In 2006, there was a lot of momentum on tackling the climate crisis: Elizabeth May won the leadership promising to make electoral gains, An Inconvenient Truth was a critical and commercial movie hit, and even The Guardian noted it was “the year the world woke up” to the climate action, and then… Well, progress stalled. Now, 20 years later, the Greens are looking for a leader again, but in this political climate can the Greens still make gains?

After 13 years as leader, May announced her retirement in 2019, and the next year, after eight rounds of voting, Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul took over. Without re-litigating what happened next, let’s just say that there was a lot of internal strife in the party, and Paul quit. May returned to the leadership in 2021, and then tried a co-leadership arrangement with Jonathan Pedneault, but that too hit a snag when Pedneault finished fifth in Outremont in 2025.

But Pedneault wasn’t the only one to have a disappointing election night in 2025. Up the road in Kitchener Centre, Mike Morrice lost re-election as MP by a startlingly slim 375 votes. Morrice decided that he was too close to give up and pledged to run again in the next federal election but then he decided to take on a new opportunity: running for leader. Whether its with Morrice in the head office or not, can the Green Party regain their lost momentum?

Mike Morrice will join us this edition of the podcast to talk about the hard lessons learned from his election loss, and why he wants to be the leader of the Green Party beyond slogans. He will also talk about how the Greens won and lost confidence over the last 20 years, how the time may be ripe for a resurgence and how politicians can overcome voter cynicism to believe that change is possible. And finally, he will discuss why he will remain bound to the Kitchener area if ends up becoming party leader.

So let’s talk about what it takes to lead a federal party on this week’s Guelph Politicast!

You can follow Morrice on Instagram, check out his Kitchener Centre campaign website here, and you can learn more about his bid to lead the Green Party here. The Green Party leadership campaign is now underway, and you learn about Morrice and the other candidate Nira Dookeran and get important dates at the Green Party of Canada website. The new Green leader will be announced after the close of voting on November 14.

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Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Photo courtesy of Facebook/Morrice for Kitchener Centre.