Elizabeth May

Prior to running for elected office, she worked as a lawyer, a governmental policy advisor and was for seventeen years the Executive Director of Sierra Club of Canada (1989-2006). The ninth leader of the Green Party of Canada (2006 – 2019), she was the first Canadian Green to win election in 2011. Once she broke through the psychological barrier that Greens cannot get elected in a First Past the Post system, sixteen other Greens have been elected federally and in four provinces of Canada.

She is currently the Co-Leader of the Green Party of Canada with Jonathan Pedneault. She represents the southern Vancouver Island riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands on the territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation.

Although her family’s financial reverses in running a restaurant on Cape Breton Island prevented Elizabeth from obtaining an undergraduate degree, she was able to work her way through law school as a mature student in the early 1980s. She cut her teeth in an epic legal struggle against corporate might and toxic chemicals in the fight to prevent the spraying of Agent Orange in Nova Scotia. A graduate of Dalhousie Law School, she was admitted to the bar in both Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Elizabeth moved to Ottawa in 1985 to become Associate General Counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, only to be recruited to work as Senior Policy Advisor for the federal minister of the environment in summer 1986. During her time with Environment Canada, she was instrumental in the creation of several national parks, including Gwaii Haanas in Haida Gwaii. She was involved in negotiating the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer as well as acid rain treaties, and in the first international scientific conference on the threat of climate disruption. In 1988, she resigned on principle when the minister granted permits for the Rafferty-Alameda Dams in Saskatchewan as part of a political trade-off, with no environmental assessment. The Federal Court later ruled the permits were granted illegally.

In 1989, Elizabeth became the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada, a position she held until March 2006, when she stepped down to run for leader of the Green Party of Canada.