Alberta Greens de-registered, can’t run for election
It will be interesting to see how Green supporters vote in the next election. I just hope they don’t join the 59% of eligible voters who don’t bother to cast a ballot.
EDMONTON — The Alberta Green Party has been de-registered as an Alberta political party and cannot run candidates in the next provincial election.
Leader Joe Anglin said the party was unable to file financial returns as required to Elections Alberta because of an internal conflict between the outgoing executive and the new executive that was elected last fall.
Elections Alberta confirmed in a news release Wednesday that the acting chief electoral officer has cancelled the party’s registration, effective July 16. The party has 30 days to request a removal of the cancellation.
Anglin said Elections Alberta gave the party an extension to July 1 to file the proper audited financial statements, but the executive could not meet the deadline.
“We cannot comply with the Elections Act,” he said. “You have to provide a financial return on everybody who donated and you have to have an audited financial report.”
He said the new executive was unable to do that despite several agreements it had with the previous executive to turn over all the financial material.
“What we’re doing is a responsible thing,” Anglin said. “We have to wipe the slate clean.”
He said the executive has established a non-profit society to re-establish the Green party after the next election, but its members intend to be active in the next election — maybe even running as candidates for other parties.
“We will work with whoever we can to make a government,” he said.
The party imploded last September when an annual general meeting in Morningside broke down in a community centre parking lot. Leaders refused to enter the community centre where the meeting was to be held, and Anglin was selected as new party boss by party members inside the building.
Court documents obtained by The Journal highlight a series of events, like a sudden surge in new memberships, that old-school Greens characterized in e-mails as sneaky and a “hostile and undemocratic takeover.”
Then, not even six months after the party reorganized its executive leadership, deputy leader Edwin Erickson jumped ship to create the Alberta Progress Party.
Grant MacEwan College political scientist Chaldeans Mensah says the Greens are in danger of being permanently defined by their internal conflicts.
“(Bill 19) really did give them a basis to spread the word in the rural areas,” Mensah says. But, “It’s going to take a lot more from the party to translate the general concerns people have about the environment to concrete political support.”
Last year, Anglin and the party’s new president filed a court injunction against former leader George Read and the old guard to keep them from touching the party’s website, membership list, money or meetings.
Read does not talk about what happened in September. He says he is taking time off to write a book, which he hopes to have published next year.
“I agreed to put that in the past,” he says. “I hope they’re doing well … there will always be Greens in Alberta. Alberta is a Green stronghold.”
Elections Alberta says it is not investigation allegations of criminality concerning the filings because there have been no filings.
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[...] looks like the Nova Scotia Greens could soon be going down the same path as the Alberta Greens. Kinda makes me wonder why Greens have so much trouble following election [...]