KITCHENER, Ont. — There was a second in 2023 when it appeared attainable the person who had turn out to be virtually synonymous with the Inexperienced Get together of Ontario would possibly go away it behind.
The Ontario Liberals, recent off one other disappointing election outcome the earlier yr, have been looking for a brand new chief and a bunch of them thought that they had their decide in Mike Schreiner.
Schreiner, who by then had been chief of the Greens for properly over a decade and cultivated a repute as a principled politician able to reaching throughout celebration traces, gave it consideration.
If he may win the Liberal management – certainly not a assure – it will have given him a bigger platform to ship his message, to not point out the assets and relevance of a once-formidable political machine that held energy for 15 straight years till the Liberals’ crushing defeat within the 2018 election.
It may have been an enormous boon for Schreiner.
“However I am not motivated by what’s good for Mike Schreiner,” he mentioned in a current interview.
“It isn’t about me. It is in regards to the motion I am making an attempt to construct.”
For those who ask Schreiner, who has been main the Greens since 2009, the motion has momentum. However after greater than 15 years of Schreiner on the helm, a query the celebration faces is whether or not it might probably translate that momentum into seats in a common election.
David Coletto, a number one Canadian pollster, referred to as the problem “daunting.”
The Greens, he famous, are a small celebration lengthy tied to local weather change and surroundings, at a time when affordability and housing have dominated the marketing campaign. Solely about one in 10 survey respondents listed local weather and surroundings as a top-three election situation, in response to current outcomes from his agency, Abacus Information.
“The problem for Mike Schreiner and the Greens is to place themselves as related within the debates that we’re having whereas on the identical time … discovering one or two ridings the place they can make some positive factors and decide up one other seat right here or there,” mentioned Coletto, the founder and CEO of Abacus Information.
It is an perception Schreiner has seemingly taken to coronary heart.
When requested what points he thought may assist the Greens stand out within the election, he first talked about the crises of affordability and housing, then well being care and schooling – and at last, nature safety.
To that time, one of many celebration’s first marketing campaign bulletins was unveiling a housing plan that features eradicating the land-transfer tax for first-time homebuyers and permitting fourplexes proper throughout the province.
However Schreiner suggests it will be misguided to discuss local weather and the surroundings as separate points from the others. In reality, he says over his 15-year tenure, one of many classes he is realized is to discuss them as intrinsically linked, particularly with affordability.
“We wish to make it clear to those who now we have options on a variety of points, along with being the celebration that may tackle the local weather disaster in a means that makes our life extra reasonably priced, it makes our economic system stronger,” he mentioned.
Schreiner mentioned his personal management has been styled, partly, on the hope-over-fear message of former U.S. president Barack Obama and the populism of Tommy Douglas, the previous federal NDP chief generally known as an architect of common well being care.
“I grew up on the Prairies myself, and I felt like he was addressing the No. 1 situation of his time, which was well being care. And I really feel like I am addressing the No. 1 situation of our time, which is ensuring we tackle a local weather disaster and have a livable future,” Schreiner mentioned.
Born in a tiny Kansas neighborhood to a farmer and a college instructor, Schreiner moved to Canada together with his spouse in 1995 and ran a number of native meals companies in Guelph, Ont., and helped begin a non-profit centered on selling sustainable meals practices. He obtained concerned within the Inexperienced celebration within the mid-2000s and later co-chaired the 2007 election platform committee and served because the celebration’s coverage co-ordinator earlier than he was acclaimed as chief.
His flip to elected politics was unsurprising to Lori Stahlbrand, his longtime good friend and former accomplice within the non-profit Native Meals Plus.
“He believes within the course of; he believes within the potential. He believes that we are able to really make constructive change in society via these democratic processes,” mentioned Stahlbrand, a professor and meals coverage analyst.
“We want individuals like Mike to be making the choice to enter politics, people who find themselves individuals of integrity and who actually have a imaginative and prescient for the province and who care a lot.”
For almost the primary decade on the celebration’s helm, Schreiner sat within the legislature with vacationers and college teams, up within the public gallery.
In 2018, he broke via and gained the celebration’s first seat in his residence driving of Guelph. He gained re-election in 2022 after which obtained firm at Queen’s Park in 2023, when Aislinn Clancy gained the Greens’ second seat in a Kitchener Centre byelection.
Beneath Schreiner, the celebration has slowly constructed up its share of the favored vote however has by no means cracked the eight-per-cent mark they hit in 2007.
In that election, Schreiner’s predecessor garnered headlines for the celebration’s stance on unifying the general public and Catholic college boards. However the situation is not thought-about a precedence for the celebration and the platform as a substitute seems to be to spice up per-student funding to make up for ranges they counsel haven’t stored up with inflation.
Schreiner, in the meantime, has made a degree of chatting with rural ridings he clams have been “deserted” by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative authorities. In making his case, he typically cites how a lot the province must spend to construct a personal spa at Ontario Place or to tear up main bike lanes in Toronto, as Ford has pledged.
Like NDP Chief Marit Stiles and Liberal Chief Bonnie Crombie, Schreiner has additionally been extremely vital of Ford’s since-reversed transfer to open protected Greenbelt lands for housing growth.
But, the Greens are enjoying with a special set of election goalposts than the opposite main events. Schreiner would contemplate it a victory if the celebration is ready to get even another seat added to its two-person Queen’s Park caucus.
The Greens have their eyes on just a few choose ridings on the outskirts of the Better Toronto Space and past. They’re hopeful longtime candidate Matt Richter can pull off a victory in Parry Sound-Muskoka, a driving he narrowly misplaced in 2022, and have additionally centered their vitality on Durham-Caledon, the place they’ve carried out comparatively properly prior to now. They’re additionally Wellington-Halton Hills, a race with no incumbent.
“We construct from the underside up, and that is what individuals energy seems to be like, and that is what it is going to take to implement the sorts of coverage modifications we’d like in Ontario to place individuals over income and to construct a fairer province,” he mentioned.
“I feel individuals on this nation are getting sick of leader-centric politics.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Feb. 8, 2025.
Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press
