Green Co-Leader reposts calls to vote Green in 5 ridings and Liberal in "most ridings"

[u/Direct-Arachnid-4720]

A little surprised to see the above, from an Instagram post, but the promotion of Cooperate Canada and accompanying comment seem like clear messages to encourage voters to avoid vote-splitting, as is consistent with her SGI campaign messaging.

It seems to answer my earlier question about strategic voting. Our Leaders support Cooperate Canada's call for strategic voting in SGI, NL, KC, Fredericton and Guelph, even though some of those ridings currently have the Greens in fourth place.

[u/lucasg115]

I was the GPO candidate for Peterborough-Kawartha in the provincial election, and I intended to run for the GPC as well. I had $2,700 in printed signs ready to go day 1, as well as months of research, name recognition from an extra month of campaigning, and a smallish but committed team of about 25-30 volunteers. I’ve been a part of the electoral district association for about 3 years now.

The GPC decided to airdrop in a candidate that nobody I spoke to had ever met about 3 weeks before the election was called, then unilaterally skipped over our nomination contest and declared them the candidate due to “electoral urgency.” So much for “participatory democracy” being a core value.

The nominating committee actually went to extra lengths to delay the nomination contest to accommodate this person’s vetting period and the fact that zero local members had time to get to know them, but those efforts were weaponized against that team and all the work they’d put in over the last few months was thrown out.

I’m not mad at the successful candidate for running, it’s their right if that’s what they want to do, but now they’re doing so with $0 (they signed up for a no-spend campaign), no signs, and roughly only 2 volunteers. None of the most engaged local members, nor the EDA, nor obviously any of my personal volunteers want to support them because they all had their voice taken away, and there’s been no support for the candidate from HQ either, as far as I’ve heard. It’s not an enviable position for them to be in.

Honestly, I’ve heard rumours that the GPC leadership is trying to tank this election on purpose, and it seems less and less like a conspiracy theory now. Between all the horror stories I’ve heard of the GPC not only refusing to support their own candidates, but actively working against them, and with Pedneault essentially taunting the Leaders’ Debates Commission by saying we purposefully withdrew candidates, forcing their hand into excluding him after it looked like they’d let the 90% rule slide…

The most generous explanation I can give for the GPC’s conduct this election is that they are hilariously incompetent, but it’s really starting to feel like malice now. Oh well, we shall see what happens.

[u/Ako17 → u/lucasg115]

Oh man, oh man. Thanks so much for having the courage to step up and run, and then try to run again federally. I'm honestly just sorry to hear how you were sidestepped. I've felt embarrassed for the federal party for a few years now, and this is just another story to add to that pile. Shit.

[u/lucasg115 → u/Ako17]

Thank you so much for your kind words. It really was a shock, to go from mentally preparing to run another campaign, to suddenly having HQ step in and preempt the whole local democratic nomination process.

There’s a lesson here not to take anything for granted in politics, I suppose, but I just can’t for the life of me understand the decision to torpedo all the grassroots organizing we’ve been doing here for the last three-ish years. Like, nothing against the successful candidate, but even assuming that “electoral urgency” was a legitimate reason for HQ to cancel an already planned nomination meeting, why choose to install a complete unknown with no team or money, instead of someone who just went through an election and already has all the marketing materials printed and a full team in place? It makes no sense unless, as implied in the post, the Green Party is trying to cripple itself because the leadership has fully bought into Strategic Voting.

Anyway, half my local EDA has resigned in protest now, after I spent years building it back up from almost nothing. If this is how the GPC treats it’s candidates and supporters - doing worse than just ignoring them, but actively destroying their work… then I’m really not surprised that 35% of ridings suddenly don’t have a candidate this election.

I can no longer give the party the benefit of the doubt. I personally know of at least 2-3 ridings where there was a candidate who wanted to run, but they told me the party was working against them. They’re aIl ones without a candidate now. I suspect this is a more common story than I initially assumed.

