Greens Need Constitutional Reform, Now

This morning I woke up, made some breakfast, and perused my news feed for anything interesting - and wow, lo and behold, Elizabeth May was in my local online paper via one of its network papers, Parliament Today. It was a piece about reflecting on the results, which is of great interest to me because that’s all I get to do during my free time lately.

Overall it was nice, talking about regrets over Jonathan’s departure and the need for electoral reform, about the travesty of the Debates Commission which should be scrapped (that’s my opinion not hers), and so on. A pleasant read, until I got to this part:

“I can take responsibility for what I have a chance to influence, but in the Green Party of Canada, the leader is not the boss,” she said. “The leader does not have power to hire and fire staff or make key decisions during the campaign.”

I literally lost my appetite reading that.

For those not in the know, the Green Party of Canada’s constitutional setup is not like other parties. It’s what you could generously term a ‘weak leader system’, where elected leadership has limited direct power over things like staffing, branding, funding, even what the campaign looks like. They instead wield influence as spokespeople and caucus members, charting a general course on policy and parliamentary action while serving as the primary contact with media. All the busywork is left to the Federal Council, an elected volunteer body who ostensibly keep checks and balances on party activity, and the GPC Fund, which controls spending, staffing decisions, and other exercises of the power of the purse. In theory they all come together and reach collective decisions on what and where the party goes next, alongside a bunch of other minor players like Shadow Cabinet and so on.

In theory. In practice, it’s a joke of a setup. I said “generously” term it as a weak leader system because it’s either by default strong or otherwise a ‘no leader’ system, all depending on who is getting along with who at any given time.

Unlike every other major political party, the Greens are constantly tying themselves in knots because of this three-headed monstrosity. Whereas the Liberals and New Democrats are generally all bound together under their leadership’s directives, Greens only move in the same direction when, essentially, the Leader and the Fund agree on a direction. If they don’t, we get the last five years.

The constant drama and arguments between the Fund and Annamie Paul led to literal lawsuits and a complete breakdown internally, with frayed relationships and nerves churning through volunteers and staff at record pace. Elizabeth May’s whole return to the leadership was predicated on the idea that she could calm the situation, bring folks back together and push through some reforms to stabilize the party.

It didn’t work. The gambit failed so badly that we have our leader and sole MP out in the media saying she has no real say over a national campaign. Can you believe that? How would that be acceptable anywhere else but the Greens? Why do we do this to ourselves?

If you’re a member of this party or ever been accosted by one, that’s a line you’ve heard a lot. "We do politics differently,” or “we’re not like the other parties” - whatever variation you can imagine. Greens are so damn proud of how we’re different we’ve made it a slogan several times. Remember “Not Left, Not Right - Forward”? I unfortunately do.

In my view we’ve gotten so caught up in how different we do politics, we’ve somehow trapped ourselves in a feedback loop of showing how different we are. We’re different from others because we do politics differently, and we do politics differently because we’re different from the others… except we don’t want to admit the way we’re chiefly different is that we absolutely suck at winning.

And it isn’t because we don’t know how to win: individual Green teams can and do claim victories, and they can be big ones. Look at Elizabeth’s machine in Saanich, or the team built up in Kitchener Centre and Guelph, or the massive leaps of support built up in Parry Sound-Muskoka or Fredericton.

We know how to win, but unlike the federal party setup, those campaigns aren’t pulled three different ways by competing interests, while being held back by the purse holder who is the only one making decisions on what gets spent where. Individual campaigns are set up not too differently from what a Liberal, Conservative, or New Democrat campaign would look like. They don’t do politics differently, and boy does that get some people I’ve met in this party mad.

I’ll be blunt: the Greens are dying, if not already dead, because our current constitutional setup is worse than useless, its actively hampering efforts to fix what’s gone wrong. Internal reform must happen, there’s no longer a choice about it. We need an entire overhaul of the whole damnable thing.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for some, and I get it. But I also don’t think they’ve thought it through. They want to be part of a movement, but think its “selling out” when someone begins the messy project of organizing to keep it running. They want to be part of something successful, but they don’t want to accept the compromises necessary to achieve that success. Too many people in this party think its a debate club rather than a professional body dedicated to one thing and one thing only: electing more Greens.

