In a message circulated by the Strengthening Democracy Network, Green Party of Canada (GPC) International Secretary Alison Lam blamed the country’s First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system for the party’s disastrous 2025 federal election result — without acknowledging the deep unpopularity of the party’s recent pro-military shift.
Lam’s statement, framed for an international Green audience, portrayed the GPC as a victim of a structurally rigged system that rewards conformity and punishes authenticity.
“A flawed electoral system doesn’t just skew results, it rewires our understanding of what is considered to be democratic,” Lam wrote. “Voters become conditioned to believe that expressing their true preferences is naïve, that viable choices are limited to the two dominant parties, and that participation means picking the lesser evil. Politics becomes a game of avoidance, an institution of deception.”
She described the difficulties of gathering the 100 nomination signatures required to appear on the ballot, recounting distrust from voters and hostility toward third-party candidates.
“Repeatedly, I encountered open hostility and slammed doors,” she said, adding that “many voters only wanted two (if not one)” candidate on the ballot.
Lam argued that strategic voting distorted the election outcome, preventing many Canadians from supporting smaller parties like the Greens.
“I normally vote Green, and I would have loved to vote for you, but I needed to vote for X so that Y doesn’t form government,” she quoted one voter as saying.
While Lam made the case for proportional representation — praising Germany’s mixed-member proportional system and Australia’s ranked choice voting — she omitted any discussion of why so many former Green supporters abandoned the party this year.
The GPC retained only one seat and lost another by just 375 votes, but the reasons for this collapse extend far beyond Canada’s voting rules. Under Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault, the party embraced a militarist message unprecedented in its history, including calls for Arctic militarization, expanding Canada’s armed forces, and creating a massive national civil defence corps. These policies alienated long-time Green voters who had supported the party for its anti-war principles.
By framing the loss entirely as a product of electoral mechanics, Lam sidesteps the uncomfortable reality that the party’s radical shift from an anti-war movement to a pro-military platform was deeply unpopular with its base.
In the end, Lam’s letter offers no acknowledgment of the party’s own strategic and ideological missteps. The GPC establishment takes no responsibility for its collapse and shows no sign of looking inward.
