In this episode of the Full Comment Podcast, we take a look at the new book, "Greener Than Thou: Surviving the Toxic Sludge of Canadian Eco-Politics," by Mark Leran-Yon, and talk to him about what it means for the Green Party of Canada.
00:06:01.140And that has its benefits and has its drawbacks.
00:06:06.900So you talk about the idea that she has built all of this around her.
00:06:15.740Having been involved in NDP and green politics over the years, I guess she has kept the brand going,
00:06:26.220but shouldn't she have stepped aside at some point to allow for renewal, allow for people to take over?
00:06:33.080I was really fascinated at how the last few leadership races have played out.
00:06:37.840I really don't get and have been, you know, asking around and still don't understand how Mike Morris didn't take over the party when he was elected out of Ontario.
00:06:52.600I really don't understand why the party didn't put everything they had into holding his seat in Ontario.
00:07:04.880Uh, you know, they're doing ads with Jonathan Pedno, who came fifth in his riding and a really good, and a really good finish in his riding would have been third.
00:07:15.680So, you know, the whole Green Party leadership thing landed him fifth place.
00:07:21.540But if they put Mike Morris and tagged him at the end of every ad, maybe he holds his seat in Ontario.
00:08:05.980And now, uh, now that riding is held by a liberal who left to go spend more time with his family, came back and won again.
00:08:13.140So it seems like if you're an incumbent in that riding in Central Nova, you're always going to win.
00:08:18.360And Elizabeth May was never going to win, but she did it.
00:08:21.720And a May Paul did it, uh, Pendal did it.
00:08:24.240Like, so is it that they like losing more than winning?
00:08:27.980Um, I don't for the life of me understand the strategy there because there are ridings that are winnable out there.
00:08:38.540There are ridings where green issues are top of mind and to go, Hey, I think I'm going to run against the most popular politician in the province.
00:08:47.920Seems like a pretty odd flex, you know?
00:08:51.040And I mean, right now, Elizabeth's riding, which is where I live, is almost that safe for her.
00:08:58.660Mike Schreiner has figured that out in Ontario.
00:09:00.440He decided that he was going to run in Guelph, uh, university town.
00:09:05.200Uh, the center of that riding is filled with, with students.
00:09:08.600It is filled with, there's two Guelphs.
00:09:10.940There's the area around the university and that is very green.
00:09:13.900And then there's the areas outside and that is very conservative or blue liberal.
00:09:18.120It depends, uh, Mike Schreiner figured out, okay, we can win there.
00:09:21.640And he has been seriously trying to figure out the other ridings that he can win.
00:09:26.480That seems like a, an attempt at a serious organization, even though he only has two, uh, and they seem to run things very professionally in your experience, working with the greens, working with Elizabeth May.
00:09:39.480Was there any sense of professionalism in the organization?
00:10:34.100Uh, did, did, did Mulroney knowingly or unknowingly give birth to the, the eco politics movement in this country?
00:10:42.060I mean, it had been, uh, bubbling and growing in, in Europe and places like Germany for years, but we didn't really have that, uh, until Brian Mulroney helped give birth to Elizabeth May.
00:10:54.160I, I give him credit for a lot of things.
00:10:58.100Well, what's fascinating is that there's always an assumption that the more right-wing governments tend to be terrible for the environment.
00:11:09.960And you look at Mulroney going, I think we should have an environment minister, but you also look at Mulroney going, you know, acid rain, bad idea.
00:11:20.540And I mean, one of the biggest wins you can point to environmentally is freaking, wasn't it Mulroney and Reagan?
00:11:39.080And, you know, so I'm not sure why he did it.
00:11:40.980He, he was depicted as someone trying to pillage the land and the environment, but he, he actually expanded national parks tremendously.
00:11:51.160Well, I mean, out here in BC, uh, it was Gordon Campbell who, you know, really in a lot of ways invented the green party out here by drafting Andrew Weaver to come up with a climate plan.
00:12:06.460And introducing a carbon tax that became the model for carbon taxes around the world to the point where Sappora Berman, you know, environmentalist who actually wrote a book with her, uh, presented him with an award for his environmental work, which would have seemed unthinkable.
