With the federal election concluded and the votes counted, Ontarians will head back to the polls in less than a year as the provincial election is set to take place on or before June 2.
Despite the low vote count federally for the Green’s, University of Guelph political science professor Tim Mau said the provincial wing of politics is a separate entity, and the Greens' support in Guelph could remain intact despite the impact at the federal level.
The Ontario Green’s are currently led by Mike Schreiner, who was elected in 2018 as the first Green MPP in Ontario history.
“To what extent is this going to negatively impact Mike? As I said, I think Mike is the leader of the provincial party, and I’m not sure there is going to be a lot of direct impact in terms of his fortunes,” said Mau.
“I mean, the reality is the Greens are not a mainstream party in this county. They’re just at the margins trying to get a few votes, trying to get a seat or two here and there, but they just haven’t really been a party that Canadians have really felt comfortable parting their votes with at this time.”
The federal election saw many local votes leave the Green Party, with Michelle Bowman receiving 5,250 votes, 13,986 fewer than Steve Dyck did in the 2019 election.
In the 2018 provincial election Schreiner garnered 29,082 votes in a landslide win.
Referencing internal strife, Mau said those conflicts within the party could be the reason why Green support waned both federally and locally.
“Definitely there is some impact because, again, I guess in the public mind they don’t necessarily differentiate the provincial wing of the party which has their own separate constitutions,” said Mau. “It’s not to say poor policies at one level aren’t going to impact another, they are separate. I think if you look at the implosion of the Green support, they were riddled with support from their leader Annamie Paul and clearly, that made a lot of headlines and news and as a party, you never want to have internal fighting.”
And while most people would associate the Green Party with the environment, Mau said the party’s policies do not place it solely on that far left and compared to European and Scandinavian countries, the green movement has not been as strong in Canada as it has been overseas.
“That’s the policy that we think about first and foremost when they think about the Greens, but if you look at the rest of their platform they are very sort of right-of-centre in their views,” said Mau.
The reduction in votes cast for the Green can’t be chalked up to leadership alone as the number of votes cast in the federal election reduced significantly locally.
According to Elections Canada, with all polls reporting the number of votes in the Guelph riding dipped to 70,205 ballots cast compared to the 76,020 ballots cast in 2019.
“I’m not sure, but I think the overall turnout numbers were down, which again is not surprising as people did not want to be congregating in large settings,” said Mau.
