Green Party leader Elizabeth May took jabs at the NDP Friday night as she defended her party’s record on issues of racism and discrimination at a Toronto townhall.

Hosted by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), May spoke on a range of issues from climate change to job creation, but was repeatedly asked about her party’s track record on racism and Islamophobia. May repeated throughout the night that “no racist is welcomed in the Green Party. Period” after being grilled about her party’s record.


May specifically indicated her opposition to Quebec’s ban on religious symbols for public servants but said that she won’t insist that other Green candidates agree with her. NCCM said in a press release Monday that they find her unwillingness to stop candidates from supporting the ban to be “unacceptable.”

The Green Party got its second seat in parliament this May with a by-election win in B.C. It also holds seats in several provincial legislatures and has surged to over 10 percent in national polls. This recent success has also attracted closer attention and scrutiny of the party and its candidates.

When asked to respond to New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh’s criticism of her party for taking in NDP defectors from New Brunswick (at least one of whom implied that much of the province may not want to vote for a turban-wearing Indian man), May said that,

“The real reason they left their party is because they tried without success to get their leader to come visit them.”

“Singh has been NDP leader for two years and never set foot in New Brunswick,” May said.

“I didn’t recruit them the members who left, I never spoke to them, they organized themselves.”

Jonathan Richardson, a former senior NDP member who defected, told the National Post that many in New Brunswick may be uncomfortable voting for a non-white party leader who wears a turban. May said Richarson’s comments were taken out of context.


“Someone in the media asked him whether he thought racism was a factor and he quite honestly said that—‘Yes, sometimes, going door-to-door, I find some people who’re unprepared’—obviously I condemn any attitudes of that kind, and Mr. Richardson would as well,” May said. “There’s no evidence that those attitudes were a motivation for him to leave the New Democrats, far from it.”

She said that she found it “baffling” that the episode has become “an issue at all.”

“I think the NDP should be very proud to have the first visible minority, I think it’s terrific for our democracy,” she said. “But he might not have been elected in Burnaby if we hadn’t decided, voluntarily, to not run a candidate against him.”

May made sure to denounce all forms of discrimination throughout the night and pointed out that her party has rejected not just aspiring candidates, but also those who wanted to be members of the Greens but have displayed any racist attitudes in the past.

But the conversation grew contentious when NCCM executive director Mustafa Farooq asked May to respond to Quebec MP Pierre Nantel—another prominent former NDP member to have recently joined the Greens—saying that Singh’s turban is “incompatible” with what Quebeckers want.

“I’m going to defend Pierre here, he’s not a racist, and the NDP had no problem with him whatsoever until he started talking to us,” May said, referring to the fact that Nantel was booted from the NDP last month after secretly meeting with her.


May emphasized that Nantel and the Greens are against the Quebec government’s bill banning public servants from wearing religious symbols on the job.

“As leader of the Green Party, I have no powers to tell my MPs to vote with me, nor do I have any powers to tell them what to say, the only thing I can insist on is that we share the same core values, and respect for diversity is a core Green Party value,” she said.

“You either stand on the side of minority communities on this issue or you don’t,” said Farooq, “No amount of wordsmithing will get you out of that.”

Pierre Nantel isn’t the first Green Party candidate in Quebec to get in trouble for comments around race and discrimination.

Luc Saint-Hilaire, the Green candidate for Lévis-Lotbinière, resigned last month after posting on Facebook that the leader of the Quebec City mosque that was attacked in 2017 showed hypocrisy for not condemning a man who set his wife on fire.