The GPC Constitution cites Six Principles including participatory democracy, which some members argue has been grievously violated by the current GPC "leadership". See transgressions of GPC Leader, transgressions of GPC Council Chair, transgressions of GPC Chief Agent, transgressions of GPC Organizing Chair and GPC Council Crisis for details.

Unique among Canadian federal parties, the Green Party of Canada often attempts to use libel chill to silence those interested in its internal operations.

The party also has had astonishingly and obviously poor political party governance. See below.

The GPC is separate from the provincial Green Parties: GPO, GPNS, GPBC?, GPTO and etc. It has a loose affiliation with the FPVA and Global Greens?.

Despite this separate legal status, some GPC members have sought to actively subvert and subordinate provincial parties, notably Kevin Colton, Michael Marshall. This has included some breaches of provincial law - see Nara Manickam.

Michael Oddy and Craig Hubley are two notable figures who objected to this, and strongly defended legal independence.

The GPC operates a carefully censored platform outreach system called Green Party of Canada Living Platform. This is a tikiwiki-based service similar to openpolitics.ca itself at lp.greenparty.ca, some pages use issue/position/argument form, but debate is confined to federal matters, and public debate of GPC goverance? issues is forbidden. See censor Green Party of Canada Living Platform for more on this issue.

The page GPC platform planks on openpolitics.ca itself shadow?s the GPC LP "all platform planks" page. Certain GPC council meeting?s are also tracked closely, e.g. GPC Council meeting 2006-02-19.

The GPC compared its own policies to those of other such parties in a party platform comparison chart, last updated during the Canadian federal election, 2004. See compare 2004 federal party platforms for an equivalent not from the GPC's view. For more detail on the 2004 policy see the Policy FAQ and Answers to Questionnaires 2004 derived from theirs.

During the Canadian federal confidence crisis, 2005, a GPC council crisis prevented the party from finalizing its own policies. A list of process proposals and the GPC Constitution they tried to reflect were all rejected by the party in favour of the GPC Constitutional Review Committee.

participatory history

Due to its history of participatory democracy, some GPC members seek a set of GPC protocols to outline what the party does (or "is supposed to do") to earn status as a viable major federal political party in Canada. Some functions are defined by law especially those laws administered by Elections Canada?. The party however has a history of attacking people who point this out - especially in the GPC whistleblower crisis, 2006.

In general the GPC is a poor instrument to do things that are not directly related to its policy initiatives, Issue Advocates' and legislators' strategies. An EDA has more flexibility - and has some autonomy, including the right to engage in an EDA strike.

ended experiment, initiated crisis

The Party was writing Platform 2005 using the Green Party of Canada Living Platform - the core of the Platform 2005 project. This experiment in deliberative democracy was attacked in early February, 2005, with the firing of Michael Pilling. The smear campaign against Pilling claimed that this was "to ensure terms of use were followed." However such enforcement activities were being conducted with no need for firings nor any shutdowns.

For more background see How Jim Harris Stole the Green Party, 2002-2003, suspension of elected Councillor, libel on GPC-COUN, overcontrol by GPC Leader, overcontrol by GPC Chief Agent, overcontrol by GPC Deputy Leader, overcontrol by GPC Organizing Chair, overcontrol by GPC Party Chair, GPC Council crisis and the consequences of all this: GPC EDA strike, 2005.

The GPC had several failed visible goverance and internal reform efforts:

• the GPC Governance Project which was an official insider effort to write the next GPC Constitution to end current power abuses - it was terminated in favour of the GPC Constitutional Review Committe?
  • This committee totally failed to consider any input via the Green Party of Canada Living Platform, or via openpolitics.ca itself by those excluded from that forum. This was seen as one of many failures of the GPC as a learning organization.
• the Grassroots Greens sought to organize around and despite the GPC ERCT, and tried to organize a GPC EDA strike, 2005, which would have succeeded in Newfoundland and Labrador? except for parachute candidates loyal to the GPC bunker.
• the GPC Evolutionary Committee was looking for some compromise that would permit the GPC itself to remain together, e.g. an emergency GPC AGM petition. It failed several such attempts in 2005 including an attempt to elect Gareth White? to the GPC Council
  • Other work of the Evolutionary Committee towards postmodern politics, Efficient Politics, a Lean Green Machine and the next GPC Constitution was conducted at openpolitics.ca itself but has now generally been stalled. The EC's own commitment to building an open party based on Four Pillars failed.
  • The GPC-EC continues to watch and try to influence GPC Council closely, e.g. noting all agenda items of GPC Council meeting 2006-02-19 with backup links to keep GPC members informed.

