After 15 years at the helm, can Schreiner lead the Ontario Greens to a breakthrough?

There was a moment in 2023 when it seemed possible the man who had become practically synonymous with the Green Party of Ontario might leave it behind. 

The Ontario Liberals, fresh off another disappointing election result the previous year, were searching for a new leader and a group of them thought they had their pick in Mike Schreiner. 

Schreiner, who by then had been leader of the Greens for well over a decade and cultivated a reputation as a principled politician capable of reaching across party lines, gave it consideration. 

If he could win the Liberal leadership – by no means a guarantee – it would have given him a larger platform to deliver his message, not to mention the resources and relevance of a once-formidable political machine that held power for 15 straight years until the Liberals’ crushing defeat in the 2018 election. 

It could have been a huge boon for Schreiner.

“But I’m not motivated by what’s good for Mike Schreiner,” he said in a recent interview. 

“It’s not about me. It’s about the movement I’m trying to build.” 

If you ask Schreiner, who has been leading the Greens since 2009, the movement has momentum. But after more than 15 years of Schreiner at the helm, a question the party faces is whether it can translate that momentum into seats in a general election.

David Coletto, a leading Canadian pollster, called the challenge “daunting.” 

The Greens, he noted, are a small party long tied to climate change and environment, at a time when affordability and housing have dominated the campaign. Only about one in 10 survey respondents listed climate and environment as a top-three election issue, according to recent results from his firm, Abacus Data. 

“The challenge for Mike Schreiner and the Greens is to position themselves as relevant in the debates that we’re having while at the same time … finding one or two ridings where they may be able to make some gains and pick up another seat here or there,” said Coletto, the founder and CEO of Abacus Data. 

It’s an insight Schreiner has seemingly taken to heart. 

When asked what issues he thought could help the Greens stand out in the election, he first mentioned the crises of affordability and housing, then health care and education – and finally, nature protection. 

To that point, one of the party’s first campaign announcements was unveiling a housing plan that includes removing the land-transfer tax for first-time homebuyers and allowing fourplexes right across the province.

But Schreiner suggests it would be misguided to speak about climate and the environment as separate issues from the others. In fact, he says over his 15-year tenure, one of the lessons he’s learned is to speak about them as intrinsically linked, especially with affordability. 

“We want to make it clear to people that we have solutions on a range of issues, in addition to being the party that can address the climate crisis in a way that makes our life more affordable, it makes our economy stronger,” he said. 

Hope-over-fear message

Schreiner said his own leadership has been styled, in part, on the hope-over-fear message of former U.S. president Barack Obama and the populism of Tommy Douglas, the former federal NDP leader known as an architect of universal health care.

“I grew up on the Prairies myself, and I felt like he was addressing the No. 1 issue of his time, which was health care. And I feel like I’m addressing the No. 1 issue of our time, which is making sure we address a climate crisis and have a livable future,” Schreiner said. 

Born in a tiny Kansas community to a farmer and a school teacher, Schreiner moved to Canada with his wife in 1995 and ran several local food businesses in Guelph, Ont., and helped start a non-profit focused on promoting sustainable food practices. He got involved in the Green party in the mid-2000s and later co-chaired the 2007 election platform committee and served as the party’s policy co-ordinator before he was acclaimed as leader.

His turn to elected politics was unsurprising to Lori Stahlbrand, his longtime friend and former partner in the non-profit Local Food Plus. 

“He believes in the process; he believes in the potential. He believes that we can actually make positive change in society through these democratic processes,” said Stahlbrand, a professor and food policy analyst. 

“We need people like Mike to be making the decision to go into politics, people who are people of integrity and who really have a vision for the province and who care so much.”

For nearly the first decade at the party’s helm, Schreiner sat in the legislature with tourists and school groups, up in the public gallery. 

In 2018, he broke through and won the party’s first seat in his home riding of Guelph. He won re-election in 2022 and then got company at Queen’s Park in 2023, when Aislinn Clancy won the Greens’ second seat in a Kitchener Centre byelection.

Under Schreiner, the party has slowly built up its share of the popular vote but has never cracked the eight-per-cent mark they hit in 2007. 

In that election, Schreiner’s predecessor garnered headlines for the party’s stance on unifying the public and Catholic school boards. But the issue is no longer considered a priority for the party and the platform instead looks to boost per-student funding to make up for levels they suggest have not kept up with inflation.

Schreiner, meanwhile, has made a point of speaking to rural ridings he clams have been “abandoned” by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government. In making his case, he often cites how much the province would have to spend to build a private spa at Ontario Place or to rip up major bike lanes in Toronto, as Ford has pledged.

Like NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, Schreiner has also been highly critical of Ford’s since-reversed move to open protected Greenbelt lands for housing development. 

Yet, the Greens are playing with a different set of election goalposts than the other major parties. Schreiner would consider it a victory if the party is able to get even one more seat added to its two-person Queen’s Park caucus.

The Greens have their eyes on a few select ridings on the outskirts of the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. They are hopeful longtime candidate Matt Richter can pull off a victory in Parry Sound-Muskoka, a riding he narrowly lost in 2022, and have also focused their energy on Durham-Caledon, where they have performed comparatively well in the past. They’re also looking at Wellington-Halton Hills, a race with no incumbent. 

“We build from the bottom up, and that’s what people power looks like, and that’s what it’s going to take to implement the kinds of policy changes we need in Ontario to put people over profits and to build a fairer province,” he said.

“I think people in this country are getting sick of leader-centric politics.”