Annamie Paul is first Black to lead a Canadian political party
October 7, 2020
For the first time ever, there’s a Black leader of a major federal political party in Canada.
Annamie Paul defeated seven other candidates on the final ballot who were seeking to replace Elizabeth May who stepped down last November after 13 years as the party’s leader.
“I stand upon the shoulders of Elizabeth May, Alexa McDonough, Audrey McLaughlin and Kim Campbell,” the lawyer, social entrepreneur and public policy analyst said in her acceptance speech. “I stand on the shoulders of Jean Augustine, David Lewis, Rosemary Brown and Viola Desmond and all of the people who opened the door so that one day I could walk through it.”
Paul is the daughter of Dominican-born Pan Africanist Peter Paul who died on May 29 and educator Ena Daniel Paul who migrated from Nevis and secured undergraduate, Master’s and teaching degrees while raising four children in the Greater Toronto Area.
“My mother is 84 years old and she believes in Canada,” said the University of Ottawa Law School and Princeton University Master’s in Public Affairs graduate. “When she came to North America in the 1960s, she came at a time when many states and parts of this continent were still segregated. I know that when she was deciding whether to take that bus for the March on Washington that she never imagined that one day her daughter would be elected to lead a national party in Canada. I think of my mother tonight and I thank her.”
Paul’s father was also in her thoughts as she savoured the historical moment.
“He died in one of our long-term care facilities because of an avoidable infection,” she said. “On the day he died, my sister called me in tears saying we have got to do better than this Annamie and we have got to know what a life is worth.”
Claiming the other political parties are intellectually exhausted and out of ideas, Paul said this is a moment that demands daring and courageous leadership that she’s ready to provide.
“You have matched a leader to the challenges of this time,” she pointed out. “I also believe that we need to match a party to the needs of this moment and there is no question that that party is the Green Party of Canada. We are the party for this moment and when you look at our policies -- the ones we were championing all on our own, voices in the dark when other parties simply didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to talk about them, the flames that we kept burning all along, whether we are talking about long-term care reform, universal pharmacare, a guaranteed livable income -- the Green Party blazes the path that other parties follow and this is the moment where this kind of innovative, evidence-based daring political policy thinking is absolutely necessary.
“When we look at the climate emergency, we must acknowledge that the Green Party remains the only party that has a target and a plan that correspond with the science and can get us to where we need to be to save the future of our planet. This is a good news story that the Green Party and I will fan out to share with people in Canada. This is the chance of a lifetime for us to move towards a just, a more resilient society…I say to people in Canada that ultimately the choice is yours because if we want different outcomes, then we need to make different choices. That begins with our choice in political leadership and it starts right here, right now.”
Paul, who is Jewish, confirmed she’s running in the Toronto Centre by-election on October 26.
She was the Green Party candidate in the last federal election in which former Finance Minister Bill Morneau retained the seat. He resigned last August.
Paul was born in the riding where her mother taught in pubic schools and her late maternal grandmother was a frontline service worker in hospitals.
“I will not abandon the residents of Toronto Centre to a Liberal Party that has neglected that constituency for the last 27 years,” she noted. “I have had enough of candidates being parachuted into that riding and then taking the next train out of town until the next election comes around. This is a riding that’s in need of real help now. It’s the centre of the opioid crisis, it is one of the least affordable ridings in the entire country, it has one of the highest child poverty rates in the entire country, it’s the centre of the urban indigenous population in Toronto and I say, on behalf of residents of Toronto Centre, enough.”
The 1993 Harry Jerome Award winner spent 14 years in Europe before returning to Toronto early last year with her husband and their two children.
She served in Canada’s mission to the European Union as an advisor in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court and as director of a global organization that works to protect citizens from armed conflict.
Paul also provided strategic planning services to Barcelona-based civil society organizations and was the Executive Director of the Barcelona International Policy Action Plan.
