Elizabeth May

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This article is about the leader of the Green Party of Canada. For the Luxembourgian athlete, see Elizabeth May (athlete).
Elizabeth May in 2007.
Elizabeth May in 2007.

Elizabeth Evans May, LL.B, DHumL (h.c.), OC (born June 9, 1954) is the current leader of the Green Party of Canada. She is also an environmentalist, writer, activist and lawyer. She was the Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada from 1989 to 2006.

May lives in Ottawa, Ontario with her daughter, Victoria Cate May, born in 1991.

Contents

Background

May was born in Connecticut to affluent parents. Her mother was a prominent anti-nuclear activist and one of the original founders of the peace group SANE. May attended the prestigious Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. Her family moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1972.

Once in Cape Breton, her family suffered a reversal of fortune due directly to involvement in protest against an environmental abuse. May waited on tables for eleven years to put herself through university. She graduated from Dalhousie Law School in 1983. She began work as an environmental lawyer advising Tom McMillan, Brian Mulroney's Environment minister. She resigned from her post after learning of the government's plan to grant permits for the Rafferty-Alameda Dams in Saskatchewan without performing environmental assessments.[1]

May's family home is in Margaree Harbour, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia but she has lived in Ottawa since 1985. [1]

May is friends with Bill Clinton and is a supporter of the NGO Help Lesotho [2].

Sierra Club of Canada executive director

In 1989, May became the founding executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada.[2]

May sits on the boards of the International Institute of Sustainable Development and Prevent Cancer Now!. She is also a former vice-chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

In 2001, May went on a 17-day hunger strike to protest the government's failure to clean up the Sydney tar ponds in Cape Breton. As a result the Federal government pledged to relocate people living nearby to a safer location.[3]

After that, May was involved in lobbying Paul Martin, then Minister of Finance, claiming that she was instrumental in convincing him that GDP was not a viable measure of economic performance, a position Martin clearly advanced in public in Canada through 2003.[4]

When Martin became Prime Minister of Canada in late 2003, he was however circumspect on this point, and his replacement in Finance, Ralph Goodale, was concerned mostly to cut Canada's debt to GDP ratio, which was already the lowest in the world. May rallied and repeated her conversion feat, and by February 2005 Goodale announced "the greenest budget ever" with May at his side, representing the Green Budget Coalition.[5]

May was also involved in international lobbying. She said that the Montreal Action Plan (which came out of the 2005 UN Climate Change Conference) was "a set of agreements that may well save the planet". [6] She counts Bill Clinton, who attended the Montreal Conference in 2005 at her request, among her contacts; Clinton became acquainted with May and her parents (then living in Connecticut) while a student at Yale University in the 1960s. In his conference speech Clinton thanked May for inviting him to Montreal. Clinton's presence was instrumental in getting the US to agree to talks on climate change for the first time.

May resigned as the Sierra Club's executive director in April 2006, intending to step down that June. As one of her last major acts in this post she participated in a poll of experts that determined that Brian Mulroney was Canada's "greenest" Prime Minister for an award presented by Corporate Knights magazine, due in part to his influence over the US on acid rain. For her prominent role in this initiative, May took some criticism from leftist commentators and environmentalists. However, as Mulroney himself noted, she saw him as "the best of a bad bunch", and the timing of the event was calculated to pressure current Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper to improve his environmental policies in the spring 2006 federal budget. This was May's last public nonpartisan announcement.

Leader of Green Party of Canada

On May 9, 2006 May entered the Green Party of Canada's leadership race. [7] She announced her intent to make the Party "a force" and "would have influence" and "rock this country's politics in a way no other party ever has". She cited the "major planetary catastrophe" and "climate crisis" and the "crisis of democracy" as primary issues. "I find myself despairing when I see four men in suits engaging in a debate where nothing important is said… if the voters get to hear a whole bunch of really exciting new ideas, they might like them… instead of trying to do a calculation of who they hate the least." [8]

On August 26, 2006, May won the leadership election on the first ballot. She tallied 65.3% of the votes beating her main rival, David Chernushenko (33.3%) and Jim Fannon (0.88%). She said one of the main platforms for the next election would be to renegotiate NAFTA. She also said that she would insist on the party being represented on the televised debates.[9] At the time of her election as leader, May said she intended to run in the riding of Cape Breton-Canso in the next federal election, although she also said she would stand in a federal byelection if one occurred prior to the next general election.[10]

London North Centre by-election

In the fall of 2006, London North Centre Member of Parliament Joe Fontana announced he was resigning his seat to run for Mayor of London, Ontario. Prime Minister Stephen Harper scheduled a by-election for that seat on November 27, 2006, and May stood as the candidate for the Green Party. She shocked some analysts when she finished second to Glen Pearson of the Liberal Party, ahead of the Conservative and NDP candidates. May's showing in this by-election is by far the best result, percentage-wise, ever achieved by the Green Party of Canada. She received 9,864 votes, about 26% of the total votes cast.[11]

Stance on abortion

May has recently made controversial statements on the issue of abortion. Although Green Party policy is officially pro-choice, while speaking to the Sisters of St. Joseph during the London by-election, May stated that she personally sees the issue as a "moral dilemma" and not "clear-cut black-and-white". May, who is a Christian, further stated her personal views, "I'm against abortion. I don't think a woman has a frivolous right to choose". In the past, May reported, she has "talked women out of having abortions". She further stated, "I would never have an abortion myself, not in a million years. I can't imagine the circumstances that would ever induce me to it". However, on the other side of the issue, May believes that they must be legal and available, because "If we make them illegal, women will die".[12] Following reports of May's statements, prominent Canadian feminist Judy Rebick announced that she was withdrawing her previous support of May and the Green Party due to May's questioning "the most important victory of the women's movement of my generation". [13]

