Quebec Greens Executive Calls For Resignation of Leader, Who Blames ‘Pressure’ From Federal Establishment

Tyrrell, the 32-year old who has led the provincial party since 2013, says members of it’s executive council who have called for him to step down due to a loss of confidence, have been pressured to do so by elements of the Federal party’s establishment, because OF his ‘eco-socialist’ policies & criticism of the federal party

On Tuesday the executive of the Quebec Green Party sent a letter to the party membership calling for the resignation of the current leader, Alex Tyrrell, on the grounds that he has lost their trust. They allege that he has raised less funds than both the Conservative & New Democratic parties of Quebec, both of whom received less support than the Greens in the 2018 election, that he has not been actively recruiting candidates for the next election, and that he has done “very little field work” such as door-to-door, or other local work, all of which they say makes him the wrong leader to continue at the head of the party going into the next provincial election.

“We have arrived at a clear consensus” reads the letter. “We no longer trust Alex Tyrrell’s ability to lead our political formation and we believe that, in the best interest of our party and our movement, Alex Tyrrell should leave without delay.”

Only two of the executive’s eight members did not sign the letter, one of which is Tyrrell himself.

Tyrrell in turn has accused the leadership of the Green Party of Canada of interfering with it’s provincial branch, and of pressuring members of the executive into opposing him and his leadership because of his more leftist, self-described eco-socialist politics and criticism of them. He has frequently been very critical of former leader Elizabeth May and her leadership team on a number of issues, from foreign policy, to internal democracy, to the general ideological direction of the party.

“This situation was provoked by my criticism of Ms. May’s support for the Alberta tar sands in 2019, by my support for the human rights of the Palestinian people at the party’s policy convention in 2016, and by the shift to eco-socialism in the Green Party of Quebec following my election as leader in 2013.” he said in a statement on Facebook. He also drew a parallel between these recent events and the temporary removals of candidates Dimitri Lascaris & Meryam Haddad, both of whom identify as eco-socialists, by the federal council during this year’s leadership race, and accused the federal establishment of attempting to “cancel” the party’s internal democracy by denying it’s members their chance to vote on his leadership themselves in a review scheduled for this December.

The party executive says they believe such a vote would be “more divisive than unifying” and also cast doubt on the integrity of the voting process in that scenario, as they say the methods for verifying the status of members authorized to vote are “vague & uncertain”. Vincent J. Carbonneau, a member of the executive who has supported Tyrrell in the past, but was a signatory to the letter, told Le Devoir that it is “difficult to verify who is a member, we do not have a database”

Tyrrell has likened these claims to those of US President Donald Trump in regards to the use of mail-in ballots for that country’s Presidential election. “They are using a tactic from Donald Trump’s playbook to discredit the party’s internal democracy” he added. “both seek to circumvent democracy and impose their agenda”.

He also says that members of the executive have attempted to intimidate him into resigning before a vote, including one unnamed individual who he claims told him it would be in his “best interest” to resign, and that he and his “collaborators” would “smear” him in the media if he did otherwise.

Tyrrell says he is proud of his work as leader of the Quebec Greens and that “the Green Party of Quebec has the right to develop it’s own platform & values rather than abiding by a centrist party line developed and imposed by federal outsiders”.

Alex Tyrrell was first elected as leader of the Quebec Greens in 2013, still a student at Concordia University, as he positioned the party as a strong left-wing, federalist alternative to the mainstream of Quebec Politics. His first election saw the party’s vote share nearly halved, while his second saw it increase somewhat, from 0.55% to 1.69%, the highest in the previous 3 election cycles, and 4th highest in total. The number of candidates also increased, the 2nd largest in the party’s 35-year history