The Green Carr parks

Adrienne Carr has stepped down as leader of the BC Green Party. This page is somewhat, if Green Party supporters will pardon the expression, stumped as to how to summarize her tenure as the party's leader. Under Carr, the Greens moved from fringe party status to... fringe party status in the course of two elections.

In 2001, the Greens fed on the anti-NDP electoral bloodlust and bragged openly about replacing the New Democrats as the Official Opposition. The boast flew in the face of a campaign dynamic that already handed Gordon Campbell's Liberals a majority, leaving Carr to sounding almost identical to Campbell: "We trust business to do the right thing" she said about pay equity. "Get back to work" she implored striking nurses. She backed the Liberals on taking away teachers' right to strike, and she wanted it taken from Translink bus drivers too. At the time, this page shredded many copies of the Vancouver Sun in fury, as the pundits chimed about the Greens splitting the "left-wing" vote. Rather than supplanting the NDP as the Official opposition, the Greens' ended up seatless and the vote splitting left British Columbia with no
Official Opposition.

Carr did, however, set the tone for the political left in BC in the four years that followed. Her petition to force a referendum on mixed member proportional representation put the issue of electoral reform front and centre, and in hindsight it was the right model, especially concerned to the Byzantine BC-STV model drawn up by a dubiously representative "citizens Assembly" who were hand-held throughout the process by Liberal supporters. The electoral damage leveled by the Greens at the NDP forced New Democrats to look in the mirror and recognize that the votes against Howe Street could no longer be taken for granted.

To this end, New Democrats realigned their relationship with the Labour movement, giving a stronger voice to progressive unions like CUPE BC and muzzling the IWA: tuning out BC's largest forestry union bought the NDP credibility on environmental issues. After enduring the combative Glen Clark and the defeatist closet Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh, The NDP took another page from the Green playbook and elected a strong, articulate woman of their own as party leader in Carole James. The move to the centre attracted strong candidates like Jagrup Brar and Gregor Robertson. During the 2005 campaign, the NDP usurped the Greens anti-polarization stance with the the slogan "Because Everyone Matters".

Adrienne Carr said that she wanted to move BC politics closer to the centre. She punched above her political weight, and unfortunately for herself and her party, the result was to squeeze the Greens out as both the Liberals and the NDP moved to the centre themselves. In 2001, the Greens had split votes in six ridings which cost the NDP official party status. On election night in 2005, the Greens had been marginalized to the point that Carole James was six seats away from becoming Premier.