party could be replaced

In a proposal, the Green Federation of Canada, seeks to simply replace the GPC with a bioregional democracy that would set policy more locally. Some members of the Green Party of Nova Scotia and some members of the Green Party of Ontario and Green Party of Newfoundland and Labrador? are in favour of this proposal.

This model has the merit of having been tested at least once in North America?: it strongly resembles the way the USGP? was replaced by the ASGP? and then GPUS, against the will of the USGP's leadership.

Efforts to create a neutral list of policy terms, optimize internal processes, gather position papers, design the next greenparty.ca web and review the next GPC constition? actually predate openpolitics.ca itself. They had the avowed support of Bruce Abel and Tom Manley and the policy work also had the avowed support of Jim Harris. All three were later to be proven insincere. See GPC Council Crisis.

When Bruce Abel sabotaged all these efforts and GPC-LP itself, an independent and nonpartisan open politics service was launched using the same open content. Some original goals of GPC-LP users were partially achieved: The GPC ERCT was eliminated but the emergency GPC AGM petition failed.

Debate at this convention covered:

• controversies over outgoing GPC Leader Jim Harris
• Claude Genest taking a stance against the "bunker mentality"
• David Chernushenko and attempts to build a list of all GPC candidates who oppose the GPC bunker
• GPC constitution crisis, 2006
  • resignations from GPC Constitutional Review Committee
  • next GPC constitution further concentrating power over member objections and in defiance of Decentralization as one of Ten Key Values most members uphold
  • Green and Growing by David Scrymgeour and the GPC Executive Director role it advised - some have suggested that to repudiate this model effectively the GPC must fire all GPC fulltime staff
  • role of GPC Leader and GPC Shadow Cabinet
• media fallout of GPC Council Crisis and GPC whistleblower crisis, 2006 including departure of Dermod Travis and whether the Party approves of his tactics
• role of Wayne Crookes in the party especially in support of Travis, Jim Harris, Abel and Scrymgeour's model
• a vowed lawsuit? by Tom Jarmyn over whether he was politically involved in the GPC
• reputed $750,000 debt, which will take over a year to clear, potentially leaving the party broke for the Canadian federal election, 2007
• shift of the GPC platform, 2006 "to the left" causing it to split vote?s with the Liberal Party of Canada and New Democratic Party which are sympathetic to the party's avowed policies, and which positioning helped elect the Conservative Party of Canada
  • sharing blame for failure of Kyoto Protocol
• failure of the party to meet any of its own explicit goals in the Canadian federal election, 2006
  • no elected MPs, many who were touted as viable prospects, e.g. David Chernushenko, coming fourth
  • nowhere near one million votes, roughly the same vote count as the last election, amounting to a total loss of any electoral momentum?
  • internal fallout arising from GPC Council Crisis:
  • transgressions of GPC Leader
  • transgressions of GPC Council Chair
  • transgressions of GPC Chief Agent
  • transgressions of GPC Organizing Chair
  • suspension of elected Councillor
  • total collapse of the party in Newfoundland and Labrador? - see Lori-Ann Martino
  • alienation of key longtime supporters, organizers and lobbyists
    • Craig Hubley re GPC
    • GPC resignation letters
• abuses by GPC officers creating the obviously worst political party governance of any Canadian federal political party
  • Bill Hulet and his dual role as GPC Communications Chair and editor of greenpartyreview.ca
  • lack of any viable GPC officer protocol
  • failure to fill specific seats seemingly deliberately
• organizing a GPC Fund to override GPC fund protocol decisions already made
• disbanding many GPC committee?s