are distancing themselves from the Liberals and the NDP and trying to present themselves as the only progressive party on the federal scene.

“In terms of a progressive party, is the field crowded? No, we stand here alone,” said May. “I don’t see anybody else. I really don’t see any other party that takes the climate crisis seriously and sees it as a genuine opportunity for greater equity and fairness across our society.”

Pedneault added that, in his opinion, the Liberals fooled Canadians with their progressive ideas in the past but represent the “status quo alternative.”

“And the NDP, sadly, has been incentivizing that by supporting them with their confidence and supply agreement,” he said.

“There is another alternative, and it’s called the Greens.”

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