00:12:25.580And just the photo op of that was just, I think, heads exploded on all ends of the political spectrum when that happened.
00:12:35.580And even though for, for our folks that are not familiar with BC politics, Gordon Campbell may have been premier while he was leader of the liberal party.
00:12:44.160Gordon Campbell, very much a conservative, uh, unlike Christy Clark, who replaced him, who was from the liberal side, the, the BC liberal party, which no longer exists, was just there to keep the NDP out of power.
00:12:56.580Uh, and, and you're saying he gave birth to the, the BC greens.
00:12:59.840He gave birth to BC greens by really bringing Andrew Weaver into the, you know, who became the leader of the BC greens, uh, into BC politics.
00:13:10.240And what happened there is that Christy Clark, uh, then axed, you know, decided, declared she was getting rid of the carbon tax.
00:13:20.160And Weaver decides to run for the greens and eventually becomes leader, but it was Christy Clark going, I'm getting rid of that tax.
00:13:28.000Held the balance of power, which allowed John Oregon to become premier.
00:15:48.240That anime Paul was, was dealing with, uh, a level of antisemitism that she seemed to be quite shocked by from everything that I read.
00:15:58.660Uh, but, yeah, it's, sorry, we moved away from where we were and I'm trying to make sure that I'm answering your question.
00:16:10.600Well, so I'm, I, I'm asking what, uh, why does, is it the leadership or is it the membership that drives this push to some radical positions or an attempt to overtake the NDP, um, whether it is pushing the politics to the left or, you know, the problem of antisemitism?
00:16:33.040I think what you end up with is that the Greens are essentially a party made up of people who feel disenfranchised from other parties, right?
00:16:41.100So you've got a lot of contrarians and it's the amount of overlap that there seemed to be between Greens and the People's Party was a little shocking.
00:16:56.720Uh, although not everybody I spoke to at the Greens.
00:17:00.080So during the pandemic, uh, because I've got a podcast where I deal with science, I felt really uncomfortable having any COVID deniers on my Facebook page and on my social media.
00:17:13.200I was like, I don't feel great about amplifying this.
00:17:16.320So I started nuking anybody who was, you know, full on anti-vax conspiracy theory.
00:17:22.900That was on my Facebook pages entirely from people who I had connected with through being green.
00:17:32.080Uh, I remember telling folks that, um, um, the growth of the PPC that Maxime Bernier was taking as much from the green party as he was from the conservative party at times in certain places that it, it, it, these were crunchy cons going over to, uh, granola eating crunchy cons going over to the PPC.
00:17:54.200Well, you've also got BC, you've got the phenomenon of traditionally, like, uh, I know that we baffled the rest of Canada in so many different ways, but one of them is like when the reform party came up, you would have reformers or Canadian Alliance members elected in the exact same writings.
00:18:20.240And I kept trying to explain to people when I was living here and I was writing for various Toronto publications.
00:18:26.680Uh, yeah, that's because the BC response to the federal government tends to be whatever party is going to give the, is going to give the middle finger.
00:18:34.980Uh, that, that's kind of how people roll here.
00:18:38.060So it was like, okay, who's, you know, who's going to hold people's feet to the fire?
00:18:42.660Yeah, we think that's going to be Preston's team this election.
00:18:58.900Well, look, even Elizabeth May's writing, uh, was previously held by Gary Lunn, who had been in Stephen Harper's cabinet and was first elected as a reformer.
00:19:08.880But, and Gary Lunn's numbers were better when he was a reformer.
00:19:15.460When he was, when he was the outlier, he actually had better numbers.
00:19:19.960I mean, he still got elected under Harper, but he did really well when he was an outsider.
00:19:27.140And I, I mean, when Elizabeth came into that riding, I had no doubt the rider was going to go, ha, you know, this is a, you know, proudly iconoclastic riding.
00:19:37.580I had no doubt it was going to go, yeah, we think there should be a, you know, national party leader from here.
00:19:41.860We'll go from, uh, uh, from conservative to, uh, to green.
