Elizabeth May announced Monday that she is stepping down as leader of the Green Party, but will stay on as the caucus leader in Parliament.
“Effective today I am no longer leader of the Green Party of Canada,” May said, speaking to reporters in Ottawa. “I’m very excited about this.”
Former journalist Jo-Ann Roberts will serve as the party’s interim leader. The party will chose a new leader during a leadership convention in October 2020.
May, who had led the party since 2006, said she had promised her daughter that the 2019 election would be her last at the party’s helm.
Under May’s leadership, the Green Party elected three members of parliament in the Oct. 21 election and nearly doubled its vote share.
“We achieved more than one million votes for the first time ever,” May said. “As I look around the world … there is no other country with first-past-the-post that has achieved what we’ve achieved.”
However, given that climate change was a central theme of the election, many within the party were expecting the party to do much better than that and were disappointed by the results.
With files from CBC News
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