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The Green Party of British Columbia is a political party in British Columbia, Canada.
The party was formed shortly before the 1983 provincial election and ran 4 candidates in that election. The party went through many growing pains in the next 9 years, and almost came to a complete end in 1992.
In 1993, the party gained a new leader, Stuart Parker, who managed through personal perserverance to take the party to running close to a full slate in the 1996 election, but was only able to garner less than 2% support province-wide. The direction of the party under Mr. Parker was set by many disgruntled ex-NDP members, and the policies of the party under Parker were notably progressive. An attempt by Adriane Carr and Colleen McCrory, two leaders of the B.C. environment movement to take over the party was rejected by members at a bitterly fought convention held in Abbotsford in 1999. The following years, however, Ms. Carr and Ms. McCrory's supporters won over Parker's followers.
The party received over 12% of the vote in the May 2001 provincial election, but it won no seats in the provincial legislature because of the first-past-the-post system used in BC elections.
The Greens maintain they receive support from all over the political spectrum. In the federal election of 2004, former Social Credit Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and media personality Rafe Mair confounded many by openly supporting the Green Party, and has actively supported the BC Green Party since. The Greens have often been labelled as openly right wing at the same time as being labelled openly left wing by opponents. Leader Adriane Carr has openly supported striking hospital empployees and British Columbia Ferry workers, and has been highly critical of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The Greens have growing strength in Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Kootenay, and on the Sunshine Coast, where leader Adriane Carr received 27% of the vote in the 2001 election. As with the Green Party of the United States, the BC Greens receive support from middle-class professionals and students, environmental activists, and voters from lower-income brackets, but has had difficulty appealing to organized labour.
In a Surrey by-election held in October, 2004, Ms. Carr ran as a parachute candidate, and came a distant third, with less than 9 % of the vote -- and some believe that the Green Party may have peaked.
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