Research:
In the summer of 2018 Canadian history was made in Guelph Ontario when Mike Schreiner became the first ever Green MPP to be elected. Taking 45% of the vote, Schreiner’s win marked the first time that four different parties were elected to the Ontario Legislature since 1951. While this was not the first victory for the Green Party in Canada, it was the first breakthrough for the provincial Green party in Ontario. This project is primarily an exploration into the Ontario Green party that aims to discover why and how the party was so successful in Guelph in the 2018 provincial election.
Within the context of the current global discussion on climate change, Canada’s political response to the ongoing climate crisis effects how our country is perceived on the international stage. Canada’s historical and contemporary position as an energy extraction state is key to the nation’s identity and economy, influencing its political decisions. Canada’s location is also uniquely precarious in that it both disproportionality contributes to, and suffers from, the consequences of global warming, and this tension is observable in current political discourse. Therefore, an examination of environmental concern in Canada as reflected in voter support for the Green Party of Canada is overdue.
Therefore, my project begins this work through an analysis of academic articles mainly discussing climate change and Canadian political parties generally, as well as the regular publications of federal election summaries. From these sources, this paper compares themes of Green party emergence and success to the EU and Australasian literature – themes of post-modernism, the economy, voting systems, and to a lesser extent, party funding, party competition and environmental and social events – to analyze where the similarities and differences to Canada’s Green party lie. This discussion of the success and emergence of the federal Green party will be used to contextualize and contrast my main focus, which is the provincial Green victory in Guelph. Then I will narrow my focus once again, looking at the provincial Green party in Ontario, again tracing its history and election success. Finally, these political and historical contexts will set the stage for the focus of my research: Guelph, Ontario
This study therefore fills a gap in third party political research in Canada, as historically, the parties examined have largely been the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois. This study also makes additions to important conversations surrounding Canada and the rise of concern at home and abroad about the issue of global climate change.
Bio:
Evangeline Kroon is a PhD candidate in political science at York University specializing in women in politics and Canadian politics. Her current research centers on political expressions of climate anxiety with a focus on the federal and provincial Green party in Canada. Previously she has published on narratives of female violence in post-apocalyptic pop culture, and this research interest has remains relevant in her current research as she examines our understandings of future-oriented imaginaries through the lens of climate crises. This research also blends seamlessly with her personal love of nature, quest for ecological sustainability and feminism. She lives and works and tries to keep plants alive in her apartment in Tkaronto, which has been care-taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat. It is now home to many First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities and she acknowledged the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.