Green Party deputy leader Jonathan Pedneault steps down for ‘personal reasons’ | CBC News

Green Party deputy leader Jonathan Pedneault has announced he is stepping down from his job for “personal reasons.”

Pedneault made the announcement on Tuesday in Ottawa, where he said he will provide no further comments on his decision.

“It’s been the honour of a lifetime to serve alongside Elizabeth May and Mike Morris, two outstanding members of Parliament who dedicate their every waking hours to Canadians in a way that, sadly, partisan politics today in Ottawa doesn’t quite exemplify,” he said.

Pedneault worked as a journalist and an activist, including with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in conflict zones around the world before entering politics.

He said his decision to step down has been in the works for “several weeks” and it is “very likely” he will return to his previous work abroad now that he is free from his responsibilities to the party.   

Pedneault and Leader Elizabeth May replaced Annamie Paul, who stepped down in 2021 after serving as leader of the party for just over a year.

Pedneault won the leadership of the party in the fall of 2022 on a co-leadership ticket with May, who had previously served as party leader from 2006 to 2019. 

Since then, Pedneault has served as the party’s deputy leader, under May, pending efforts to amend the party’s constitution to allow for co-leadership. 

Pedneault ran for a seat in the House of Commons in a federal byelection in the Montreal riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount in June 2023. Liberal Anna Gainey won the contest, with almost 51 per cent of the vote. 

Pedneault finished fourth with 13.4 per cent of the vote, after the Conservatives, who finished third with 13.5 per cent, and the NDP, who finished second with 13.8 per cent. 

May to remain on as leader

On Tuesday, May said she intends to continue pressing her party from within to adopt a co-leadership structure. 

“We’ll see what happens at the special general meeting, we’ll see what model of co-leadership gets accepted or gets rejected,” May said. 

“It’s a process, and the Green Party system is night and day from the top-down structures that exist in other parties.” 

May said that the party has specifically asked her not to step down but to remain in her post to lead the party into the next federal election, where she said Green candidates will run for office in all ridings across the country. 

May, who is 70, suffered a hemorrhagic stroke a year ago. Despite that setback, she insists she is in “remarkably good health” and is “working longer hours than most people half my age could handle.”

May said it was heartbreaking to lose Pedneault but that she will answer her party’s call and stay on, because “the stakes are really big here.”

“Am I ready? Sure, of course,” she said. “I would be much, much happier if I was doing this with Jonathan, ’cause that was our plan all along, I wouldn’t have run for leadership if we hadn’t met.”

May passionately restated her determination to continue advocating for the environment, going so far as to use profanity to describe the current state of affairs.

“I feel very, very committed, as I think everybody my age should,” she said. “Baby boomers have f–ked this planet and we can’t walk away and leave it for our kids to fix it.”