An opinion column arguing that Avi Lewis’s leadership of the NDP poses a greater threat to the federal Green Party than to anyone else. Leiren-Young — author of Greener Than Thou: Surviving the Toxic Sludge of Canadian Eco-Politics and host of the Skaana podcast — contends that with the Greens searching for a new leader, an NDP positioned this far to the environmental left leaves little room for the smaller party to survive.
The Greens’ decline
Leiren-Young traces the party’s electoral collapse. Under Annamie Paul in 2021, the Greens ran 252 candidates, qualified for two leaders’ debates, took 2.3 per cent of the vote, and elected Mike Morrice in Kitchener. In 2025, with Elizabeth May back at the helm, they ran 232 candidates, missed the federal debates, fell to 1.2 per cent, and lost Morrice’s seat — what he calls the party’s worst vote share ever. Co-leader Jonathan Pedneault placed fifth in Outremont, below 10 per cent.
He is sharply critical of the party’s co-leadership arrangement and succession dynamics under May, and mocks the requirement that a new leader speak both official languages given the Greens’ negligible prospects in Quebec.
Lewis as “green kryptonite”
The column’s central claim is that Lewis is “arguably Greener than Ms. May,” fonder of theory, and so identified with climate-left politics that provincial NDP leaders west of Manitoba are “allergic to him.” He links Lewis to the 2015 LEAP Manifesto, describing it as reading “like the Green policy playbook, but with more taxes.”
With Mark Carney’s government having softened climate commitments, Leiren-Young argues the Greens’ environmental flank is exposed — but that it would be hard for them to out-green “the newly carbon-neutral NDP.” He cites May’s husband John Kidder, a former party executive, who suggested Lewis’s “emotional home turf is green” and that he might have been a more natural fit leading the Greens.
The piece concludes that while Leiren-Young is unconvinced Lewis can save the NDP — crediting any rescue more to the unpopularity of Pierre Poilievre — he believes Lewis “is the green kryptonite that ends the Green Party.”