00:19:47.600I mean, there's certain areas where, uh, in Ontario where you will find, uh, blue, orange switchers, but nothing is quite like BC politics where it's blue, orange, green switchers.
00:20:00.900And never read, never going to go for the liberals.
00:20:05.420Just go as I like how you put it, the, the going for the party that's going to annoy folks.
00:20:11.760Oh, that's why this election was so shocking.
00:20:14.160When we come back, we'll take a quick break.
00:20:16.840And I want to ask you about why the, uh, the NDP is the arch enemy of the NDP, because you do have experience with, with both parties and both of them are, are, are failing you.
00:20:28.120I would say they're failing Canadian democracy at the moment because we need strong opposition.
00:20:32.900And well, that's not coming from that side of the aisle at the moment.
00:20:37.480This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada did what, where we unpack the biggest, weirdest, and wildest political moments in Canadian history.
00:20:45.280You thought you knew and tell you what really happened.
00:20:48.720Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.
00:20:53.240If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada did what everywhere you get podcasts.
00:20:59.680So Mark, you say that the NDP is the greatest enemy of the NDP.
00:21:05.280And before I get into why you described that in the book, I want to set it in terms of the politics that's happening right now in Ottawa.
00:21:14.080So, um, the NDP is down to seven seats.
00:21:18.140The liberals are four seats short once you count the speaker for passing their budget.
00:21:22.460And there's a big thing about, will we have an election?
00:21:24.820And the NDP, everyone looked to them and said, well, I guess they're helping pass the budget, but they really don't want to.
00:21:30.500Because part of the reason they've been reduced to seven seats is, well, that damn coalition agreement that Jagmeet Singh signed them on to.
00:21:38.820And people were like, well, why not just vote for the liberals?
00:21:42.940So, uh, I mean, this is a really bad spot because if they go to an election, they have no leader and they have no money and they'll have zero credibility if they back the liberals.
00:21:54.600So is this part of what you're talking about when you say that they're their own worst enemy?
00:22:27.880He, he left, you know, he left the, he left everything open for the Greens to move through and take over as, you know, the perpetual third party.
00:22:36.760But I mean, you, I look now and I'm listening to people say, well, Hey, how could things get worse for the NDP?
00:22:45.760Ask Kim Campbell, ask, you know, ask Jenny Quinn, who's in your caucus and served in a two person caucus in British Columbia.
00:22:53.740Cause I look and go, regardless of what Carney does with the budget, there's nothing that has changed about the way Pierre Polyev is resonating with the people who don't already dig him.
00:23:09.420So I think if the NDP goes to an election, Heather McPherson is going to be leader by default because she's going to be the only one left standing.
00:24:04.240But Mulcair is a major reason why Jack Layton had the orange wave in 2011 and doesn't get the credit for it because he was an effective campaigner.
00:24:16.840And while Jack was working in Ottawa and crisscrossing the country prior to the 2011 election, Tom Mulcair was going around Quebec, the region he knew so well, having worked as a bureaucrat, as an elected official.
00:24:31.700And recruiting candidates, serious candidates, setting up the infrastructure to win, they won 57 seats in Quebec.
00:24:50.600Well, it was mind blowing, but this gets into why I said off the top, the NDP's religion, because it is the only party that excommunicates you.
00:25:02.440And I mean, the Matthew Green also said, you know, Mulcair, really more of a liberal than an NDPer, not really an NDPer, a liberal.
00:25:13.080And what's fascinating is same thing about former premiers.
00:25:17.320So you'd think a party that wants to be diverse and representative and, you know, take your pick, wouldn't basically pretend Ujjal Dossange never happened after being premier of BC because he went to liberals.
00:25:33.100And then Bob Ray was never really NDP because he went to federal liberals.
00:25:37.020And instead of going, they were never really NDP, I think there's a better question in why did they leave?
00:25:42.980Uh, what was it about the party that has cost them so many of the best and brightest, but instead it's like, oh, well, they were clearly never pure enough.
00:25:54.640They clearly, and I'm waiting for the day.
00:25:57.960And I think it's coming soon that we hear Jagmeet, he was never really NDP.