Responding to Judy Rebick’s open letter, Elizabeth May explicitly reaffirmed that she supported a woman's right to access a safe and legal abortion and that “I never said a woman's right to choose trivialized anything. Not ever.” To clarify the misunderstanding around the Green Party’s recently approved Pro-Choice/Pro-Life position, Elizabeth May further wrote “Some feminist scholars have pointed out that the slogan 'right to choose' focuses on too narrow a context. What are a woman's real rights in society? Where are our economic rights? While a woman must have the right to terminate a pregnancy, what of the larger context? What about the on-going struggle to create a truly equal relationship of sexual equality that might (would) help avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place? What about the responsibility of both sexual partners to avoid unwanted pregnancy (and while on the topic, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases that would be reduced through use of condoms)? I believe that respectful dialogue is possible even around such an emotionally charged issue as this. Not every opponent of legal abortions is unthinking. Neither is every supporter of legal abortion unwilling to acknowledge the moral complexity of the issue. Some common ground could be found, I believe, when the discussion shifts to a broader context”. [14]

40th Canadian federal election

On March 17, 2007, May announced that she will run in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, in the forthcoming federal election. [15] Central Nova is located on mainland Nova Scotia, rather than Cape Breton Island where May once lived. However, it is adjacent to the Cape Breton-Canso riding in which May previously expressed interest, and overlaps with the area covered by the former Cape Breton Highlands—Canso riding in which she ran in 1980 [16] as founder of the "Small Party", precurser to the Green Party of Canada. [17] It is currently held by Conservative Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. May has explained that she chose Central Nova to avoid running against a Liberal or NDP incumbent. [18] She acknowledged, however, that this would be a more difficult riding for her to win than others she had considered. [19] The Green Party received less than 2% of the vote in Central Nova in 2006. [20]

Electoral Record

Cape Breton Highlands—Canso federal election, 1980
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
     Liberal Allan J. MacEachen 18,262
     Progressive Conservative Bill Kelly 12,799
     New Democrat William J. Woodfine 4,902
     Independent Elizabeth May 272


London North Centre by-election, November 27, 2006
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
     Liberal Glen Pearson 13,287 34.85% -5.27%
     Green Elizabeth May 9,864 25.87% +20.38%
     Conservative Dianne Haskett 9,309 24.42% -5.48%
     New Democrat Megan Walker 5,388 14.13% -9.62%
Progressive Canadian Steven Hunter 145 0.38% -0.09%
     Independent Robert Ede 77 0.20% -
     Canadian Action Will Arlow 53 0.14% -
Total 38,123 100.00%

Honours and awards

Selected works

References

  1. ^ Interview with Elizabeth May, Sept. 1990
  2. ^ Library of Canada biography
  3. ^ Sierra Club news release on hunger strike
  4. ^ Green Party Leadership Debate, June 21, 2006
  5. ^ Liberal budget announcement, 2005
  6. ^ "Climate-change conference ends with key deals", CBC News, December 10, 2005.
  7. ^ Dennis Bueckert, "Veteran environmentalist ponders Green Party leadership run," Toronto Star, April 14, 2006
  8. ^ quotes from a CBC Radio One replay of her announcement on May 9, 2006.
  9. ^ "Renegotiate NAFTA, new Green party leader says" CBC News, August 26, 2006.
  10. ^ "New Green leader to try for a seat in Cape Breton," Canadian Press, August 27, 2006.
  11. ^ London North Centre 2006 byelection results from Elections Canada
  12. ^ David Akin, "Elizabeth May and abortion," CTV Politics Blog, December 11, 2006.
  13. ^ Judy Rebick, "Rebick withdraws any support for May", rabble.ca, December 20, 2006.
  14. ^ Elizabeth May, "Looking for Common Ground", rabble.ca, December 22, 2006.
  15. ^ CTV News. "Green Party leader to run against Peter MacKay", March 18, 2007..
  16. ^ Parliament of Canada, History of Federal Ridings
  17. ^ Green Party of Canada history article
  18. ^ Susan Delacourt, Taking on MacKay: Is it May madness? Toronto Star, March 19, 2007.
  19. ^ James Rusk, "May vs. MacKay," Globe and Mail May 19, 2007; See also "May tilts at wrong political windmill," Toronto Star, May 23, 2007 (editorial criticizing May's decision to run in Central Nova).
  20. ^ Central Nova 2006 general election results from CBC Canada Votes 2006.
  21. ^ Library of Canada biography
  22. ^ Mount Saint Vincent University honour roll
  23. ^ Renowned Environmental Leader To Speak At UNB's Renaissance College
  24. ^ UN Global 500 directory
  25. ^ Order of Canada citation

External links

Preceded by
Jim Harris		 Leader of the Green Party of Canada
2006-present		 Succeeded by
incumbent
Image:WikiThanks.png Leaders of the Green Party of Canada (edit):
Trevor Hancock | Seymour Trieger | Kathryn Cholette | Chris Lea | Wendy Priesnitz | Harry Garfinkle | Joan Russow | Chris Bradshaw | Jim Harris | Elizabeth May
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