Green Party of Canada because leaders don't matter

During the 2006 federal election, a pro-Green Party of Canada anti-Jim Harris campaign called Green Party of Canada because leaders don't matter worked to discredit then GPC Leader Jim Harris. His opponents within the party used many means to dissociate themselves from him. Reasons for this include:
 * Harris hijacking the party's policy
 * Most notably, permitting Dermod Travis, a PR flack, to shut down its innovative Living Platform wiki which had produced the 2004 platform and answers to citizen questionnaires . This technology strongly resembled today's Globe and Mail policy wiki but with additional features to support mobile devices and to respect and keep divergent and unpopular positions visible in debate
 * Harris systematically excluding women from decision making
 * Harris being unable to build bridges to opposing factions
 * Harris tolerating a major donor, Wayne Crookes, controlling the party finances - and suppresing comment on this by extraordinary means
 * Harris breaking a deal to share federal funding with his own riding associations
 * Harris being a Pointy Haired Boss, iconic of bad decision making practices.

Some of these Greens were falling back to their longstanding position that leaders don't matter and that therefore it is ok to vote for Greens who strongly oppose Harris, but not those who support him. This division was most easily exploited in Beaches-East York where Harris ran against very "green" opponent, Marilyn Churley. Other close allies of Harris became discredited using this division, including David Chernushenko, Chris Bradshaw, Debbie Hartley, Steve Kisby and Kevin Colton.

The bitter campaign was instrumental in Harris deciding not to run for re-election as GPC leader in 2006. Sine then Harris has been actively involved in GPC campaigns. He is blamed by some Greens for sabotaging the 2007 Ontario electoral reform referendum by controlling contact lists and hiring incompetents to do the web outreach effort.

Details can probably be found on the gpc-members and newgreencanada yahoogroups, or the openpolitics.ca wiki. Due to Mr. Crookes' lawsuits and attempts to suppress comment, material on the latter source may only be visible to those who obtain an openpolitics.ca login.