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Jim Harris (born ca. 1961) is the leader of the Green Party of Canada. He was initially elected in 2003 with over 81 per cent of the votes cast in a three-way race. After the Canadian federal election, 2004, Harris was re-elected leader in a much closer race against Tom Manley and John Grogan, despite the Party's dramatic rise to 4.3% of the popular vote (see Party directions below for more on this). Harris has run in municipal, provincial and federal elections as a Green.
Early Green Career
In the early 1980's Harris was a student at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada - which no longer exists. Harris claims to have been converted to green politics after reading Green Politics by Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak, which highlighted the emergence of the German Greens. In 1987, he worked as the National Press Officer of the British Green Party; he is now a lifetime member of that party.
After traveling around the world for four years following university, Harris returned to Canada and immediately entered green politics. In 1990, he organized the Green Party of Ontario's provincial campaign - which fielded 40 candidates and received 33,000 votes - a drastic increase from 7 candidates and 3,000 votes in the previous election. Jim Harris was elected as the first president of the Green Party of Ontario in 2001, serving in that role until 2003 when he moved to the federal arena.
Author and Speaking Career
Jim Harris has written six books - one of which was a best-seller in Canada. He also speaks on change and leadership. Association Magazine ranked him as one of Canada's top speakers. Harris speaks at about 50 international conferences a year and conducts strategic planning sessions with executive teams on leadership, change, CRM, eLearning, innovation and creating learning organizations. Several members of the Green Party of Canada have contributed portions to his books, but none have been credited.
Some of Harris' critics have spoken disparagingly about his actual knowledge of these subjects or capacity to apply the
"Green values" in either business or politics. See politics sections below. Many of Harris' top aides worked both in the leaders' office of the Party and Harris's personal businesses, often simultaneously.
His most recent book Blindsided!, was published in over 80 countries. His second book, The Learning Paradox, was nominated for the National Business Book Award in Canada and appeared on numerous bestseller lists. Books for Business ranked it as one of the top-10 business books in North America. Harris also co-authored The 100 Best Companies to Work for in Canada - part of a regular best-selling series of books that multiple authors have contributed to over the years.
Policy directions
Harris replaced interim leader Chris Bradshaw who led the party from 2001-2003. Joan Russow, who left the GPC after the Canadian federal election, 2000, re-emerged in 2004 to launch a series of statements favoring the New Democratic Party of Canada - claiming among other things that ISO 14000 standards were incompatible with stronger environmental management regulations by government because they allow industries to choose whether to comply or not.
There was extremely bad blood between Harris and Russow, in part because Harris is from the realist or "reli" faction of the GPC while Russow hailed from the fundamental or "fundi" faction of the GPC. These are sometimes seen vaguely as right and left tendencies, but Greens in general deny that and consider it mostly a tactical difference.
The 2004 GPC turned to the eco-capitalist doctrines of full cost accounting, triple bottom line and green tax shift. (For a more true view of green democratic ideology see Bioregional Democracy.)
GPC policy is authored online by members according to the Green's participatory democracy principle using a wiki process called the Green Party of Canada Living Platform. Centralization of power has increased significantly during Harris's two terms as leader, as he has pushed out a number of voices who spoke for or sought transparency in party operations. Making this even a larger democratic problem, the membership has be left in the dark due to circumvention of the party's constitution. See Party direction below for details.
2004 election
That said, Harris did exercise tight control over the Green Party's electoral campaign and press releases during the 2004 election. Very few releases during the election quoted any Party figure other than Jim Harris, and some complained that they had no access to the party's media pipeline whatsoever, and that it was being used effectively as a self-promotional tool for Harris' values only. David Chernushenko, for instance, despite being endorsed by the prominent Ottawa Citizen newspaper over former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, was not quoted in any official Party national press releases. This fueled the criticism that Harris uses the Green Party as his own publicity vehicle.
Among other policy omissions, he was also criticized for making no mention of recent (2003) successes in the Party's longstanding strategy of measuring well-being as an obligation of the Ministry of Finance and Auditor-General of Canada. For this Harris was criticized by Mike Nickerson, who had authored the Canada Well-Being Measurement Act, part of which had in fact been passed into law in 2003. Other members suggested that because Harris could personally claim no credit for this, he ignored it, and passed up a crucial opportunity to exploit the Auditor-Generals' role being an issue for likely the first and last time in the 2004 election, due to the Liberal Party of Canada's Quebec sponsorship scandal linked to Canada's then Finance Minister and current Prime Minister Paul Martin, Jr..
If Harris' objective was publicity, it was partially frustrated by his being excluded from the Canada-wide TV leaders' debate. Harris was also wrongly reported as being gay by one reporter in a mix-up with former leader Chris Lea. It was a difficult election in many ways, compounded by a leadership race that followed almost immediately after.
Since the election, the Party has been almost completely ignored by the media, leading some to question Harris' determination to bring the Party's message to the public. The loss of momentum has been blamed on several factors but one is certainly that Harris is busy authoring a new book and interfering in Party internals rather than doing his job as Leader - which is to present the party's program to the public.
Party directions
Despite GPC Constitution provisions that Leaders not direct Party internal affairs, Harris seems eager to manipulate the Party's internal processes to personal political advantage - several times he has been personally implicated in factional infighting that has seen removals, suspensions and resignations from the Green Party's internal Council. His favourite tactic seems to be to call "emergency" in camera meetings, making various claims about member, volunteer or staff morale, and demanding what he wants from the Council - sometimes threatening to resign.
Harris' insistence on micro-management causes him to burn through close allies quickly. For instance, his closest assistant during the 2004 election supported rival Tom Manley for the leadership just two months later.
Mr. Harris is also somewhat infamous for organising purges of his Councillors who don't follow his lead, the latest among many being the Fundraising Chair who asked some serious questions about the party's plans to incorporate with only one director, the Chief Financial Officer, John Anderson, who has never submitted a financial statement to the membership. With an annual budget of over $1,000,000, many other Council members are also concerned, and many are waiting for the axe to fall. Harris is also being investigated by Elections Canada for financial irregularities.
Harris has also refused to sign the nomination papers of locally selected candidates, and has frequently ignored the Party's constitution.
One reason why Harris' re-election as leader was not as overwhelming as his earlier run is that many Greens do not believe these tactics are ethical, nor do they necessarily ascribe to his command and control leadership style. That said, his 55% on the first ballot is comparable to margins of victory of other federal rivals such as Jack Layton and Stephen Harper.
Unlike these leaders, however, Harris is generally unable to control the factions that oppose him in the Party, especially the New Green Canada movement, many of whose members are working towards registering a new party that will honour the values of the Global Green Charter.
On raucous internal GPC mailing lists it is common to see Harris ascerbically described as "misogynistic" and (likely the most amusing) as the GPC's "pointy-haired boss".
Threatened to resign
This has likely taken its toll. In mid-January 2005, Harris was rumoured to be close to quitting, having threatened on more than one occasion to "take his Rolodex with him," (according to Party insiders), and perhaps follow Russow in defaming the Party, its members and directions, discouraging donors and voters. It remains to be seen if he and his core group of followers are able to remain in "election readiness" in anticipation of a Canadian federal election, 2005 that might never come, or if Harris will resign the leadership to focus on his career as an author and speaker, as seems likely:
He has said that he would resign when the party elects the first Green Member to the Canadian House of Commons. Presumably that MP would be expected to become the Leader upon their election. Evidently Harris does not expect to be that MP. In the 2004 election, he ran in a hopeless race against New Democratic Party of Canada leader Jack Layton and long standing MP Dennis Mills, getting only 5.38%, behind the Conservative candidate at 6.21%.
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