Annamie Paul is fighting an election campaign and an internal revolt. Can she change the way Canadians see her?

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This article was published 15/08/2021 (1131 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA—On October 26 of last year, three weeks after she was elected leader of the Green Party of Canada, Annamie Paul piled into a car with her sister, brother-in-law, husband and one of her sons and headed to an Irish pub in downtown Toronto.

It was the night of the Toronto Centre byelection, and, unable to stand the wait any longer, Paul and her family drove to an outdoor patio where a COVID-safe number of party volunteers had gathered to find out whether the newly-minted leader would claim the riding as her own.

She didn’t.

But Paul had a strong showing; she placed second to the Liberals’ Marci Ien, raking in 32.7 per cent of the vote. The governing party was dealt a 15-point drop compared to its 2019 result, in a riding typically written off as a Liberal stronghold.

“There was that moment of daring to hope that we might actually have succeeded,” Paul recalled in a video interview from her Toronto home.

“We were all, of course, disappointed, but also hopeful because we thought if we were able to accomplish that much in three weeks…imagine what we could do in the next election.”

That is precisely what party insiders and political observers are now trying to gauge after months of party infighting seeped into public view.

There was the defection of a Green MP to the Liberals; the claims, from a faction of federal council members, that Paul helms with “hostility” and the leader’s counter-allegations of racism and sexism within the party’s upper ranks.

And with the party’s interim executive director, Dana Taylor, warning that the Greens are bleeding too much cash to mount an effective national campaign, it seems the story of Canada’s first Black and Jewish woman to lead a major federal party could end almost as soon as it all began.

Indeed, there is no guarantee that previous threats to declare lost confidence in Paul’s leadership and strip her of her party membership have withered away, even as Paul canvasses the streets of Toronto Centre in search of new support. On Sunday, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau called an election for Sept. 20.

“The first lesson of politics (is to) make sure you define you. Other people don’t define you,” said Jo-Ann Roberts, who served as interim Green leader before Paul assumed the role.

“Right now, unfortunately, there’s lots of people trying to define her.”

The Annamie Paul the country already knows comes with a long list of accomplishments.

She was one of four children born to Caribbean immigrants: her mother is from Nevis, her father from Dominica. Paul was born in the Toronto riding she’s lost twice and is courting once more, but was raised near Eglinton West. At age 12, she served as a page in the Ontario legislature, going on to study law at the University of Ottawa before obtaining a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University.

Many pursuits followed, including founding the Canadian Centre for Political Leadership, an organization that helped women and other minority groups to run for elected office. She’s worked as an adviser at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and has served on the boards of several international organizations focused on climate infrastructure, education for refugees and assisting states in transitioning out of conflict and crisis.

Then, she became Annamie Paul, the Green Party leader. Embattled, beleaguered, besieged.

“As many experiences as I have had, it’s an absolutely unique experience,” Paul says. “Certainly unforgettable and incomparable to anything else that I’ve ever done.”

It’s a role Roberts believes Paul was built to take on.

“I like to remind people sometimes when they’re being critical of Annamie’s sort of, approach, to things sometimes: ‘Have you ever thought of what it took to get to where she is today?’”

But there’s more to the 48-year-old lawyer than the bullet points on her resume, and supporters are hoping a federal campaign will give her a chance to reclaim her story — and the public’s trust.

Darcy Higgins is handling community outreach for Paul’s current Toronto Centre run. He was part of her past two attempts to take the riding, and her leadership campaign, making this the fourth time they’ve hit the trail.

They first met over bubble tea in 2019 — Paul wanted to try out a spot in the riding she hadn’t sampled before — and the pair discussed policy and their personal lives.

“She’s got this really bright, strong personality, with lots of interests,” Higgins said, citing hip hop and Star Trek as two of them.

“She’s kind of nerdy. I think when people learn more … the controversy and such is probably going to melt away a bit.”

When Paul is out and about mainstreeting — or “wavestreeting,” as her team is calling it during these pandemic times — Higgins says the internal party strife hasn’t presented as much of a challenge as initially thought.

“They pump her up and encourage her, or they talk about how they feel bad for her and hope she pushes forward. A lot of people don’t even know the situation,” he said.

As Jo-Ann Roberts remembers it, her first interaction with Paul also left a distinct impression: whenever Paul spoke, Roberts felt people ought to listen.

They met right after the 2019 general election, when Paul was fresh off her first Toronto Centre campaign.

The party had convened a federal council meeting for a post-election debrief, and Paul was one of several candidates who attended to share how they would have handled the campaign differently.

Implementing a diversity and inclusion policy to improve how the party recruited and worked with candidates from equity-seeking groups was one of Paul’s asks, Roberts said.

“She was right, and we passed a motion at that meeting. So it was almost instantaneous to put something in place that we would move in that direction.”

The one thing Roberts said she misjudged about the new leader was Paul’s understanding of the Green Party’s “culture”.

It’s something Roberts isn’t sure she understands herself, years after joining the party she now says is in a state of “metamorphosis, or maybe just churn.”

“Sometimes I think there was an awful lot happening all at the same time. There was no slow growth that leaders often get,” Roberts said, of a leadership race, byelection and pandemic rolling out in quick succession.

“We put a great deal of unusual pressure on the person who was coming into leadership.”

At a July news conference earlier this year, Paul admitted that parts of her tenure as leader had been “one of the most painful” moments of her life.

“I have thought many times over the last number of weeks of packing it in,” Paul said. “I think that anybody in my situation that is in it for the right reasons would have considered stepping down.”

What will happen to the Green Party come election day remains to be seen, Roberts says, but it’s not time to count the leader out yet.

“Anyone who’s looked at her history would say, ‘Do not underestimate Annamie.’ If she chooses to leave, she’ll choose to leave. But she’s staying for this fight.”

Find the Star’s federal election coverage here.

Raisa Patel is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @R_SPatel