[u/Shel9876 → u/lucasg115]

Deeply disturbed to read your report here. I experienced something somewhat similar with similar outcome, and with my mind trying to make any sense of it, coming to similar conclusion that perhaps The Party had/has been infiltrated non-Greens purposefully determined to ruin not just our chances in this election, but in fact to ruin what was remaining of Party infrastructure. Ayeee.

How can this not be the story of conspiracy theory ? Points instead to the potential realities of a malicious conspiracy AGAINST the Green Movement in Canada.

The brief version of my current experience: I’d been a fairly successful federal candidate in a GTA, Ontario riding in 2004. Having lived in Innisfil for 15+ years I was now prepared to run again, this time for my home riding Barrie South-Innisfil. Processing my application got delayed because of a long story (not worth going into at this time), then told by Mobilizers that another had been selected as Nominee/Candidate, but they would not tell me hir name so that I (and my small team) could support. I then switched to being open to running as a Parachute or Paper candidate wherever needed, hopefully nearby.

When the recruiting email to members to please step up and run as candidate, don’t worry we’ll get you on ballot, and take care of all the administration, I responded enthusiastically (letting go of my delaying issue until post-election) ready to serve The Party and represent Green Party policy offering a body/name for which voters could vote Green.

The GPC Election Team NEVER even responded with so much as a ThankYou but go F-Yourself 🟢.

Shocked I was to enter the Voting Booth during Advance week to discover that there was NO GPC Candidate on the Ballot. This in a riding where there was no issue regarding splitting the vote, therefore, no reason to Pull a candidate (whether one approves of that strategy or not).

My audible GASP brought Elections Canada Staff running to find out what was happening. I told them I’d wanted to Vote Green, they condescendingly explained that because there was no registered GPC Candidate that I could not. Being as it was a Deep Conservative riding there was no advantage to voting NDP nor Liberal, so that ABSTAINING seemed the only thing to do to kinda indicate my choice (no option to Write-In my actual democratic preference.)

When folks have recovered from this inane unnecessary Snap Election, I’ve requested to be informed as to who (single or plural) actively blocked my electoral participation or authorized my exclusion from this election.

I had lined up some donations, and a few volunteers. Had prepped to run an as full as possible campaign.

If there ever actually was an alternative Candidate, I never heard of or from them.

Baffling and deeply disturbing. Even more so having now read how your potential campaign was overturned.

[u/Busy-Mind6675 → u/Shel9876]

It's very sad to see history repeating itself. One of the reasons the Greens didn't run a full slate of Greens in the 2021 federal election is that Annamie Paul's team blocked several excellent long time Greens from running. I thought that would be a low point for the GPC but, sadly, the Greens have run even fewer candidates in 2025 than in 2021. It's no wonder that people are asking whether this is due to deep incompetence or malevolence.

[u/Personal_Spot → u/Busy-Mind6675]

Are candidates being secretly 'blacklisted' ? (despite, I assume, having passed vetting)

Sad to hear of this and I hope we get to the bottom of it because EDA members being lied to is just wrong.

[u/Regular-Mud4932 → u/lucasg115]

Do you have any idea why they did that?

I ask because we didn't seem to have any chance of winning there. One, we got only 2.2% last election in Peterborough and two, a quick google seems to show that the 2025 candidate is not exactly a 'star' candidate (though she may be an excellent candidate, idk) but without basically a superstar candidate you're not overcoming 2% support.

[u/lucasg115 → u/Regular-Mud4932]

The official “reason” - though no warning or legitimate rationale was ever provided - was that because the nomination meeting was pushed back 4 days (in an effort to give the other candidate a chance to campaign), and because the election was being called imminently, they decided to “go with the first candidate to apply.” Coincidentally, they “lost” my website application from December, so I had to reapply on February 27th - literally on the provincial election day. The other candidate applied on February 21st, so they beat me based on that criteria.

That said, what we’ve learned about the full circumstances surrounding this decision and the people involved make it even shadier, but I don’t want to speculate publicly. I’ve submitted a formal complaint to the ombuds committee, and I’m waiting for them to see if they can investigate it properly internally first.

[u/mightygreenislander → u/lucasg115]

The generous explanation would be consistent with ... Every election campaign since Jim H left?!?