Canada: Federal Green Reconnection Tour with Kuttner as Interim Leader

Dr. Kuttner is currently travelling across British-Colombia to promote the party’s platform and emphasize their cohesion.

Dr. Kuttner
Dr. Kuttner is travelling across British-Colombia to promote the party’s platform and emphasize their cohesion.

The Green Party of Canada’s interim leader Dr. Amita Kuttner spoke on Tuesday April 19th on Vancouver Island as part of the party’s ongoing event with party members called the Reconnection Tour.

“The whole point of this tour, as it is named, is to reconnect in more than one way — Greens connecting with their community, Greens connecting with each other, the party reconnecting with its members and re-solidifying ourselves and our work going into the future,” said Kuttner in an interview with Black Press Media before appearing in Sidney as part of the tour.

“I have been doing visioning exercises, thinking about what we want in the future” Kuttner added.

As an interim leader for six months, Kuttner won’t be able to run for the leadership itself – a contest unfolding against the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, climate change, and more.

“The root causes of pretty much every crisis are the same things,” said Kuttner. “It’s always important that we talk about the driving forces of the crises and colonialism and resource extraction are also behind the war in Ukraine.”

“The experience of a changing climate is spread out over a long enough period that the psychological experience is not the same” said Kuttner. “Because of that, the communication is harder … anything that shows up will always dominate news cycles.”

Kuttner’s tenure as interim leader follows a divisive period in the history of the federal Greens. Paul’s leadership was subject to multiple controversies, fundraising suffered immensely, and the party fell behind the People’s Party of Canada — a party questioning the science of global warming — in raw vote numbers during the last federal election. All raising questions about the ability of Greens to prevail in today’s political marketplace.

Kuttner acknowledged those aspects and expressed understanding of those concerns. “When a party doesn’t appear able to govern itself, how can it be trusted to govern the country? […] We are getting our own house in order to show that we do know how to function ourselves and treat each other well and therefore are worthy to be in government … the process itself is going well, albeit slowly.”

Ryan Dumont

Ryan (Tiohtià:ke/Montréal) is a political science student at Concordia University. His interests in green politics include healthcare reform, feminism, Indigenous affairs, homelessness, education, immigration, asylum-seekers and refugees, drug reform, workers' rights, and more.

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