Who wants to be the leader of the BC Green Party? Anyone? ... Anyone at all?
It’s a question now rippling through B.C. politics, after Green leader Sonia Furstenau resigned Tuesday and the party’s only two MLAs refused to take her job.
“I feel like I gave it everything I had, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished,” Furstenau said at a retirement event at a Victoria hotel.
“I’m very comfortable with moving back into private life.”
After seven years, Furstenau can leave politics with her head held high. Her strong debate performances as leader kept the Greens from being wiped off the electoral map in two elections. She saved the party from extinction more than once.
It wasn’t Furstenau’s job to figure out who should step up and lead the next generation of Greens. That should have fallen to the elected MLAs, Rob Botterell or Jeremy Valeriote. Except, apparently, neither is willing.
“Being a leader, the time commitment is not in the cards for me right now,” said Valeriote, the MLA for West Vancouver-Sea to Sky.
“I’m the house leader; 2025 and the next eight years is full for me, so I just won’t be seeking the leadership,” said Botterell, the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.
Furstenau tried to put the best spin possible on the situation, saying the next leader can be free to grow the party without having to worry about all that legislature stuff.
Technically, that’s true. You don’t have to be elected to lead a political party. It’s just, you won’t be much of a draw on the party fundraising circuit, you’ll struggle to get any public attention whatsoever, recruiting candidates will be a challenge, and nobody will take you seriously — including the New Democrats you are supposed to be partnering with in a co-operation deal.
Still, there’s another, even more worrying, possibility for the Greens: That the next party leader could be somebody the membership and its two reluctant MLAs don’t want at all.
To play out that scenario, we need only look at the last two leadership races involving major B.C. political parties, in which young, savvy outsiders appeared out of nowhere and upended the races by out-hustling traditional party organizers.
In 2022, the BC NDP scrambled to block climate activist Anjali Appadurai’s candidacy after her campaign of disenfranchised environmentalists reportedly signed up enough new members to mount a credible bid to defeat David Eby in the race. It was an embarrassment to the moribund Eby campaign.
Earlier that year, the BC Liberal party blocked the leadership candidacy of social media influencer Aaron Gunn, amidst worry a new wave of young federal Conservatives had the potential to tilt the party in an unwanted direction. Those folks left to resurrect the BC Conservatives — which went on to force the Liberals into extinction in under two years.
In both cases, motivated outsiders, barely affiliated with the existing party, used smart digital campaigns to mount hostile takeovers by flooding the zone with new members. Party officials had to frantically pull emergency levers, looking for opaque clauses in the race rules about values and organizational impropriety.
The Greens now face a similar risk in the vacuum created by Valeriote and Botterell’s refusal to run. What happens if the winning leader has policies that run contrary to the confidence deal the Greens signed with the NDP? What if they change positions on issues that Valeriote and Botterell were elected on? What if they set policies Valeriote and Botterell refuse to vote in line with at the legislature?
The easiest, most logical outcome would have been for Botterell or Valeriote to step up. Instead, the Greens will lurch into the unknown later this year. Leadership race rules will be released in February. The vote will be held in September.
“In the electoral system we have, it’s not easy being Green,” Furstenau said.
It’s about to get a lot harder.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 17 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
