Green Party Leader Annamie Paul says questions on her leadership are within the rearview mirror — for now.
Her sentiments come after party tensions have cooled in recent days. On Sunday, party executives called off a non-confidence vote set to happen this week. Had that vote taken place, it could have kick-started the strategy of booting Paul from her position because the party’s leader.
A celebration membership review, which was launched last week and would have seen Paul’s membership suspended, has also halted.
“It’s definitely great that that has been put behind us for now,” Paul said, speaking with host Greg Brady in an interview for 640 Toronto Wednesday morning.
“What we didn’t have, and what we have now now, is just more certainty or clarity for our candidates, for our volunteers … about my leadership in order that they will plan.”
Nonetheless, she acknowledged that party members could have a probability to think about her leadership after a federal election takes place — should they still want to achieve this.
“There are other opportunities for our members to weigh in,” she said.
“There’s an automatic leadership review … after a federal election. So members all the time have the last say.”
Within the meantime, nevertheless, Paul said she stays laser-focused on getting more Green Party candidates elected in the subsequent federal election.
“I’m not infighting. I’m not feuding. I never have been. I’m specializing in the things that matter,” she said.
“Where I’m at, absolutely, 100 per cent, is specializing in getting more Greens elected in the subsequent election.”
At the identical time, Paul said she doesn’t consider Canadians needs to be heading to the polls, should an election be called, because there’s “a number of work that also must be done.”
“There’s still two years within the mandate of this minority government. But when we’re then having more Greens elected implies that there are more voices which can be on the market talking in regards to the climate, proposing policy solutions for green recovery,” Paul said.
A federal election has yet to be called. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also rejected the rumours that he’s on the cusp of dropping the writ, despite rampant speculation from politicians and pundits alike.
Should Canada be plunged right into a federal election, the Green Party can be forced to reckon with whatever impact recent months of party infighting have had on their support on the polls.
Paul won the leadership in October of last 12 months with 54 per cent of the vote on the eighth ballot. Paul’s 12,090 votes allowed her to tug ahead of runner-up Dimitri Lascaris in a race that saw 69 per cent of party members vote.
But lower than two months after taking on on the party’s helm, Paul began experiencing internal bumps within the road. At the tip of November 2020, the party’s federal council was sent a letter that alleged a “pattern of poor governance” throughout the Green Party.
The interior turmoil burst out from behind closed doors when former Green MP Jenica Atwin crossed the ground to hitch the Liberal Party on June 10, slamming the infighting among the many Greens over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “distraction” on her way out.
Paul, nevertheless, said Atwin’s departure from the party was the results of conversations that predated this 12 months’s flare-up of violence between Israel and Hamas.
Some members of the Green Party’s governing body, the federal council, held a former advisor of Paul’s chargeable for Atwin’s defection from the Greens to the Liberals. They demanded she repudiate him — and if she rejected the request, they said they’d conduct a non-confidence vote.
Nonetheless, Paul has now dodged that bullet, as party members selected the weekend to show off the warmth and permit the boiling tensions to chill off.
Elizabeth May, who’s currently one among the Greens’ only two MPs, also got here to Paul’s defence in a Tuesday statement.
“I stepped down as leader of the Green Party lower than two years ago, despite our greatest ever leads to electing three MPs, knowing it was time for brand spanking new leadership,” she said in a press release. “That recent leader is Annamie Paul.”
Still, May admitted that Atwin’s defection stays “deeply troubling.”
“That loss is painful, however the misplaced anger, blame and name-calling which have followed it are doing much more damage than the event itself,” she said.
May has avoided the highlight since stepping down because the party’s leader after 13 years on the helm and said she has played no role within the federal council, which has been central within the movement against Paul.
She emphasized that “only members” have the authority to call Paul’s leadership into query.
“We want to tug together for what appears to be an imminent election campaign,” she said.
–With files from Global News’ Eric Stober and The Canadian Press
