Green Party of Prince Edward Island leadership candidate Hannah Bell has released a pointed and principled response to Premier Rob Lantz’s 2025 Speech from the Throne, positioning herself as the strongest voice ready to challenge the provincial government head-on if elected leader this June.
In her detailed critique, Bell accused the Lantz government of offering little more than “buzzwords and bureaucracy” while sidestepping the province’s most urgent challenges—affordable housing, health care staffing, climate action, and reconciliation.
“There is an overall significant lack of real action to help Islanders navigate these challenging times,” Bell wrote in her statement.
Far from offering vague opposition, Bell’s response outlines a clear, left-wing policy alternative that reflects Green values rooted in justice, equity, and public investment.
On housing, she delivered a forceful rebuke of the government’s track record. With only 69 public housing units completed in the last five years, Bell made it clear that Islanders can’t wait for targets—they need homes.
“We need literally hundreds of units of publicly-owned and operated housing, and we need them now,” she said.
She reiterated the Green Party’s longstanding support for the “Housing First” model—getting people into homes without bureaucratic hurdles or preconditions—and pointed out that this policy has been part of the party’s platform since 2019. While the Lantz government now echoes the language, Bell warned that details and real action remain absent.
Bell also drew attention to the government’s lack of urgency on health care, calling out the delayed establishment of a practice-ready assessment centre for internationally trained physicians—a basic step that every other Canadian province has already implemented.
“Is it any wonder our healthcare system is struggling to recruit and retain health care specialists?” she asked.
On climate, Bell criticized the government for pausing the province’s solar rebate program with no warning—a move that, she notes, jeopardizes hundreds of clean energy jobs and contradicts the throne speech’s vague commitments to renewable energy expansion. At the same time, she condemned the speech’s near-total silence on coastal erosion and climate adaptation, calling the lack of detail “glaring.”
Perhaps the most stinging section of Bell’s response came in her remarks on Indigenous reconciliation.
“It is glaringly obvious that First Nations were an afterthought in this throne speech,” she wrote, pointing to a single sentence tacked onto the end of the address and a complete absence of commitments to truth, reconciliation, or Indigenous-led solutions.
Bell’s statement reads less like a press release and more like the speech Islanders might have heard if the Greens were in opposition with a strong leader at the helm. It’s a signal to party members—and the public—that she is prepared not only to lead, but to lead with integrity, clarity, and courage.
With the Green Party of PEI heading toward a leadership vote on June 7, Bell is making the case that she offers more than credentials—she offers the political backbone to hold the government to account, and the vision to set a higher bar.
Global Green News will continue to cover the leadership race, including upcoming debates and campaign developments.
