Infighting halts Green party’s progress

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This article was published 11/06/2021 (1757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week brought news of renewed infighting, back-biting and metaphorical mud wrestling among high-ranking officials in the Green Party of Canada. This culminated Thursday in the revelation Green MP Jenica Atwin would cross the floor to sit with the Liberals.

Continued reports of internal fractiousness will not help the party grow beyond its current minor party status. Indeed, the Greens may be facing an impending crack-up and reversal of even the small gains the party has made in recent federal elections.

Two Green MPs have recently been critical of leader Annamie Paul’s position on the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, and have struck strongly pro-Palestinian positions. In what was seen as a response to this criticism, a Paul adviser, Noah Zatzman, took to Facebook to accuse a number of people — including Green MPs and activists — of “appalling anti-Semitism.”

“We will work to defeat you,” Zatzman wrote, “and bring in progressive climate champions who are antifa and pro LGBT and pro indigenous sovereignty and Zionists!!!!!!” In May, more than 150 members of the party signed a letter to Paul imploring her to fire Zatzman over those comments.

This conflict highlighted divisions in the party over the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as tension between Paul (who doesn’t have a seat in the House of Commons) and members of the Green caucus. One Green MP, for example, condemned Zatzman for making accusations of anti-Semitism in response to “legitimate critiques of human rights abuses” committed by the state of Israel.

While it appeared Paul would try to protect her adviser, the party’s executive committee nevertheless voted not to renew Zatzman’s contract. Despite this, MP Atwin still decided to defect to the Liberals, cutting the Green delegation in Parliament by a third.

The Greens can scarcely afford this airing of their dirty undergarments in full public view. The party already faces a built-in disadvantage when competing in Canadian elections: our single-member plurality electoral system. The design of this system, in which each constituency elects the candidate with the highest number of votes, benefits big established parties which are typically competitive and can win in ridings across the country.

But minor parties such as the Greens can be well regarded and receive a respectable number of votes in each constituency, yet still end up with snake eyes in terms of parliamentary representation if their votes are diluted across the country and they can’t maximize their votes in any one seat. In the 2008 Canadian election, for example, the Greens scored more than 900,000 votes, but elected no MPs.

The one exception to this rule for minor parties is those with strong regional bases of support, such as the Bloc Quebecois, which runs candidates only in Quebec, or the Reform Party of years past, which was strong in Western Canada. Because these parties maximize their votes in a small number of ridings, they can build a sizable caucus despite being comparably small.

The Greens figured this out in recent elections, and accordingly poured resources into a very small number of seats that were seen to be winnable. This is why the party’s former leader, Elizabeth May, was able to win her seat on Vancouver Island for the first time in 2011. The party boosted its seat share to two from Vancouver Island in the 2019 election as a result of this strategy, and picked up Atwin’s surprise seat in Fredericton, N.B.

In one sense, Green infighting is not surprising. Nothing tames party people like the prospect of power. Party officials may grit their teeth and stay silent if they feel that sparking an internal conflict will hurt the party’s chances in the next election. And the party leader is in a stronger position if the scuttlebutt is that he or she will likely soon become the prime minister, with all the power to bestow favours that comes with the position.

But, in small parties such as the Green party, there is no chance of electoral victory in the near future, so none of this applies. The prospect of power cannot pre-empt conflict for rambunctious Green activists.

Throughout the 20th century with few exceptions, the Liberal party remained largely cohesive both in and out of office. This was because the party won so often. Even when it lost, party officials could count on victory only one or two elections away. Given what a big-tent party the Liberals are, this was a remarkable feat.

Meanwhile, the Tories spent long periods on the opposition benches, essentially tearing themselves apart, which in turn made it even more difficult for them to win in subsequent elections. This vicious cycle repeated itself over and over. It was so notable that political scientist George C. Perlin coined a term for this tendency to self-immolate between Canadian elections: the Tory Syndrome.

Now, the Green party has developed its own syndrome. If the Greens don’t want three MPs to have been their high-water mark, they’d best work out these internal problems.

Royce Koop is an associate professor in the department of political studies and co-ordinator of the Canadian studies program at the University of Manitoba.