Annamie Paul has formally resigned as leader of the Greens and in addition handed in her membership card, leaving the longer term of the party up within the air because it attempts to recuperate from internal strife and repudiation on the polls.
Paul sent in a resignation letter to the Green Party on Wednesday, which follows her announcement in September of her plans to step down.
The Green leader, the primary Black and Jewish woman to steer a significant political party in Canada, said every week after the election that leading the Greens had been the worst period of her life — due partly to the shattered glass ceiling.
“I had crawled over that tumbler, I used to be spitting up blood but I used to be determined to be there,” she told reporters on Sept. 27.
The Greens returned only two MPs within the Sept. 20 election and Paul didn’t win her Toronto Centre riding, placing fourth in her third run on the Liberal stronghold.
The party’s puny showing on the polls — it won 2.3 per cent of the favored vote versus 6.6 per cent in 2019 — followed a period of infighting and sniping at Paul. She faced slurs by Green Party members on Twitter and claimed the party executive didn’t do enough to guard or support her.
Earlier this yr, Paul drew criticism from a lot of Greens, including MPs, for not publicly condemning Israel in stronger terms following a fresh outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. A minimum of 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed within the 11-day war.
In a May 10 tweet, Paul called “for an instantaneous de-escalation within the violence and a return to dialogue as a way to in search of a peaceful resolution.”
This dispute — set off after a senior Paul adviser pledged on social media to defeat unspecified Green MPs, amongst others, whom he accused of antisemitism — played a task in Jenica Atwin’s crossing the ground to affix the Liberals. First elected as a Green MP within the 2019 election, Atwin was re-elected under a red banner last month in Fredericton.
A lawyer by training, Paul became Green leader in October 2020 after Elizabeth May stepped down following 13 years on the helm.
“I feel it’s regrettable that she’s turned in her membership to the party,” May said in a late-night interview from Glasgow, where she and fellow Green MP Mike Morrice are attending the United Nations climate change conference.
“We’re, in Canada as a Green party, essential for our democracy and essential for climate motion, and we are going to rebuild and we can be wonderful,” she added.
“We were in a paralysis. That is the moment where we will move forward.”
Throughout the election, the Greens struggled with financial issues and sacked greater than half their staff since.
Paul didn’t visit key goal seats through the election due to lack of funding and since some candidates asked for her to remain away in order that the party’s bitter internal politics didn’t spill over into their ridings.
Paul complained about a scarcity of funding, campaign staff or a national campaign manager. Originally, $250,000 was earmarked for her local campaign however the funds were nixed by party executives.
Throughout the English leaders debate within the campaign, Paul gave a confident performance that drew accolades for a series of pithy zingers.
Per week after the election, she announced her intention to resign, but negotiations with the party and an ongoing court dispute meant that she didn’t step down immediately. Negotiations are continuing, in keeping with two senior party sources who spoke on condition of anonymity with a purpose to discuss matters not public.
Since then, a lot of Greens have posted messages of support for Paul.
Dr. Courtney Howard, who got here third after Paul within the last leadership race, tweeted that it meant lots to have a “strong, intelligent, articulate woman on the stage.”
In a tweet on Wednesday, Paul said: “It was an honour to work for the people of Canada and I stay up for serving in recent ways.”
The party will now select an interim leader until there’s a fresh election for Paul’s successor.
It didn’t respond immediately to requests for comment.
Mark Winfield, a professor at York University who researches the Greens, says the party faces an “existential crisis.”
“There are very serious questions on whether or not they’re going to survive as an entity or a company. Because, along with the leadership query, there’s also the financial crisis as well,” he said, noting the Greens’ financial woes that preceded Paul’s time on the helm.
“It needs to be their moment,” Winfield said, pointing to greater public awareness of environmental issues. “But it surely definitely isn’t.
“That’s not due to external aspects; it’s entirely internal to the party. They form of self-destructed,” he said.
The fractious infighting showed no signs of abating this week.
On Monday, Green interim executive director, Dana Taylor, shut down two of the party’s Slack channels, saying in a post that aggressive chatter had made the spaces “unsafe” for members and hurt their “well-being.”
Taylor also removed users’ ability to create recent public channels.
The announcement was visible in a screenshot obtained by The Canadian Press and confirmed with three Green Party sources.
