It’s official: Annamie Paul says she’s finally finished as leader of the Green party

Thestar.com
Nov. 11, 2021
Alex Ballingall

The Green Party of Canada’s troubled and turbulent Annamie Paul era is coming to a close.

Paul announced Wednesday that she submitted her notice of resignation as Green party leader, more than a month after she initially said she would step down.

Paul also stated that she is terminating her membership with the party she led for the past 13 months -- a period that was defined by bitter infighting and efforts to depose her by top party officials.

“It was an honour to work for the people of Canada and I look forward to serving in new ways,” she wrote in a statement on Twitter.

It was not clear if Paul’s resignation was effective immediately, or whether her decision to submit notice means the party’s ongoing leadership review will be cancelled before it finishes on Nov. 25.

Paul did not respond to a request for comment from the Star on Wednesday. The party also did not respond to questions about the resignation notice.

Even so, the Greens are now looking to name an interim leader and start the process to find Paul’s successor. One Green insider, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal matters, said Wednesday that the party’s federal council was working to hold an emergency meeting where they would discuss a “short list” of candidates for interim leader.

Some party figures, including former interim leader Jo-Ann Roberts, have suggested former Green MP Paul Manly should take the job, while former leader Elizabeth May has said she doesn’t want it.

Manly did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment from the Star.

Amita Kuttner, an astrophysicist who is gender non-binary and ran against Paul for the leadership in 2020, has also put their name forward as a candidate for interim leader. Kuttner told the Star Wednesday that they are only offering out of a sense of duty to help the party repair after a damaging period, and to ensure the next leadership race runs smoother than the last one, which was beset with accusations of unfairness.

“I don’t really want it because it’s an awful, awful job,” Kuttner said of the role as interim leader.

The Greens will also hold a leadership race to find Paul’s ultimate successor. And on that front, at least one prominent candidate from the 2020 contest is open to taking another run.

“I’m seriously considering it,” said Dimitri Lascaris, a Montreal lawyer and avowed “eco-socialist” who placed second to Paul last year and wants to shift the already-progressive party further to the left.

Paul won the Green leadership in October 2020 and became the first Black person and Jewish woman to lead a national party in Canadian federal politics.

Her tenure in the job was rocky from the start, with supporters describing how she faced “resistance” from officials within the Green party. At the same time, Paul’s critics claimed she had demonstrated poor communication skills and tried to take too much control of an organization that intentionally limits the power of its elected leaders.

Along the way, Paul accused unnamed members of the party’s top governing body of racism and sexism after her detractors in the party tried to call a confidence vote in her leadership.

They claimed she showed an “autocratic attitude of hostility, superiority and rejection” that included displays of “anger in long, repetitive, aggressive monologues.”

Some party officials also launched an effort to suspend her party membership after Paul’s lawyer sent a threat of legal action to one of them and she launched an arbitration process under her employment contract.

The party spent more than $100,000 defending that arbitration, which ultimately halted the efforts to remove her as leader through a confidence vote and membership review. The party then submitted a legal challenge to try and overturn the arbitration decision in Ontario Superior Court.

Paul’s supporters also raised questions about why May, who remains the Greens’ parliamentary leader and MP for the B.C. riding of Saanich--Gulf Islands, didn’t speak out in support of Paul during the challenges to her leadership.

The former leader from 2006 to 2019 later said she had been respecting Paul’s demand that she not speak to the media without Paul’s approval. May issued a statement in July that called on the party to “pull together” but stopped short of expressing support for Paul’s leadership.

Paul announced she would step down as leader after this summer’s federal election, in which she was defeated in her third attempt to win a seat in the riding of Toronto Centre and the Greens received their lowest share of the popular vote in 21 years. She called her time as leader the “worst” experience of her life.
But even Paul’s resignation did not go smoothly.

In late October, a month after Paul announced she would step down, the party moved forward with its membership-wide review of her leadership while negotiations to formalize her resignation dragged on.

Two senior party sources with knowledge of the negotiations told the Star at the time that the cause of the delay was “entirely financial,” but declined to disclose further information.

Daniel Green, a former deputy Green leader who became one of Paul’s opponents inside the party, told the Star on Wednesday that he hopes the notice of resignation means those negotiations -- which involved lawyers representing Paul and the party -- have been resolved.

“Our donors are not going to give us money if they think that money is going to lawyers,” said Green.

“Hopefully this is closure and everybody can move forward.”

Sean Yo, who worked for Paul’s leadership bid and managed her unsuccessful byelection bid in Toronto Centre last year, said the Greens missed an “historic” opportunity to support Paul as a progressive racialized leader in federal politics.

He also questioned whether the party -- which he sees as damaged after a year of division over Paul’s leadership -- can even recover.

“The party is salvageable if the people inside the party want it to be … and I’m currently not seeing that,” he said, referring to a move last month to lay off 11 of the party’s 26 remaining staff.

“The saga for Annamie is over. But the morass that the party is in -- it’s even worse than on the end of election day.”