The Green Party of Canada officially launched its 2025 election campaign on Saturday with a press conference from co-leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault. Despite the gravity of global crises—including the ongoing genocide in Gaza—the Greens opted to focus their message almost entirely on fear of Donald Trump, militaristic rhetoric, and vague appeals to patriotism.
“Vote like your country depends on it. Vote like your planet depends on it. Vote like your future depends on it,” declared Elizabeth May, in one of several dramatic flourishes that echoed throughout the event.
This tone of emergency and existential crisis defined the launch—at times sounding more like a war briefing than a call for grassroots political action.
While the Greens touted their “Team Canada” message and promised to stand up to threats from the U.S., they offered no words for the Palestinian people or for the urgent calls from international human rights experts to impose sanctions on Israel. Elizabeth May, who has conspicuously avoided calling Israel’s actions a genocide, stayed silent on the issue yet again. The omission stands out sharply given that Green MP Mike Morrice and numerous provincial Green leaders—including Alex Tyrrell—have explicitly used the word.
“We will stand together against any threat…”
Instead, May focused on apocalyptic threats to Canada’s sovereignty and democracy. “Let’s have the highest voter turnout in the history of Canada. Take that, Trump. We’re a country. We vote. We’re proud citizens and we will stand together against any threat you can put to us,” she declared, invoking a kind of nationalist resistance rarely seen from the Greens.
Yet, for all the tough talk, the party conspicuously avoided challenging the Canadian government itself. Despite leading a campaign under the banner of urgency and truth-telling, neither May nor Pedneault explicitly criticized the Liberal government’s support for the Israeli military or its record on foreign policy more broadly even when it came to climate and environmental policy the pair shied away from directly criticizing Liberals. This is not a one-off; in a recent Arctic security press release, the Green Party praised Prime Minister Mark Carney’s missile detection investments while merely encouraging him not to “neglect climate action.” This also comes as Global Green News reported about Pedneault’s proximity to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals who he has previously campaigned with.
Missing: Gaza, Sanctions, and Systemic Critique
The Green Party’s silence on Gaza is not an oversight—it’s a choice. At a time when progressives around the world are demanding action and solidarity, May and Pedneault chose to frame the election around Trump, climate targets, and vague notions of democracy, leaving the most urgent humanitarian crisis of our time unmentioned.
The closest they came to foreign policy critique was a passing reference to the F-35 fighter jet deal which they want reevaluated and some boilerplate language about building up Canadian shipbuilding and Arctic defense capabilities—hardly a departure from militarized status quo thinking.
May proposed the creation of strategic reserves for Canadian natural resources and suggesting we “buy it all up, put it in a strategic reserve, and make sure that Canadian jobs and workers are protected.”
But for all their impassioned words, the co-leaders offered little in terms of clarity or coherence. Their rhetoric was sky-high, but their politics, especially around war and peace, remained muddled. As calls grow louder from progressives across the country—including from former federal leadership candidate and current Green Party of Quebec leader Alex Tyrrell—for the Green Party to take a stronger stance on Gaza by using the term genocide and calling for sanctions, the question remains: how long can May and Pedneault avoid the issue?
