There's a federal Green leadership race?

If the candidates can hit their fundraising and new member signup requirements, it will be former MP Mike Morrice vs. long-time party organizer Nira Dookeran.

Former MP Mike Morrice and Green organizer Nira Dookeran are running for the Green Party of Canada leadership.

With everything else happening, I had forgotten that Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May committed in August 2025 to step down as the face of the party once her successor is elected.

My memory was jogged during Wednesday’s early morning perusal of the news, when I saw that former Kitchener Centre Green MP Mike Morrice launched his leadership bid.

Morrice represented half of the federal Green caucus from 2021 to 2025, when he lost by 375 votes to Conservative Kelly DeRidder. He’s already secured the federal nomination for his former riding for the next election.

Don’t expect a coronation. Ottawa-based Nira Dookeran, who has organized for the party and ran as a federal and Ontario provincial candidate over the past 12 years, is running too.

If both candidates can raise at least $15,000 and sign up at least 200 new members, including 50 Young Greens, by Sept. 30, they will be on the ballot.

A peculiar quirk of federal Green Party races is the inclusion of a none of the above option, providing the potential for a candidate’s especially humiliating defeat.

The last time May stepped aside for a new leader, things didn’t go so well, with Annamie Paul’s tenure lasting little more than a year before May returned.

And the most recent election was as unkind to the Greens as it was to the NDP, who are engaged in a rebuilding process of its own that I’ve been documenting somewhat extensively.

I figured I’d reach out to each Green leadership candidate to allow them to make the case for why they should be the next Green leader and how the party can return to electoral relevance.

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At this early point in the leadership race, the differences between the candidates appear to be more of emphasis than policy.

Dookeran, who doesn’t yet have a leadership platform or website, is focused on renewing internal party structures to make them more democratic, arguing that the party must “go back to its roots” to expand its support.

When the Canadian Green Party was founded in 1983, one of its key commitments was to “promote citizen involvement in decision-making.”

“That's one of the significant ways in which the Green Party does politics differently,” Dookeran told this newsletter. “It's great on paper, and we have tried mightily over 43 years, but there are forces that have led us off that track. We need to get back to that because that's where our power is, that's where our uniqueness is.”

She added that she’s spent the past several years working to empower local electoral district associations (EDAs) “to rebuild and power our party from the ground up” through an organization dubbed EDA Empowerment.

Its signature achievement has been the circulation of a petition calling on Canada to establish a national carbon budget to reach an accelerated goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, rather than 2050, and report annually on its progress.

This process served the dual purpose of both educating the party grassroots about how the parliamentary petition process works while mobilizing it to obtain signatures.

“The skills we're using on the petition project are the same transferable skills that we need during any election readiness period, so it’s building capacity on the ground,” explained Dookeran.

As of writing, the petition has 964 paper and 1,112 digital signatures, well above the thresholds of 25 and 500, respectively.

Dookeran emphasized that she has “great respect” for Morrice, but doesn’t necessarily see him as a grassroots movement builder.

“I know what work we need to do. I've been doing it. I'll continue doing it in the position of leader. I'll be able to do it with more alacrity, with more clout, with more influence, more streamlined, and we'll get it done faster and be ready to be an electable alternative for the Canadian public,” she said.

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Unsurprisingly, Morrice is highlighting his experience in the House of Commons as an asset, particularly the opportunity he had “to build relationships with MPs in all parties that generate these results that help folks in my community.”

He cited a series of amendments to the Liberals’ Canada Disability Benefit, chief among them that it be indexed to inflation, which received support across party divisions in the House of Commons, as an achievement he’s particularly proud of.

Dookeran credited Morrice for this particular accomplishment; Morrice, for his part, said he “absolutely” agrees with Dookeran’s efforts to empower EDAs, although conceded that he hasn’t yet had time to examine her proposal in detail.

Both candidates also expressed admiration for U.K. Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who was polling neck-and-neck with the ruling Labour Party earlier this year until Labour replaced Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham as prime minister.

When I pointed to the diminishing electoral prospects of the federal Greens from its three seats and 6.5% of the popular vote in the 2019 election to one seat and 1.2% of the popular vote in 2025, Morrice pivoted to provincial Green parties’ recent strings of success across Canada.

These include the 2018 election of Mike Schreiner as the first Green MPP in Ontario and Aislinn Clancy as the second in a 2023 byelection, climate activist Emily Lowan’s insurgent campaign to become B.C. Green leader last year, and recent polling showing the P.E.I. Green Official Opposition potentially forming government in October’s election.

“Greens are connecting with folks here in Canada and other jurisdictions around the world,” said Morrice. “It's a moment where I really hope we can be working in lockstep with provincial parties with whom we share the same values.”

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Both Dookeran and Morrice are emphasizing economic inequality and its role in fuelling climate catastrophe.

Dookeran’s Green Party website bio reads in part:

At a time when forests are burning, communities are facing dangerous heat, and waterways are being polluted, Canada needs a Green Party willing to confront corporate power when private profit comes at the expense of people, communities, and the planet.

In our interview, Morrice spoke of halting the “wealth transfer that exists from regular folks to the billionaire class” as a means of addressing the “crises that we face,” including climate and housing.

These both sound much like recently elected federal NDP leader Avi Lewis’s messaging.

How Avi Lewis Won a Convincing NDP Leadership Victory

Dookeran, however, expresses skepticism that the climate-friendly politics Lewis advocates can be accomplished within the NDP’s confines, arguing that the New Democrats are as beholden to corporate interests as the Liberals or Conservatives.

“Big union organizing is a corporate interest,” she explained. “I'd like to see how he's going to implement some of the things he's talking about implementing and keep his labour base. I don't think it's possible.”

Morrice is more interested in making “common cause” with Lewis, pointing towards his own platform plank calling for “good faith engagement with other progressive parties in the interest of securing electoral cooperation until we have proportional representation.”

Echoing Lewis, Morrice added that if a Morrice-led Greens held the balance of power in a minority Parliament, its sole demand would be for the government to adopt proportional representation.

(I’m not convinced that’s a wise strategy for either Lewis or Morrice, but that’s a topic for a separate newsletter.)

“That is about ensuring that we are in service of the issues and not just planting party flags in a system of first-past-the-post, which is designed to encourage just that,” said Morrice.

The deadline to sign up as a Green party member and participate in the leadership election is Oct. 14. Voting occurs Nov. 2 to 13.