Roberts ran for the party for the second time, first in Victoria in 2015 and then in Halifax in 2019, where she came third with 14.5 per cent of the vote.
“This is a position I take on somewhat reluctantly,” Roberts told reporters. “For now in the Green Party the focus is to start the search for the person who will take the Green Party into the next stage. This is not a replacement for Elizabeth May, I don’t think anybody would be up for applying for that job.”
Roberts will now focus on how to expand the party’s membership in time for the leadership vote, encouraging more of the 1.1 million voters who cast their ballot for a Green candidate in the 2019 election to sign up, as the party membership sits at around 20,000 at the moment.
She made this announcement flanked by her two Green Party caucus colleagues MPs Paul Manly, and Jenica Atwin, as well as Roberts, deputy leader Daniel Green, and May’s husband John Kidder.
May said her decision to step down now was done, in part, to follow through on a promise she made to her daughter Cate May Burton after the 2015 election: that the 2019 campaign would be her last at the helm.
“I’m very excited to know that I’ll have time with my husband and time with my daughter and my extended family, and that I keep my promises,” May said. She and Kidder got married on Earth Day, April 22.
Cate told CTV News Channel she had initially suggested her mother step down out of concern for her work-life balance.
“My whole life my mom has been working like nobody’s business, because she’s so driven to help protect the planet,” she said. “Under her responsibility as leader of the Green Party, I witnessed it go up several notches and I was getting concerned about her well-being, and whether she was going to have any balance, and space in her life for herself.”
May also asserted she is “not done yet.”
“I’m not stopping my work, the climate crisis is as critical as ever,” May said.
In various interviews with CTV News since the election, May has spoken candidly about the unlikelihood that she will still be the leader by the next scheduled federal election in 2023, though with the nature of minority parliaments it’s possible that the next campaign will kick off before then.
She recently mused about running for House of Commons Speaker, but for now she won’t be doing that, saying she’d like to run for speaker after the next election.
May intends to stay on as the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
May said that, in her view, given the unpredictability that comes with minority governments, the sooner the party names her official replacement, the better, adding that while so many people leave politics when they are already being helped out the door, “that’s not happening here.”
Cate said her mother’s 13 years as leader of the Green Party have been a valuable experience for the whole family.
“It’s been very stressful…but I’ve had an amazing learning experience to be part of Canadian politics from the inside,” she said. “We’ve always been very close, but that relationship has gotten stronger over the years.”
Source: CTV News
Saturday, May 2, 2026
