| Green Party of Quebec Parti vert du Québec |
|
|---|---|
| Leader | Claude Sabourin |
| President | Paul-André Martineau |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Headquarters | Montreal, Quebec |
| Ideology | Green |
| Official colours | Green |
| Seats in the National Assembly |
0 / 125
|
| Website | |
| pvq.qc.ca/en | |
| Politics of Quebec Political parties Elections |
|
The Parti vert du Québec/Green Party of Quebec or PVQ is a Quebec political party whose platform is the promotion of green values. It has not elected any members to the National Assembly of Quebec. It has received between 2% and 4% of the popular vote in Quebec elections since 2007.
Contents |
A first version of the Green Party of Québec was founded in the 1980s and had candidates in the 1985, 1989 and 1994 Quebec general elections. The 1989 elections results were at the time the strongest showing for any Green Party in Canada. On average, candidates collected 5.55% of votes in contested seats.[1] Although the party had a small budget, it attempted to run a province-wide campaign with organizers from Montreal, Québec City and Sherbrooke, as well as some relatively independent local campaigns in rural ridings. Many meetings were held at Le Commensal restaurant in Montréal, a strong supporter. Attempts were made to involve the various environmental groups, but most shied away from officially supporting the PVQ in order to maintain political neutrality and protect financial interests. In the party structure of 1989, sovereignty and economical neutrality were promoted rather than left-wing policies, under the slogan of "not left or right but forward". This caused some strife within the party, as many members were more left-leaning.
The party disintegrated in 1994 due to its leader, Jean Ouimet, and many of his colleagues leaving for the Parti Québécois. Ouimet, a strong sovereigntist, maintained a party wholly independent of the federal Green Party during his leadership. Members of the Green Party of Canada formed an organization called the Green Party of Canada in Quebec, a predominantly anglophone entity that nominated federal candidates only. There was open antipathy between Ouimet and the GPCQ's leader, Rolf Bramann. (Neither was affiliated with Montreal's municipal Green Party of the time, Écologie-Montreal, led by Dmitri Roussopolis.) At the same time as the PVQ began to collapse due to Ouimet's departure, Rolf Bramann was removed from his position. This led to a precipitous decline in federal organization in the province contemporaneous with the collapse of the provincial Greens.
It lost its recognition as an official political party in 1998 when it ran no candidates in the 1998 Quebec general election. (Quebec law at the time required parties to run at least 20 candidates to maintain their official status. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled minimum candidate laws unconstitutional in 2003.)
The second (and current) version of the PVQ was founded in 2001 by members of the Green Party of Canada in Quebec after receiving more support in Quebec in the 2000 federal election than they had expected. The founding meeting, in the basement of the Montreal Biodome, was attended by about 20 people, and it contested the 2003 provincial election with few candidates and almost no money.
In 2002, three leftist political parties (Rassemblement pour l'alternative progressiste, Parti de la démocratie socialiste and Parti Communiste du Québec) merged to form the Union des forces progressistes. The PVQ pledged to try to avoid running candidates in ridings where there was a UFP candidate, although it reserved the right to run anywhere it wanted to (even ridings with a UFP candidate), and did not merge with the UFP. In May 2006, the Party pledged to stay independent after several appeals to join Québec solidaire, the UFP's successor.
Scott McKay was elected as party leader in 2006. The party had its most successful showing ever in the 2007 Quebec general elections, placing 4th with just under 4% of the popular vote. Unlike the previous version of the party, the new version did not adopt a position on whether Quebec should become sovereign. As a result, it was most competitive in western Montreal where there was a drop in Liberal Party support but little enthusiasm for sovereigntist alternatives such as the Parti Québécois. The Green Party placed second or third in the popular vote in some western Montreal ridings. In 2008, the PVQ held a leadership review, during which Guy Rainville defeated Scott McKay. McKay then joined the Parti Québécois and was elected as an MNA in the 2008 election, while the Green Party itself fell to 2% of the popular vote, fifth place among political parties and the only one of the top five parties not to win a seat in the National Assembly.
On September 10, 2010, Rainville announced that he would not seek another 2-year term as leader.[2] Claude Sabourin narrowly defeated party president Paul-André Martineau for the position.[3]
Party did not exist between 1998 and 2001.
| General election | # of candidates | # of elected candidates | % of popular vote | # of votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | 10 | 0 | 0.14% | 4,613 |
| 1989 | 46 | 0 | 1.99% | 67,675 |
| 1994 | 11 | 0 | 0.14% | 5,499 |
| 1998 | The party was dissolved. | |||
| 2003 | 36 | 0 | 0.44% | 16,975 |
| 2007 | 108 | 0 | 3.85% | 152,885 |
| 2008 | 80 | 0 | 2.18% | 70,685 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||