KITCHENER, Ont. — There was a second in 2023 when it appeared doable the person who had change into virtually synonymous with the Inexperienced Social gathering of Ontario may go away it behind.
KITCHENER, Ont. — There was a second in 2023 when it appeared doable the person who had change into virtually synonymous with the Inexperienced Social gathering of Ontario may go away it behind.
The Ontario Liberals, contemporary off one other disappointing election outcome the earlier 12 months, had been trying to find 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 nicely over a decade and cultivated a fame as a principled politician able to reaching throughout social gathering strains, gave it consideration.
If he might win the Liberal management – in no way a assure – it could 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 might have been an enormous boon for Schreiner.
“However I am not motivated by what’s good for Mike Schreiner,” he stated in a latest interview.
“It isn’t about me. It is in regards to the motion I am attempting to construct.”
In the event you 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 social gathering faces is whether or not it could actually translate that momentum into seats in a normal election.
David Coletto, a number one Canadian pollster, known as the problem “daunting.”
The Greens, he famous, are a small social gathering lengthy tied to local weather change and atmosphere, at a time when affordability and housing have dominated the marketing campaign. Solely about one in 10 survey respondents listed local weather and atmosphere as a top-three election subject, in line with latest 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 similar time … discovering one or two ridings the place they are able to make some features and decide up one other seat right here or there,” stated 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 might assist the Greens stand out within the election, he first talked about the crises of affordability and housing, then well being care and training – and eventually, nature safety.
To that time, one of many social gathering’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 could be misguided to talk about local weather and the atmosphere as separate points from the others. In truth, he says over his 15-year tenure, one of many classes he is realized is to talk about them as intrinsically linked, particularly with affordability.
“We need to make it clear to those that now we have options on a variety of points, along with being the social gathering that may deal with the local weather disaster in a manner that makes our life extra reasonably priced, it makes our financial system stronger,” he stated.
Schreiner stated 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 often called an architect of common well being care.
“I grew up on the Prairies myself, and I felt like he was addressing the No. 1 subject of his time, which was well being care. And I really feel like I am addressing the No. 1 subject of our time, which is ensuring we deal with a local weather disaster and have a livable future,” Schreiner stated.
Born in a tiny Kansas group to a farmer and a faculty 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 targeted on selling sustainable meals practices. He bought concerned within the Inexperienced social gathering within the mid-2000s and later co-chaired the 2007 election platform committee and served because the social gathering’s coverage co-ordinator earlier than he was acclaimed as chief.
His flip to elected politics was unsurprising to Lori Stahlbrand, his longtime buddy and former associate 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 truly make constructive change in society by means of these democratic processes,” stated Stahlbrand, a professor and meals coverage analyst.
“We’d like folks like Mike to be making the choice to enter politics, people who find themselves folks of integrity and who actually have a imaginative and prescient for the province and who care a lot.”
For practically the primary decade on the social gathering’s helm, Schreiner sat within the legislature with vacationers and faculty teams, up within the public gallery.
In 2018, he broke by means of and gained the social gathering’s first seat in his house using of Guelph. He gained re-election in 2022 after which bought firm at Queen’s Park in 2023, when Aislinn Clancy gained the Greens’ second seat in a Kitchener Centre byelection.
Beneath Schreiner, the social gathering 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 social gathering’s stance on unifying the general public and Catholic faculty boards. However the subject is now not thought-about a precedence for the social gathering and the platform as an alternative seems to spice up per-student funding to make up for ranges they recommend haven’t saved up with inflation.
Schreiner, in the meantime, has made a degree of talking to rural ridings he clams have been “deserted” by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative authorities. In making his case, he usually cites how a lot the province must spend to construct a non-public 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 important of Ford’s since-reversed transfer to open protected Greenbelt lands for housing improvement.
But, the Greens are enjoying with a unique set of election goalposts than the opposite main events. Schreiner would take into account it a victory if the social gathering is ready to get even yet another seat added to its two-person Queen’s Park caucus.
The Greens have their eyes on a couple of 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 using he narrowly misplaced in 2022, and have additionally targeted their vitality on Durham-Caledon, the place they’ve carried out comparatively nicely previously. They’re additionally taking a look at Wellington-Halton Hills, a race with no incumbent.
“We construct from the underside up, and that is what folks energy seems like, and that is what it’ll take to implement the sorts of coverage modifications we want in Ontario to place folks over earnings and to construct a fairer province,” he stated.
“I feel folks on this nation are getting sick of leader-centric politics.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Feb. 8, 2025.
Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press