00:26:03.740Like which other parties go, look, the number of times a year, they're really more liberal than NDP.
00:26:10.680You know, so why do your members keep electing them as leader?
00:26:14.440Well, look, I think the conservatives do that to a degree, not to the same degree, but there is constantly this, well, you know, down in the States, they'd be called rhinos, Republicans in name only.
00:26:26.680And here they get called senos, conservatives in name only.
00:26:29.620And, um, that's a, uh, something that the NDP and the conservatives have in common, you know, uh, is they've all got the shibboleth test for you, uh, to see, are you, are you one of us?
00:26:45.320And, and there's a big faction of the conservative party that would rather be pure and right in their own way and sit off in the corner, never being in power.
00:26:55.700That's a major part of the NDP is we'd rather, we'd rather be pure and never actually govern and get anything done, but at least we're right.
00:27:05.180And we feel holier than now, you know, back to the title of your book.
00:27:44.640The Leap Manifesto, you know, I, I grew up in an NDP household.
00:27:48.740That would have made my father and, uh, all of the, the, the blue collar guys in my East Hamilton, uh, neighborhood that had orange signs on their lawn, turned around and say, what the hell are you talking about?
00:28:04.500Well, I mean, keep in mind, uh, I'm a West coast tree hunter, whale lover, right?
00:28:11.880So I'm looking at the Leap Manifesto and I'm not objecting to it.
00:28:15.520I'm thinking this is pretty cool, but when they took out Mulcair, right?
00:28:21.200Like I'm two things that I wasn't a fan of.
00:28:23.940One, they launched the Leap Manifesto in the middle of the campaign, which was odd because the people who were launching the Leap Manifesto know that the NDP is supposed to take their marching orders for membership, which means there was no world in which the NDP could go, this is our policy.
00:28:43.060And I had a conversation with Finn Donnelly at one point where he felt the Leap Manifesto really took them off the game.
00:28:49.700And I remember when the Leap Manifesto came out and the number of pieces that ran in media, uh, basically talking about how this was clearly the true NDP platform and the, the lengths Mulcair went to, to distance himself from it were astonishing.
00:29:10.920So it became the focus of the campaign, but not in any positive way.
00:29:15.280And it felt like the Leap Manifesto basically sabotaged the party most likely to implement the Leap Manifesto.
00:29:51.980And at that time, that time would have been a brilliant time for Avi Lewis to step up and go, as one of the authors of Leap Manifesto, I'm going to run, or I'm going to, or better yet, his wife, Naomi Klein, who has such massive media presence, right?
00:30:10.560And, you know, wonderful speaker, all of the things you could possibly want in a leader, uh, she could have stepped up.
00:30:17.900Any of the 50 celebrities who backed the Leap Manifesto could have stepped up.
00:30:25.480And there, there was not a green, particularly green person running for the NDP.
00:30:29.620And then Jagmeet shows up and I don't think he said a word about the environment until he ran in Burnaby and went, oh, wow, pipelines.
00:30:39.860I better start talking about pipelines or I'm not winning this seat.
00:30:43.140And suddenly you hear all of this stuff about pipelines from, which wasn't on his, you know, definitely wasn't on, you know, in the list of key talking points prior to moving to BC.
00:30:54.360So give me your assessment, uh, of Jagmeet, you know, Tom Mulcair, uh, inherited, uh, a party, um, I think when the 2015 election started, they had 95 seats.
00:31:15.380As you say, Jagmeet wins, um, in part due to a broken leadership system that the NDP should really fix.
00:31:24.820Uh, it's a bizarre leadership system and it could really bite them again.
00:31:31.020You get, you can easily get single issue voters winning in the NDP in ways that you can't with the two parties that actually vie for party, uh, power in this country.
00:31:42.060So, but Jagmeet takes them from 44 seats to 24 in 2019.
00:31:48.820Then, you know, okay, you got one more in, in, in 2021, but then down to seven.
00:31:54.420I mean, give me an assessment of him and, um, was it him?
00:33:18.180But he did something that I thought was just shocking.
00:33:20.920And it was the moment I went, I think I'm going green now.
