History of the Green Party of Canada
"[1] In June 1983, the Green Party of Canada was registered by Paul George, Ted Mousseau, William Marshall, Ed McDonough and Seymour Trieger.
Immediately afterwards, Betty Nickerson was able to run as a Green Party of Canada candidate in a byelection in British Columbia's federal district Mission—Port Moody.
Eventually, an uneasy agreement was reached for a federation of regional parties, with strong support for building upwards from the bottom.
A year later, the provincial Greens in Quebec scored 2% of the popular vote, averaging 5% in the constituencies in which they ran under the leadership of Jean Ouimet.
This led to a precipitous decline in all Green Party organizations in Quebec despite a very promising start a mere four years previous.
In the spring of 1996, although the hopes of electing a representative to the BC legislature proved premature, Andy Shadrack in the interior of the province received over 11% of the vote.
A mail-in ballot was held: Wendy Priesnitz (from Ontario) beat Don Francis (Quebec), Jason Crummey (Newfoundland and Labrador), and Harry Garfinkle (Alberta) to become the Registered Leader of the Green Party of Canada.
Harry Garfinkle stepped in to be the interim Registered Leader of the Green Party of Canada, and a leadership convention by mail-in ballot was held.
Russow won 52% of the ballots cast in the 1997 leadership race, surpassing Ontario's Jim Harris (39%) and Rachelle Small (8%).
In February 2003, Jim Harris, in his second bid for the leadership, defeated John Grogan of Valemount, British Columbia, and Jason Crummey.
However, his campaign also included a hard line against Red-Green (i.e., alliances with NDP members and organized labour) coalitions that Russow had supported at the municipal level in Victoria.
The Green Party ran a fundraising campaign in 2003 to realize Harris' goal of running a full slate in the upcoming election.
In the 2004 election, the party received a significant increase in media coverage on the strength of its 308 candidates, the platform, and a national leaders' tour.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps on March 2, 2005, spoke publicly to a group of Greens in Toronto, advising the party on its electoral strategy.
Long-time environmental activist and lawyer Elizabeth May won the leadership of the federal Green party at a convention in Ottawa on 26 August 2006.
He had been a Liberal MP, but stepped down voluntarily from the caucus earlier in the parliament after anonymous allegations of campaign finance irregularities, most of which he was later cleared after a 9-month investigation by Elections Canada.
Some prominent Green Party members blamed the public discussion of strategic voting and the media's misrepresentation of May's comments during the election campaign for the failure of some promising candidates to reach Election Canada's 10% reimbursement threshold, as well as reducing the party's federal funding based on popular vote.
[14] May earlier attempted to broker a deal with the NDP, by contacting Stephen Lewis to set up a meeting with party leader Jack Layton, who both rejected the notion outright.
[18] Ultimately, however, the coalition fell apart after Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in order to delay an impending non-confidence vote, advised the Governor General to prorogue parliament.
While parliament was prorogued, Harper also announced his intention to fill all current and upcoming Senate vacancies with Conservative appointees.
[23]In August 2014, President elect Paul Estrin published a blog post on the Green Party's website criticizing the actions of Hamas during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
In his article, "Why Gaza Makes Me Sad", Estrin talked about Hamas' "desire to obliterate" the State of Israel and how the terrorist group uses children as human shields.
On 5 August, Estrin resigned, criticizing the party for betraying their commitment to values of inclusivity and open public discourse.
[27] Hyer lost the election to Liberal Party candidate Patty Hajdu in his riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North.
[28] In March 2018, May appointed journalist and broadcaster Jo-Ann Roberts as a deputy leader along with environmentalist Daniel Green of Montreal.
[31][32][33] On 19 August 2019, a former NDP and briefly Independent MP Pierre Nantel joined the Green Party during the Parliament's summer recess.
She edged out Dimitri Lascasris, a Montreal class-action lawyer running as an ecosocialist, by 2,009 votes (9 percentage points) in the final ballot count.
[42] Annamie Paul became the first Black Canadian and first Jewish woman to be elected leader of a major political party in Canada.
All of the Bloc's members had been elected as either Conservatives or Liberals or, in Gilles Duceppe's case, as an independent, before the group formally registered as a political party.
[63] After being advised of the exclusion from The Munk Debate[64] on Canada's Foreign Policy on 28 September 2015, May took her message to social media where she attacked the Harper government using tweets on Twitter.
