The Green Party Establishment's War on the Left
Written by: Daniel Xie
On the evening of Tuesday, September 22, just four days before voting would commence for the Green Party Leadership Race, leftist candidate Meryam Haddad found out she was expelled from the race by the Leadership Contest Authority (LCA). The letter from the LCA informed Haddad the reason for her expulsion was Twitter posts she had made where she criticized elected members of the British Columbian Green Party in favor of the BC ecosocialsts—a rival political party. The LCA claimed that her actions have supposedly “discredited and intentionally damaged” the interests of the Green Party of Canada, citing a violation of Bylaw 1.3.3, which holds candidates liable to expulsion for “intentionally damaging the interests of the Party”.
A day after her expulsion, Haddad wrote on Readpassage that the Green Party Establishment, through the LCA, was seeking to end her campaign because of the challenge she posed to the status quo. In her post, Haddad states that members of the Green Party executive have attempted to undermine her campaign in a variety of ways, including by blocking the previously promised policy of free youth membership. The effort of establishment Greens to expel her from the party, stemming from her endorsement of the BC Ecosocialists, is a sign that the establishment Greens are seeking to take the fight against her public.
Not long following her appeal, it was reported by both Haddad and Ricochet media on Twitter that Haddad has been reinstated. In response to her reinstatement in the race, Haddad expressed thanks towards her supporters and further stated that the show of support for her when she was expelled strongly demonstrates the power of grassroots solidarity.
Ricochet media would later, on September 25, 2020 publish a follow-up by Ethan Cox examining the 48 hours in which Haddad was expelled from the leadership race. According to that follow-up, Haddad was indeed specifically expelled for her support of the BC ecosocialists. The rationale given for expelling Haddad for endorsing the BC ecosocialists by the Green Party was that BC Ecosocialists then interim leader, Stuart Parker, expressed support for transphobic fantasy author J.K. Rowling and those that shared her viewpoints.
According to Jo-Ann Roberts, Haddad was supposedly then expelled because she had made statements supporting “a party whose leader did not represent Green Party values”. She claimed that when the expulsion was decided, the Greens were not aware that Haddad had quickly condemned Parker when she became aware of his transphobic comments; her condemnation leading subsequently to Parker’s resignation from the BC Ecosocialists.
Haddad on the other hand, paints a different picture of the events surrounding her initial expulsion. According to her, nothing was mentioned about the BC Ecosocialist Leader in the expulsion email. Indeed, the expulsion email never mentioned Parker at all, but simply stated that her support for the BC Ecosocialists compromised the ability of the Green party to work effectively at both the Federal and Provincial level. This being despite the fact that while one is forbidden to hold dual memberships with two parties on the Federal Level, they are able to do so on the Provincial level.
Haddad also notes, according to Ricochet, that throughout the campaign, she has faced considerable opposition along with “emotional and mental” harassment that she has detailed in a 12-page report. In one email from the Green Party to Haddad addressing her expulsion, references are made to individual complaints against her that Haddad believes are irrelevant, while more serious complaints against others have been ignored. Haddad also noted that Elizabeth May was complicit in the harassment directed against her through May’s rampant opposition to Haddad’s plans to bring in new voters under the pretext that these new voters constituted a plot to hijack the party.
Previously, Elizabeth May had condemned in a tweet (now deleted), groups such as Justice Greens, as un-democratic groups seeking to usurp the Green Party in endorsing a Lascaris-Haddad-Kuttner vote. In addition, Elizabeth May has also retweeted a tweet by Green Party loyalist Ryan Clayton accusing Haddad of stabbing the party in the back and calling on Haddad to drop out of the race simply because she endorsed the BC ecosocialists over the BC Greens.
It has also been speculated that Haddad’s initial expulsion was also caused by her willingness to form a one-time alliance with the NDP to maximize the amount of seats both parties can win in Parliament as a means to facilitate the best opportunity to accomplish progressive changes in the face of Canada’s first-past-the-post system. Haddad notes that these efforts to get rid of her under the pretext that she was demonstrating disloyalty were extremely hypocritical, noting that just in 2019, Elizabeth May endorsed and encouraged people to vote for Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould over the Green candidate in Vancouver Granville.
