In 2020 Nov, a member of the Green Party of Canada wanted the Party to walk in a direction to advocate a stronger stance on human rights, a document was submitted to add a policy to the Party's Policy Book.
The Proposal:
Be it resolved that the Green Party of Canada advocates the disentanglement of trade with, the reduction of economic dependency from, and the implementation of multilateral restrictive measures against authoritarian states where evidence confirms gross and systematic violations of International Human Rights Law (IHRL).
Evidence:
China is Canada’s second largest trading partner after the U.S. British think tank Henry Jackson Society warned in a report that members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, U.K., U.S.) were strategically dependent on China in 831 categories of goods, including in critical industries such as communications, energy, transport systems, and information technology. Canada is strategically dependent on China for 367 categories of goods. 83 of these have applications in critical national infrastructure.
Saudi Arabia is Canada's 17th largest trading partner, and is Canada's second largest export market in the Middle East. Originally negotiated in 2014, the Canadian government renegotiated the $14 billion agreement in early 2020 to continue the sale of light-armoured vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia, citing that cancellation would have meant penalties up to the full value of the agreement, along with thousands of Canadian jobs in southwestern Ontario and across the defence industry supply chain. Both the Auditor-General and UN Human Rights Council subsequently found the export of LAVs to Saudi Arabia carries significant human rights concerns.
The Vote:
Rounds of votes were carried out by a 3rd party voting system that can verify voter's identity in the Party. 3,049 of the members voted Yes. And the addition of the policy is passed.
What's Next:
In the upcoming Party's conference, the policy will be officially added to the Party's Policy Book, that define what the Party is and who the Greens are.
This is how a true democratic party works. It is led by the people, it walks with the people, rather than leading by a handful of people or a decades-old policy book, like the blue and the red.