Elizabeth May has never been one for understatement.
Just days after the Green Party of Canada marked her 71st birthday by declaring she was “born to make a difference”, the longtime leader took part in a religious ceremony blessing a small rooftop solar installation at her home parish in Sidney, British Columbia.
“Overjoyed to attend the blessing of the new solar panel installation at my home parish, St. Andrew Anglican Church in Sidney!” she wrote on social media. “It was a pleasure to hear the blessing from the Right Rev. Anna Greenwood-Lee… This project is a significant step towards sustainability for St. Andrew’s and our community!”
The system is expected to save the church about $3k annually on its BC Hydro bill.
For May, it seems, this modest energy-saving measure deserves not just congratulations—but divine sanctification. And if the solar panels were the holy objects, then Elizabeth May was the self-anointed saint.
The solar blessing came just days after her party posted a hagiographic tribute marking her 71st birthday. “Elizabeth was born to make a difference,” the statement declared, recounting a tale in which nine-year-old Elizabeth sits beside her mother at a Washington press conference in 1958 to oppose nuclear testing.
“By 1963,” it continues, “the Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban treaty was in force.”
The implication? Little Elizabeth May helped usher in an international arms control agreement before reaching high school.
The post reads more like scripture than a political biography, adopting a self-aggrandizing tone that frames her as a prophet rather than a leader. Alongside that miraculous achievement, May is credited with helping:
• Stopping acid rain
• Saving the ozone layer
• Ending clearcut logging of old growth
• Banning toxic chemicals like Agent Orange
But missing from the official birthday canon and her recent speeches in parliament is any mention of one of the most pressing moral crises of our time: the Israeli genocide on Gaza. While May has yet to use the word « Genocide » in Parlement to describe the situation in Gaza she dedicated her opening statement to the solar panels.
For months, as human rights groups, UN officials, and legal scholars rang alarm bells about war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Elizabeth May avoided using the word “genocide.” While thousands of Canadians marched in the streets demanding justice for Palestinians, May offered cautious, weakly worded and ambiguous statements.
It was only in June 2025, after years of mounting pressure, that she finally uttered the word genocide—long after the International Court of Justice had already concluded there was a plausible case that genocide was occurring. Even then, she shielded the Israeli state from direct accountability, casting blame in vague terms and sidestepping calls for meaningful action like sanctions.
The disconnect is staggering. A Green Party leader who once claimed the moral clarity to stop Agent Orange now struggles to clearly name genocide. A figure who boasts of confronting nuclear war as a child seems unable to confront apartheid, the NATO military alliance, U.S. imperialism or the arms manufactures as an elder. In fact, she is openly in favour of increased military spending.
Could May’s Religious Beliefs Be The Driving Force Behind Her Support For Israel?
Renowned author and activist Yves Engler and his research may offer part of the answer. In a recent episode of The Eco Mindset podcast hosted by Green Party of Quebec leader Alex Tyrrell, Engler traced the roots of Canada’s historic support for Israel back to Christian Zionism, a theology that predates even Jewish Zionist lobbying in Canada. As Engler explained, support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was, in Canada, originally “a Christian movement, not a Jewish movement” — rooted in biblical prophecy and imperial ideology.
“There’s this passive Christian Zionist ideology that was quite influential in Canada for many decades,” Engler noted, pointing to figures like Lester B. Pearson who learned more about “the Holy Land” in Sunday school than about Canada itself.
May, a lifelong Anglican and self-declared moral voice of Canada, regularly invokes her faith to frame environmental action and social justice. But that same religious tradition — the Anglican Church as a colonial institution of empire — also carries a theological legacy that casts the return of Jews to Palestine as a divine fulfillment, not a colonial injustice.
Could it be that May’s reluctance to take a stronger stance against Israeli apartheid and occupation stems not only from political calculation — but from a worldview shaped by Christian Zionist moral exceptionalism? Is her failure to demand sanctions or justice for Palestinians partly rooted in a belief that the Holy Land belongs to someone else?
