“When I was elected and put into this role, I was breaking a glass ceiling. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was breaking a glass ceiling that was going to fall on my head and leave a lot of shards of glass that I was going to have to crawl over … I was spitting up blood, but I was determined to be there.”

—Annamie Paul, during her Green leadership resignation speech

After months of petty infighting, a torrid election campaign and the short-lived leader’s resignation, Canada’s Greens must confront an existential crisis. Will the federal party be able to rebuild and continue as an electoral force, or will its collapse prove too catastrophic to recover from?

Until quite recently, the Green political movement had been basking in momentum and promise. The federal caucus finally elected a second member in 2018, followed by a third in 2019, with the Maritimes quickly developing into another regional hotbed for the party. Provincial politics were especially propitious, with Greens elected as Official Opposition (party with the second-most seats) and bolstered by more than 30 percent of the vote in Prince Edward Island in 2019. A year earlier, the New Brunswick Greens trebled their seat count, while the Ontario Greens elected a member.

With Annamie Paul’s rise to the national leadership last October, a woman of colour had taken the helm of a major federal party for the first time in Canadian history – and it’s worth remembering that no major party other than the Greens has been led into a general election by a woman since 2000, back when Alexa McDonough led the NDP, which feels like a political lifetime ago.

With Paul in charge, the Greens initially seemed destined to continue expanding their electoral footprint – despite minor cracks in the party’s foundation that appeared soon after Paul replaced Elizabeth May as leader. Paul earned an impressive 32.7 percent in last year’s Toronto Centre by-election – by far the best federal Green performance ever in Toronto – despite beginning her campaign late, due to overlap with the party’s leadership contest. Greens often end up winning seats where they initially finish second and are able to convince the electorate to vote with their heart, rather than strategically – and this Liberal “fortress” in Toronto suddenly looked eminently winnable.

Paul also earned plaudits for her impressive performance in the televised English-language leaders’ debate earlier this month, with audience members certainly noticing that she was the only woman at the podiums.

But despite such tremendous potential, the 2021 election ultimately proved to be a trouncing for the Greens. Incumbent Paul Manly lost his seat, finishing third – the only time that an elected Green in senior government has failed to win re-election. The party’s popular vote declined by almost two-thirds from the previous election (plummeting from 6.6 percent to just 2.3 percent), and the Greens were unable to nominate a candidate in 86 ridings – in both cases, their worst performance since 2000, back when the party was still very much a fringe entity. Newfound popularity in the Maritimes mostly collapsed. And despite the silver lining of the party electing its first member in Ontario, leader Annamie Paul this week felt there was little choice but to depart from what has become a highly toxic political party – meaning that Canada’s first Black federal party leader lasted less than a single year.

How did it all go so wrong, so quickly?

Was it the nearly non-existent leadership transition? The highly-politicized federal council that refused to accept the new leader and attempted to undermine her at every step? The new leader not devoting enough time to building bridges between warring factions or assuaging change-averse mandarins? The ill-fitting political appointments that polarized the party and alienated its sitting MPs, leading to a cross-floor defection? The fomenting systemic racism among a mostly white and economically-comfortable membership? The venomous internal debates over peripheral policies, such as international relations? Members who bristled when Elizabeth May lapel pins were no longer compulsory? Half of the party’s staff being laid off ahead of a snap election, to complement the bare financial chest? Or the legacy of constant turnover among staff, volunteers and candidates, leaving anemic institutional memory?

For the Greens, the past year was an omnishambles lacerated through a blender of vitriol. And thankfully, it’s over.

But what happens next? Will the party be able to regain its past popularity, and possibly even push beyond its legacy of three seats? Or will it revert back to essentially the status of an environmental non-profit, exploiting the soapbox of elections to make noise during campaigns but failing to win seats and disappearing for the lengthy remainder of the electoral cycle?

Internally, the Greens are split along many political fissures, with the primary schism arguably eco-capitalism versus eco-socialism. For a party that officially subscribes to principles such as “participatory democracy” and “respect for diversity,” it’s perhaps ironic that its internal culture has come to somewhat resemble politics in Thailand – if I don’t get my way, instead of focusing on winning the next vote, I’ll just do my utmost to undermine the current regime and encourage a coup. Until someone with masterful leadership skills – be they diplomatic or otherwise Machiavellian – can bring harmony to the party, Greens may remain more focused on each other’s throats than their actual parliamentary adversaries.

But I would argue that the party’s post-Paul potential is perhaps just as dependent on external factors – principally how relevant other political parties insist on keeping the Greens. With Liberals buying an oil pipeline, the NDP equivocating on climate measures (given their prioritization of labour above environment), the Albertan NDP one of the most vocal proponents of oil production in Canada, and the BC NDP happily subsidizing the liquefied natural gas industry, it appears there will continue be a role for the Green party in Canada for the foreseeable future: dragging the stubborn legacy parties, kicking and screaming, toward an inevitable post-carbon future.

Put simply, Green success is built upon others’ failings.

It’s worth noting that while Conservatives drag their feet on climate action here in Canada, over in the United Kingdom, Tories often outdo Labour and Liberal Democrats when it comes to taking a bold stance. Perhaps it’s no wonder the Greens perform relatively poorly there.

It’s an incredibly simple premise – co-opt your opponents’ strengths – that so far has mostly eluded the Liberals and NDP here in Canada. And if that continues, the Greens will retain a lifeline, even if their internal affairs happen to mimic an Argentinean telenovela.