OTTAWA – Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul has been elected as the new leader of the Green Party of Canada, succeeding long-time head Elizabeth May.
Paul is the first Black Canadian elected as permanent leader of a major federal party, and only the second Jewish leader after David Lewis of the NDP.
She’ll also follow May as the only current female leader of a major federal party.
Paul had been perceived as the contest’s frontrunner, outraising her opponents with more total contributors, and gaining scores of endorsements from former Green candidates.
She will soon face what may prove a greater challenge – winning a by-election for a federal seat in the Toronto Centre riding, recently vacated after former Finance Minister Bill Morneau resigned in the wake of the WE scandal.
Paul ran a distant fourth as a candidate in Toronto Centre in 2019, but more than doubled the Green Party’s vote share to just over 7 per cent.
Her background includes years working in international affairs, including with Canada's Mission to the European Union and as an advisor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
She’s fluently bilingual in Canada’s official languages, as well as speaking Catalan and Spanish.
Speaking from Ottawa, Paul began a short acceptance address by acknowledging the unceded territory of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe peoples. She highlighted her identity as the daughter of Carribean immigrants in declaring her intention to work “in a spirit of true allyship” with Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
“As the descendent of the Black diaspora, who has suffered its own history of oppression and colonialism, I will always stand as a strong ally with Indigenous peoples in their calls to action and the fight for self-determination and sovereignty,” she said.
Paul emphasized support for a strong social safety net and more rapid government action to combat climate change in her remarks, arguing Canada’s other major parties were “intellectually exhausted” and unprepared to meet the gravity of what she described as a “climate emergency.”
She won on the eighth round of the party’s ranked ballot system, with a slim majority of 12,090 votes. Her nearest competitor, lawyer and self-described eco-socialist Dimitri Lascaris, finished second with just over 10,000.
Her predecessor Elizabeth May, synonymous with the party’s brand since taking over as leader in 2006, gave an impassioned parting speech pressing the urgency of immediate action on climate change.
“We don’t have time for despair,” she said. “We have it within ourselves to change our society, to turn away from fossil fuels, and to turn towards those wonderful new technologies that will deliver all the services [we need].”
May announced she was stepping down in November of 2019.
She led the party to its historic high 6.8 per cent national vote share in 2008, and was the first Green elected to the house in the B.C. riding of Saanich Gulf-Islands in 2011.
May has announced her intention to remain as a sitting MP.
