CANADA
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May hospitalized for 'overwork, fatigue and stress,' husband says

Story by John Paul Tasker • Jul 10, 2023

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was hospitalized last week for fatigue owing to the "idiotic" schedule MPs kept in the dying days of Parliament, her husband said in a note to constituents.

John Kidder said his spouse was "undone" by a punishing workload and spent a few days "under observation" at a hospital in her Vancouver Island riding before being discharged Saturday to recuperate at home.

May, 69, will be off her feet for another week before resuming some of her usual summer duties, Kidder said.

Kidder, who is himself a founding member of the Green Party in British Columbia, blamed May's hospitalization on marathon voting sessions — which had MPs in the House of Commons until midnight some days in June — combined with her constituency duties and her role as Green Party co-leader.

"Does it not seem odd to you that we expect our parliamentarians to work double shifts through May and June, sometimes nineteen-hour days, to sit until midnight almost every day, to keep up with their always demanding constituency work, and still to have minds at all?" Kidder said.

Government House Leader Mark Holland extended the Commons sitting times to clear the legislative decks and pass some key government bills before a three-month summer recess.

Among the bills enacted were C-47, the budget bill, and C-18, legislation that forces tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay news outlets for posting their journalism on their platforms.

The opposition Conservatives tried to stall some bills but the government, with the support of the NDP, introduced a parliamentary manoeuvre called "time allocation" on several occasions to shut down debate and move bills to votes.

Kidder said that in any "decent union job," grievances would be "flying thick and fast" if workers had to deal with what MPs like May endure.

He said it's acknowledged that, in other professions, people "cannot do their best work when they're over-tired," and yet MPs are expected to handle "routine sixteen-hour days in and out of Parliament, constant travel, instant responses to matters of urgency from constituents and the press, to be available for any and all local matters."

He said May recently attended nine high school graduation ceremonies that lasted hours and Toronto's Pride parade, all while carrying out "the additional multiple-pronged job as leader of the Green Party of Canada, itself nearly regular full-time work for any reasonable mortal."



Green Party Leader Elizabeth May walks in the Toronto Pride Parade on Sunday, June 25, 2023. 

(Chris Young/Canadian Press)

"The summer festivities have been cut down because of the idiotic schedule in the spring, that itself because (my opinion) Parliament spends so much time in idiot bickering that actual legislation always takes longer than expected, and always backs up into the late spring. Predictable, just like climate change," Kidder said.

In response to claims that parliamentarians are overworked, MPs voted recently to permanently extend a COVID-era hybrid policy that allows for virtual attendance and voting.

Kidder also told constituents that May got "a close-up and very personal look" at "troubling elements" of Canada's "vaunted health-care system."

He said they both lack a family doctor and struggled to get May seen by a professional when she fell ill. He said public health care is "a messed-up system" staffed by "wonderful people" who endure workloads like May's with "even more personal stress."

After stepping down from the party's leadership in 2019, May returned to lead the party last year after a disastrous result for the Greens in the 2021 federal election.

The party nearly came apart at the seams due to party infighting during Annamie Paul's fractious time as leader. Paul compared her time at the helm to crawling over broken glass — a painful experience she described as the worst of her life.

Quebec human rights advocate Jonathan Pedneault is the party's co-leader.