TORONTO -- Green Party Leader Annamie Paul said on Friday that she's staying out of other ridings in part to avoid being a distraction and to honour her candidates' wishes.
At a press conference on Friday, Paul addressed why she hasn't been travelling to various ridings around the country, acknowledging that some candidates might not want her to visit.
"I still want to make sure that if I travel somewhere first, that I'm wanted, and that's not a given, and then secondly, that it is going to help our local candidates and that's also unfortunately, not a given," she said a press conference on Friday.
She added that this stems from the internal issues that have haunted the Green Party since before the election was called. A non-confidence vote in July to potentially remove Paul from the party's leadership was called off days before it was scheduled to happen.
Paul said that she wants to make sure that anything she does helps her candidates.
"Many of them are deeply involved in their communities. Many of them have set aside their jobs, their families, to do what is an incredibly intense thing which is to run for office and to put themselves out there," she said. "I want to honour that all the way through this election, and I want to make sure that anything I do is a help and not a harm."
She said that it's been difficult to accept that she might distract from Green Party candidates' campaigns in light of the public conflict within the party.
"Part of that is recognizing that because of what has transpired that is not always going to be helpful for me to be there on the ground and there's certainly going to be some candidates that have made that evaluation as well," Paul said.