It’s time we build a Green Party of Canada in the mold of what’s been successful. I’ve not the want or will to go into deep detail, but the following five points are what I believe is needed to create something successful out of this mess:

1. End the GPC Fund’s ability to interfere in political and administrative matters.
   Remove their votes on Federal Council, hand their administrative and oversight powers to a reformed FC or Executive Director, and turn them into the rubber-stamping accountants they’re meant to be.
   

2. Federal Council turns exclusively into an oversight and approval body.
   The FC should operate as a basic approval body of the party, making final decisions on budgets, by-laws, committees, and so on. FC’s membership should be slimmed down and some of its broader authority curtailed, acting more like a sounding board for ideas from the Executive Council. It can create term-limited by-laws and governance committees, act as the primary point of contact for EDAs and members seeking change, but it is not involved in day-to-day operations of the party, which should be designated solely to the Executive Director or similar role.
   

3. Make the Executive Council and its members useful as administrators.
   As it stands, the GPC’s Executive Council - which consists of the Leader, Chair of the FC and two vice-chairs, the GPC Fund Representative, and the Executive Director as non-voting - does effectively nothing. It can set the agenda and operate in emergency situations, but otherwise its decisions are later subject to ratification by the FC. While retaining the latter, let’s make this body the primary administrative heart of the GPC: an Executive Director who actually runs staffing and administration; the Leader (or Leader’s representative) who is actually deciding priorities; the FC chair and vice-chairs; and a Fund representative who sits and nods with a happy expression on their face, unless the Party is running out of money. We could add or subtract others, just make this group the ones actually setting the pace of the Party.
   

4. Give Leader(s) control over campaigns.
   An Election Readiness or Campaign Committee should be set up and its members solely nominated by the Leader(s). They have to be Green members in good standing of course, but neither the FC nor EC gets a say in who these people are. Their whole job is to deal with nominations (yes, that means no more FC control over nominations), vetting, disputes, and anything related to running a national campaign or preparing for one. Obviously their set out rules and budget is still subject to approval by the FC, but ultimately the Leader(s) need to be in control of their campaign direction beyond the basic exercise of control via their ability to appoint the Shadow Cabinet (which should probably be scrapped and reformed). In this system, the Leader is the boss - at least during campaigns.
   

5. Leader(s) lead.
   Right now, as laid out in the GPC constitution, the Leader of the party does not lead - they’re a spokesperson. The trouble is, they’re also uninhibited in terms the direction of Caucus, whether by virtue of being a lone legislator or because they’re literally the Caucus Leader, which gives them a much larger voice than any other constituent part of the GPC. There’s an inherent contradiction here which gets borne out when the Party, whose direction is set out by other agents, clashes with the Leader and Caucus. There’s two ways to resolve the contradiction: one is to entirely separate the Spokesperson role from the Leader role, similar to what Quebec solidaire has done with its collective leadership model (or adopt a similar constitution to the New Zealand Greens, which cements the spokesperson role as part of collective leadership) - or drop the pretense and give the Leader(s) similar control as the leaders of the Liberals or Conservatives have over their party. This means they’re involved in most, if not all, critical decision making points - not given a pure veto over them, but given due weight and consideration. We must have Party and Leader align in the same direction.

What would this ultimately mean? Well, for one, less squabbling because now the Leader(s) are in broader control of the party. Would it open the door to terrible managers like Annamie Paul wielding even more influence? Perhaps - but given the results we saw anyway, I’m not sure how it could’ve been worse. There’s an added benefit of the fact that, when the bad leader is eventually gone, a new leader will have the ability to make greater impact and reform, rather than dealing with the continued fallout.

Another consequence would be aligning ourselves with how Canadians treat political parties - as extensions of their leaders. As much as it pains me to say, we can’t pretend our system isn’t leader-centric, the other parties certainly don’t. When Canadians see internal drama erupt, no matter how small, they think its because we’re dysfunctional - which we are, of course. While it puts a lot of onus on a Leader to do well, it also gives us a side benefit: aspiring leaders scared off by our convoluted system will instead see a system not too different from elsewhere, and their chance to make an imprint.

Or as I said briefly - adopt an actual collective leadership model. End this halfway bullshit. Whatever we do, we need to embrace a better system, because continuing on as we are just won’t suffice. Frankly my patience is wearing thin these days, I know many of my fellow Greens feel the same.

PS:

Also, get rid of the stupid green dot. Bring back the sunflower logo. That’s the real reform we need.