00:33:24.040Uh, he announced he was going to stay in Burnaby and live in Burnaby.
00:33:27.980And I went, oh my God, he's abandoned Ontario.
00:33:33.060So I look at him and go, oh no, this was self-inflicted, right?
00:33:38.000If he couldn't win a seat in Ontario, he had no business being leader of that party because that was his value proposition.
00:33:45.060He was going to bring the NDP back in Ontario.
00:33:47.240And if he could only, and instead he basically turned the NDP into a rival with the Greens in BC to win West Coast environmental votes, right?
00:33:59.840Like the, the, the way he reduced the party was astonishing.
00:34:44.060So he, he, Trudeau, that is, really leaned into green politics.
00:34:50.220He tried to eat away at the Greens lunch.
00:34:53.540He tried to outflank the NDP on many policies, not everything, but he, not surprisingly, because of the people that surrounded him, a bunch of Kathleen Wynne, Ontario liberals, went to work for Justin Trudeau.
00:35:09.880So he did what Kathleen Wynne did, which worked for a little while here, which was, hey, let's outflank the NDP and take away their seats in power.
00:35:19.780So how much of the failure of both the Greens and the NDP is due to Justin Trudeau trying to outflank them and be like the greenest NDP-ist liberal leader in government ever?
00:35:32.720Oh, he definitely deserves some credit for that, you know, because, but I mean, part of that again is just odd branding.
00:35:39.880It, it, it's very hard to believe when Tom Mulcair goes, I'm going to run on a balanced budget.
00:35:46.340I mean, that was, that was the winning moment for Trudeau going, and I'm going to help people.
00:35:52.520I mean, it was like, politically, it was freaking awesome, you know?
00:35:56.960So Mulcair says the NDP is going to balance the budget.
00:36:30.900Well, this is one of the things that, that's fascinating to me.
00:36:33.940I, I've listened to all of the different pundits, mostly from Ontario, talking about how, well, you know, the NDP is never going to go anywhere.
00:36:43.920Cause just look at the presence they have in these other, in these provinces.
00:36:47.860And I'm like, Wop Canoe is not running a particularly left, you know, party.
00:36:53.960And in most of the places, the NDP is alive that are being cited as proof of life of the party, what you've essentially got is a two-party system where the NDP is essentially playing the part of the liberals.
00:37:08.680Uh, you know, there, you've got a, you know, a party on the right ish and a party on the left ish, uh, in most provinces.
00:37:18.700And, you know, there, there hasn't been a liberal party that was really aligned with the federal liberal party in BC, probably in my lifetime.
00:37:33.440Uh, you know, that's just not the brand here.
00:37:36.560You know, when Gordon Campbell took, like, there was a brief moment when a guy named Gordon Wilson ran the liberals where they believed in the same stuff as federal liberals.
00:37:44.600Gordon Campbell just took it over cause that was the vehicle that was going to beat the NDP.
00:37:49.140Like the PC party in Alberta for decades.
00:37:54.380I remember the first time, first time I'm in Calgary talking to people, uh, I'm at the Petroleum Club of all places for an event.
00:38:02.400And these people are describing how they're strong PCers and have been members for years and they donate money.
00:38:08.440And then they're telling me their, their political views.
00:38:10.960And I'm thinking, no, you're, you're very much a new Democrat, but it was a one party system.
00:38:16.020Look, I know that the, uh, the focus of your book was not the Ontario NDP, but since you, you know, the party so well, you do know Ontario and you mentioned the two party system.
00:38:26.820After the 2018 Ontario election, when the liberals were decimated and became known as the minivan party, because they could all fit in one vehicle.
00:38:37.420I thought the NDP has a real chance here to turn Ontario into a two party state, the way things are in, uh, every province west of the Ontario Manitoba border.
00:38:51.820I thought there was a real opportunity there and Andrea Horvath and now Merritt Stiles have utterly failed to take advantage of that.
00:39:00.880And now there's a little bit of liberal life back and, you know, Doug Ford's playing with the, um, some of the election rules by extending the per vote subsidy.
