Green Party co-leader Jonathan Pedneault gets a hug from co-leader Elizabeth May after announcing his resignation during a press conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on July 9.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Jonathan Pedneault has resigned as deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada, citing “personal reasons” and declining to explain further at a news conference announcing his decision.
“My decision today was inevitable,” Mr. Pedneault said Tuesday, without elaborating on why that’s the case.
Appearing with Green Leader Elizabeth May, Mr. Pedneault said it had been “the honour of a lifetime” to serve with her.
“I am not going to discuss the reasons I am leaving today. This is a discussion I have had with Elizabeth,” he said.
Mr. Pedneault, who had spent years working with groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch investigating abuses in war zones including Afghanistan, entered the political arena in 2022. That year, Ms. May was elected leader by the party for the second time in a partnership arrangement with Mr. Pedneault. Ms. May also led the Greens from 2006 to 2019.
In the interim between Ms. May’s exit and return, the party had elected lawyer and activist Annamie Paul as its leader. She served from 2020 to 2021, and resigned amid turmoil in the party as well as her failure to win a seat.
Tuesday’s announcement leaves Ms. May at the forefront of a party that has only two seats in the House of Commons – Ms. May for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Kitchener-Centre MP Mike Morrice. Mr. Pedneault was never elected to the House of Commons.
The party has another deputy leader, Angela Davidson, a climate activist also known as Rainbow Eyes. Ms. Davidson has been convicted of criminal contempt for breaching a court injunction blocking protesters from disrupting logging activities in B.C.
Nik Nanos, the chief data scientist of Nanos Research, said support for the Green Party has consistently fallen between 3 per cent and 6 per cent in his company’s weekly tracking of public opinion.
“The challenge for the Greens is that the federal Liberals have made the environment and fighting climate change a top priority, effectively taking the wind out of the Green Party sails and making the Greens less relevant,” Mr. Nanos said in a statement.
Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said in an interview that Ms. May has shown no ability to significantly increase the number of elected Greens, and that succession planning has bedevilled the party.
“At the end of the day, it’s still Elizabeth May’s show and if that was successful then we would see the party at higher than 4 per cent in current public-opinion polling, and we would see the ability of the party to get MPs elected,” she said.
When voters have heard of the Green Party, she said, it has been because of turmoil such as the conflict between Ms. Paul and the party. “The challenge is everything you hear about the Greens, it’s not in a good context.”
Mr. Pedneault said he was not leaving for a specific new job, but expected to return to his previous professional interests.
“I’ve been working for 14 years in conflict areas. This been my turf for many years. It’s very likely I will return to that turf,” he said, adding this likely precluded any future role for him helping the Green Party.
“It’s very difficult to knock on doors in Canada while I am abroad dodging bullets, but one way or another I remain committed to the Greens.”