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When Canadian Green party leader Elizabeth May was excluded from three of the televised leaders debates ahead of Canada’s federal election, she still managed to force her way onto the political stage.
As the other three party leaders gathered to spar over the economy, she hosted her own parallel debate with the assistance of Twitter.
The tactic was similar to the digital debate the social networking site had helped orchestrate for the Scottish National party in the UK earlier this year - and it was equally effective.
May’s comments were retweeted thousands of times, her Twitter mentions far outstripped those of the other leaders - and the Green leader featured prominently in press coverage of the debate.
May, who has led the party since 2006, has shown a talent for getting her voice heard in a way that has given her party influence and impact far beyond its weight in votes.

“She’s a machine, she’s driven like no other, she doesn’t take no for an answer,” said May’s chief of staff, Debra Eindiguer.
Unlike Green parties in Europe, Canadian Greens have failed to become a serious national political force, with support hovering nationally around 4%.
May was the party’s first MP in Canada when she was elected in 2011. (The party’s seat count in parliament briefly doubled when she was joined by a New Democrat who switched parties.)
But with Canada looking likely to elect a minority government in Monday’s federal elections - maybe a slim minority - May is positioning herself as a potential power broker.
“We have the clout and the influence in a minority parliament,” May said. “Ideally we can have the balance of power."
May said her ultimate goal is to get rid of Canada’s first past the post political system and replace it with some form of proportional representation.
May was born in the US but as a youth moved with her family to Atlantic Canada. She embraced environmental activism not long after, leading campaigns against uranium mining and herbicide use in the 1970s and going on to head the Sierra Club of Canada.
She said it was Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s first 2006 federal election win that spurred her Green party leadership bid.
“I realized the traditional tools I was using as an environmentalist would not be effective in dealing with a prime minister as dedicated to stopping climate action as Stephen Harper was and is,” she said.
Canada’s environmental record under Harper has come under scathing international criticism, including for its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol because the accord didn’t cover the US and China.
May has raised concerns about Wi-Fi’s effect on schoolchildren and has called for the mandatory food labeling of GMOs over concerns they are potentially harmful. The broader scientific community does not consider either a threat to human health.
 


Elizabeth May: Canadian Green leader elbows her way into election picture

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, left, and her daughter Victoria Cate May Burton.  Photo: AP

Bloc Quebecois leader Duceppe, Conservative leader and PM Harper, NDP leader Mulcair, Green Party leader May, and Liberal leader Trudeau shake hands before the start of the French language leaders' debate in Montreal in September. Photo: Reuters

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Laureen Harper, wife of Canada's PM and Conservative leader Stephen Harper, dances a rally with the South Asian community in Brampton. Photo: Reuters

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair greeted supporters at a campaign rally in Vancouver, British Columbia yesterday. Photo: AP

‘Bad for the country’: Ex-premier slams Canada PM Stephen Harper’s policies as borderline racist

Critics of the Harper government say it’s engaging in a dangerous, xenophobic game by grandstanding on an issue that involves a tiny minority of devout Muslim women in the country.  Photo: AP


There are lots of important issues at stake in Canada's election - But, of late, something far more insignificant has begun to dominate the conversation: whether Muslim women can wear the niqab, a type of full-face veil, during Canadian citizenship ceremonies.  File photo: AFP


Former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams

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