For Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May, learning her party was no longer invited to the two leaders’ debates in the run-up to the 2025 federal election was a rude awakening.
May, speaking at a news conference Wednesday, said the Greens’ absence would lead to “skewed, unfair and undemocratic leaders’ debates starting with this evening’s.”
The Leaders’ Debates Commission rescinded its invitation to co-leader Jonathan Pedneault, saying the party did not meet the criteria for participation.
May was one of just two Greens in Parliament when it was dissolved, and the setback over the debates adds to the party’s challenges raising its profile, says political pollster and pundit Mario Canseco.
“It certainly makes things more complicated for the candidates who are trying to get their name out there and are knocking on doors and being told their leader or co-leader is not participating in debates,” he told CTV News Wednesday.
May, who became the first-ever elected Green Party MP in Canada in 2011, acknowledges she faces a tight race in her own riding of Saanich - Gulf Islands.
The co-leader’s internal polling suggests a narrowing lead of about four per cent over the Conservatives’ Cathie Ounsted.
Despite May’s popularity in the riding, and experience as a politician, this election has been widely framed as a tight, two-way race between the Liberals and Conservatives in the face of unprecedented threats from U.S. president Donald Trump – raising the spectre of strategic voting.
Voters have 12 days left to decide who they support. And it will be a choice they’ll make without seeing a Green Party leader on the debate stage.
