The Green Party is now more Moderate than the NDP and Liberals

The federal Green Party of Canada just recently elected their new leader, Annamie Paul on Oct. 3rd, 2020 and the mainstream-progressive Canadian press went into awesome fanfare as she represents the first female of colour leader of a political party in Canada. 

Although I understand why Paul leans so hard on this capital D, ‘Diversity’ messaging (it’s a winning strategy in a leftist party like the Greens), I find it’s just a bit too bad. If Paul and the Greens were able to make a break away from the “diversity” dogma as a staple platform issue they could become Canada’s most reasonable centre-left choice. 

At least in my opinion, Annamie Paul and the Green Party in general are actually becoming smarter on some issues than Jagmeet Singh’s NDP or Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in the last few years, and the Conservatives are not far behind either. 

Let me explain what I mean: earlier this year I was surprised to see this piece in the National Post, entitled: ‘Give farmers a carbon tax break after ‘harvest from hell’: Green Party agriculture critic.’ 

Alright, so this is not fully scrapping the Carbon Tax, as I’d like to see, but it is something significant, and it’s surprisingly reasonable coming from the Greens, as the Liberals and NDP have never considered moderating the scope of their carbon tax plans.

You’d expect the Greens to be fully in favour of an expensive and broad carbon tax, but early this year they’re showing more common sense than the other parties. It is absolutely true farmers were hit badly by the carbon tax last year, but it begs the question: why are the Greens looking sharper on this issue than the Liberals and NDP? 

Even the Conservative Erin O’Toole has been vague on the carbon tax (he says he’ll cut the carbon tax, but institute carbon pricing?). So just let that sink in: we have a more clear-cut idea of what the Greens think of the carbon tax’s limitations than we do from the O’Toole Conservatives who plan to put a carbon pricing scheme on “big emitters” which very easily could include farmers.

The Federal Green and CPC positions on the Carbon tax really shows the Canadian political climate has delved deep into environmentalism to the point that the Green’s position has actually become the most moderate of the seat holding parties.

This sort of thing coming out of the Green Party shouldn’t be that surprising, seeing as although they’ve had some limited federal success as a party, on two occasions they have formed governments on the provincial level, in B.C. and New Brunswick, and this just shows the trend of Canadians starting to take the Greens seriously. 

This is because the Greens are taking themselves more seriously, and their new leader Annamie Paul represents a further step in this direction.

Paul seems to be set to halt the infiltration of the Green Party by extremist views. Paul as a Jewish Canadian was able to beat an anti-Israel candidate in the 2020 Green Party’s nomination race, who wanted to put boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) on Israel as official Green Party policy. Those pushing for BDS will now no longer have a friendly home to spread their radical anti-Israel views in the Green Party now that Paul is the leader.

Being Jewish, it should be unsurprising to find Paul supports Israel’s right to exist, although this support isn’t unconditional as she has condemned Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian West Bank. 

This stance gives her some national security credentials ahead of some of the more social justice oriented Canadian party leaders, and I’ll let you fill in the blanks about who I’m talking about there. 

You wouldn’t expect this from what used to be a more hard left-wing party like the Greens, and yet Paul is their candidate. 

Paul’s policy section on her website contains further signals Paul’s goal is to run the Green Party more to the centre under her leadership. 

Of course there is the extreme environmentalist policy you’d expect and the bad economics, but then again how much better is Conservative Party environment and economic policy really these days, amirite? 

But is Paul’s economic policy even that bad compared to the Green Party of the past? 

During the tenure of the Green’s last federal leader, Elizabeth May couldn’t help but shoot herself and her party in the foot constantly by flying off the handle about nationalizing seemingly every other industry, and Paul may be in favour of some of that but actually seems to value the private sector to a certain, which is leagues better than the NDP are currently.

So while we can still expect some comparatively unreasonable leftwing/environmentalist policies from the Green Party, Paul’s rise to leadership should be recognized for what it is: a conscious move by the Green Party to become a more serious and more moderate party.

By pushing away from the real hard-left fringe the Green Party could threaten the NDP and Liberal’s polling numbers in the future.