00:39:10.560And the only reason he's doing that is not because he likes it, but because it keeps the greens, the NDP and the liberals all alive so they can fight each other and he can win the next election and be premier forever.
00:39:20.740Um, but you know, do they just, from what you would know of the Ontario NDP, did they just not have the killer instinct to say the liberals are gasping for air?
00:39:30.440Let's step on their neck a little bit.
00:39:34.240And it really, it was like, yes, let's go even, you know, let's go more hardcore.
00:39:40.580And I'm like, no, no, this, this is the time you can go for it.
00:39:45.260And really, I always felt like Harper's end game.
00:39:48.360And part of the affection that he seemed to have for Jack Layton was he was trying to get Canada down to a two party system.
00:39:55.260Um, that's what it always looked like to me was that he was trying to go, yeah, if it's a binary between us and the NDP instead of us and liberals, we become the national governing party and they take over every four elections.
00:41:02.800Like, and I kept telling people, no, no, the guy to watch is Stephen Harper.
00:41:06.580Uh, because he seems to be planning everything right down to, I mean, really the genius self-destruct clause in the reform party that went, if we don't achieve this and this and this by such and such a date, we start a new party.
00:41:37.080And I thought, wow, he's figured out how to do that.
00:41:39.940So let me ask you, um, you, you finished talking about bright green politics and going forward, where does the green movement go?
00:41:50.480Is it part of the progressive movement?
00:41:52.780Um, you know, Mark Carney is a different cat.
00:41:57.600Of course he wrote values, which I think is on the shelf behind me here.
00:42:00.900He wrote values, which was very much a green progressive manifesto of sorts.
00:42:06.820Doesn't seem to be governing that way.
00:42:09.300So it looks like, you know, these parties might be dead right now, but with the right leader, the right pitch, there's an opportunity for them.
00:42:19.160So what do you see in the coming years?
00:42:22.340Make your Stephen Harper like prediction for the green and the progressive side.
00:42:27.380My Stephen Harper like prediction right now is that as long as Paul Yev's around, uh, I think Carney can do pretty much anything and he's going to keep the NDP and the greens off the map.
00:42:44.560Because I think, you know, the, in some respects, the greens finally got the ultimate wish they had a, you know, Paul Yev was running on a campaign all about climate policy.
00:42:57.960He was trying desperately to turn everything into climate policy.
00:43:01.560I mean, the most hilarious slide was he, he's so, he seems to get so attached to certain phrasings that he was talking about carbon tax Clark when he was, you know, when she looked like she might run for liberals.
00:43:13.360I'm like, oh, you mean the woman that got rid of the carbon tax?
00:43:19.860That, that, that's who you're going to tag as, as the carbon tax candidate.
00:43:23.800But I feel like he's creating a really untenable situation for pretty much anybody who isn't, like I said, isn't into him.
00:43:35.140Uh, so we'll see, but I kind of wish that the Carney who's governing would meet the Carney who wrote values.
00:43:44.480Uh, I wish those two guys would have a conversation.
00:43:51.200You know, um, I did hear someone say recently, uh, that, um, they want to know which Mark Carney is going to govern.
00:44:01.200Is it the fiscally conservative Mark Carney, who was the bank of Canada governor through the fiscal crisis in 08, 09?
00:44:07.540Is it the, uh, values Mark Carney, uh, who clearly was on the progressive green side of things, uh, declaring that Greta is one of his people?
00:44:18.420Uh, is it the centrist Mark Carney that, uh, wants you to believe he's something different than those previous two?
00:45:53.960There wasn't even an act of parliament.
00:45:56.140This whole thing is due to a somewhat surprised decision out of the Supreme Court of Canada.
00:46:00.780And it came about in large part because of one man, a Canadian doctor who had been relentless about running illegal abortion clinics since the 1960s and was determined to overturn the laws prohibiting the practice.
00:46:13.080Along the way, he endured multiple arrests, constant raids, a jail term, a firebombing of his clinic, an attack by a fanatic wielding garden shears, the approbation of virtually his entire profession, and frequent death threats.
00:46:29.080If you want to hear the rest of the story, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What? everywhere you get your podcasts.