The Green Party’s attempts to suppress the growing Left Insurgency
Haddad’s initial expulsion from the Leadership Race by the Green Party under the pretext of disloyalty, along with Elizabeth May’s earlier tweets against Meryam and the Justice Greens movement, is yet another attempt by the Green Party to seek to suppress the growing ecosocialist insurgency within their party headed by candidates such as Dimitri Lascaris and Meryam Haddad.
When Dimitri Lascaris initially launched his campaign, his application to run was rejected by the executives, and this decision was only overturned after pressure from left wing activists within and outside the Green Party. Earlier in 2016, Elizabeth May displayed strong opposition to Lascaris while he was the Justice Critic on the Green Party Shadow Cabinet due to his successful passing of a resolution within the Green Party calling for them to support BDS. Elizabeth May was angered by this demonstration of Pro-Palestinian solidarity, and fired Lascaris from his position as Shadow Justice Critic in retaliation.
While the pro-Palestinian voices within the Greens were too strong to shut down, the establishment wing of the Green Party pushed through resolutions erasing all mentions of BDS at the Party’s Special General Meeting in 2016. While the basic tenants of the policy the Greens adapted on Palestine remained, May used the erasure of all mentions of BDS in order to spread a false narrative that downplayed the existing policies; claiming that the party “repealed” the BDS motion and the movement was not supported by the party.
Lascaris and Haddad were not the only ecosocialists that faced strong opposition from the establishment. Earlier during the leadership race, the Green Party establishment successfully ended the ecosocialist campaign of Green Party of Quebec leader Alex Tyrell, another supporter of the BDS movement. On June 3 2020, Alex Tyrell withdrew from the leadership race, claiming this was due to meddling by Elizabeth May and her supporters directed against her campaign. He also pointed out on June 15, sometime after he dropped out of the Leadership Race, there was an attempt by Elizabeth May to push the Green Party rank-and-file to support establishment candidate Annamie Paul, noting brochures and letters delivered to Green Party members endorsing said candidate. This behavior, as Tyrell notes, contradicted claims by May in 2019, when she stepped down as Green Party leader, that she would remain neutral in the leadership race.
When polls for the Green Party leadership race finally opened on September 26, Haddad noted on twitter that some members of the Green Party who registered to vote have yet to have their membership approved by the Green Party. She called on anyone experiencing problems with securing a Green Party membership to contact her campaign immediately. Green Party member Bonnie North replied to her tweet, noting that this was yet another example of the Green Party establishment “sucking at actual democracy” and noting that she had a friend that was accused by Green Party insiders of being a Doug Ford plant simply because they didn’t like that person.
Opinion: Reject the Centre, for a left-wing Green party
The recent chain of events surrounding Haddad’s temporary expulsion, especially when factored into the behavior both Elizabeth May and the Green party establishment towards leftist candidates such as Haddad, along with Lascaris and Tyrell, makes it very apparent that the Green Party establishment is doing all it can to prevent the Green Party from becoming a viable leftist party capable of challenging the NDP’s hegemony over the Canadian left.
Ever since leftist candidates have announced that they would seek to run for the position of Green Party Leader, the Green Party Establishment has worked hard in order to suppress their insurgency as can be seen by the initial attempts to prevent Lascaris from running, the meddling of Elizabeth May in favor of Annamie Paul, and the constant harassment and initial expulsion faced by Meryam Haddad just a few days before polling starts. In response to the constant attempts by the Green Party establishment to meddle in the leadership race, leftists seeking a genuine alternative to the Canadian status quo must make their displeasure at this turn of events known by facilitating the election of a leftist candidate in the leadership race.
The task of fighting the Green Party establishment must not only stop with the victory of an leftist such as Lascaris or Haddad, but must be advanced alongside the task of building an leftist Green party. As the successful efforts to destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour in the UK has shown, the establishment won’t stop fighting after their bid to continue political dominance has failed, but they will sabotage any movement for socialism time and time again until these movements are destroyed from within, even long after they have succeeded at removing socialist elements from the party. The establishment will not stop fighting to regain their political dominance, and thus, neither should the left stop fighting their efforts to sabotage leftist insurgencies from within.
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