SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 29 March 2024, Friday |

Canada’s Green Party chief resigns, calling it ‘worst period’ of her life

Annamie Paul resigned as head of Canada’s Green Party on Monday after losing in her own district in last week’s parliamentary election, stepping aside just under a year after becoming the nation’s first Black leader of a mainstream national party.

Paul, 48, said she felt she was never truly allowed to lead the fractious environmentally focused party and was not interested in going through a fight to remain its chief. She called her time as party leader “the worst period in my life.”

“When I was elected and put in this role, I was breaking a glass ceiling,” Paul told reporters in Toronto. “What I didn’t realize at the time is that I was breaking a glass ceiling that was going to fall on my head.”

Paul came in fourth in her own Toronto constituency – won by the Liberals – and the Greens dropped 4 percentage points nationally in the Sept. 20 election compared with 2019. They won only two seats in the 338-seat House of Commons compared with three two years ago.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a third term, albeit with a minority of seats in parliament.

Paul, a Toronto lawyer, beat out seven other contenders to win the leadership of the party last October. But she has for months been in a battle with the party’s federal council, which tried to oust her before the election. The party did not provide funding for Paul to hire a campaign staff or a national campaign manager.

“I just don’t have the heart for it,” Paul said, referring to going through a leadership review invoked by the party immediately after the election.

Of the discord within the party, Paul said she had never been given the opportunity to lead and “I will not be given that opportunity.”

    Source:
  • Reuters