Roundup: Reprieve for Annamie Paul?

Posted on by

After weeks of intense drama (sooo much drama), it looks like the Green Party’s federal council is finally going to back off on holding a vote to challenge Annamie Paul’s leadership, and possibly the review of her party membership as well. Nobody is saying what exactly went on, other than Paul will be holding a press conference in Toronto Centre at some point today, so we’ll see what she has to say for herself.

Meanwhile, one of Paul’s former leadership rivals has helped establish the Green Left, which promises to be a political organization but not a party, and it seems to be largely geared toward Green Party members in order to help them organize and push the party further toward eco-socialism. Whether there is any correlation between the two, or whether it’s simply coincidence, remains to be seen, but perhaps this sorry chapter in the Greens’ history may be drawing to a close – or at least transitioning to a new phase.

As for why this happened in the first place, I think part of the fault rests with how the Greens are structured, which is a hugely decentralized party that gives its leader very little power – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this certainly highlights some of the drawbacks of structure (and which other parties will use as a cautionary tale when it comes to demands that their own leaders relinquish their iron grip on power). But with the Greens, this particular problem is not just with the leader, but with much of their policy development process, which they have opened wide in the name of earning more democracy points, but leads to things like “men’s rights activists” writing swaths of their platform because it’s that open, and without much in the way of adult supervision. This is further compounded by having a leader who doesn’t have a seat, who isn’t planning on running in a winnable seat, and who doesn’t actually understand enough about what her own MPs are doing and how to communicate with them (thus driving one of them to cross the floor). There needs to be a better balance of grassroots empowerment and having a leader who has enough power to do things but is still beholden to the elected members (of which Paul is not one). You can’t just handwave and shout “democracy!” and not have any reasonable give-and-take in the process. Right now the balance is as absent in the Green Party as it is with the other mainstream parties – it’s just tipped in the opposite direction.

Good reads:

  • Canada has now surpassed the US in terms of percentage of the population that is fully vaccinated, but the delta variant means our vaccination targets are now higher.
  • The “heat dome” in Western Canada is ruining crops and ensuring there isn’t enough feed for livestock, and will have a major effect on our agricultural industry.
  • The federal government is still mulling whether they will send an official delegation to the Olympics in Tokyo.
  • Here are some infectious disease specialists talking about ways to maintain safety while re-opening the border to fully-vaccinated travellers.
  • The legislature has been dissolved and the writs drawn up as Nova Scotia is now in a general election.
  • Two Indigenous members of Manitoba’s economic development boards resigned in the wake of Brian Pallister’s remarks excusing residential schools.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1416954352766373895

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.