Annamie Paul steps down as Green party leader
OTTAWA-Annamie Paul said Monday that she is stepping down as leader of the federal Green party, a week after a fourth-place election finish in her longtime riding of Toronto Centre and months after reports first emerged of internal strife roiling the party's upper ranks.
Paul lost the riding for the third time in last week's election, raking in just over eight per cent of the riding's vote - a precipitous drop from the 32.7 per cent she pulled in during a byelection in the riding last fall.
The beleaguered leader told a news conference Monday morning that on election day, she received an email from the president of the Greens' federal council - the party's top governing body - calling for an emergency meeting to launch a leadership review.
On Saturday night, Paul said that party members were informed that the review process had been launched.
I just asked myself whether this is something that I wanted to continue - whether I was willing to continue to put up with the attacks I knew would be coming, whether to continue to have to fight and struggle just to fulfil my democratically elected role as leader of this party," Paul said.
I just don't have the heart for it."
The party's former interim leader, Jo-Ann Roberts, told the Star that while there are many reasons for the Greens' election performance, Paul is the leader and that responsibility for the party's results ultimately lies with her.
While the Greens emerged from last week's election with the party's first MP in Ontario - Mike Morrice took Kitchener Centre from ousted former Liberal Raj Saini - the party also lost Paul Manly's Nanaimo-Ladysmith seat to the NDP.
Former Green leader Elizabeth May once again won her seat in Saanich-Gulf Islands, although she brought in her smallest share of the vote since she first took the riding in 2011.
When Paul was elected Green leader last year, she became the first Black person and Jewish woman to helm a major federal party in Canada.
But as the Star first reported in April, Paul faced significant opposition from officials on the party's federal council over the first six months of her leadership, including attempts to distract her byelection campaign and having her to work without payment before she received an employment contract.
Sean Yo, who managed Paul's 2020 byelection campaign, told the Star at the time that it was very hard not see this process through the lens of race, gender and religion."
In June, then-Green MP Jenica Atwin crossed the floor to the Liberals, partly over her stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was at odds with Paul's public position.
Atwin denounced Paul's calls for de-escalation in the region as totally inadequate" and aligned herself with Palestinians facing violence. Manly also called the planned removal of Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah ethnic cleansing."
Paul's then-senior adviser, Noah Zatzman, later accused other politicians and unnamed federal Greens in a Facebook post of stoking antisemitism and discrimination, and vowed to defeat unspecified MPs in the next election.
Several top officials then kick-started a process to declare lost confidence in Paul's leadership.
At the time, a faction of federal council members alleged in a letter that Paul had acted with an autocratic attitude of hostility, superiority and rejection," claiming that she displayed anger in long, repetitive, aggressive monologues."
Paul called the allegations racist" and sexist," and criticized the council members for triggering the review process without consulting the party's wider membership.
On Monday, Paul said those events had been extremely painful."
It has been the worst period in my life in many respects," she said.
During the federal election campaign, Paul alluded to her battles in the English-language leaders' debate, saying she had to crawl over broken glass to reach that national stage.
On Monday, she raised that metaphor again.
What people need to realize is that when I was elected and put in this role, I was breaking a glass ceiling. 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 said.
When I arrived at that debate stage, I had crawled over that glass, I was spitting up blood, but I was determined to be there.
I was determined to be there so that the next time someone like me thinks of running and wonders whether it's possible to be on that stage, they will know that it is possible to do that."
With files from Alex Ballingall
Raisa Patel is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @R_SPatel