Elizabeth May is back as leader of the federal Green Party.

She also served as leader between 2006 and 2019.

May beat out five other candidates in a leadership vote held Saturday but intends to share the leadership with Jonathan Pedneault, a former journalist and human rights activist.

“We cannot use the term, ‘we are now co-leaders of the Green Party of Canada,’ because that will require a change to the Constitution. But we are clearly a team, and Jonathan and I will be explaining details in the coming days,” says May.

May notes a co-leadership model is being used by Green Parties elsewhere, including New Zealand and Germany.

She says it’s a different model that emphasizes Greens do things differently.

“We don’t have a top-down leader, a boss who tells people what to say or where to go or how to vote. We have a distributed model of leadership, and Jonathan and I believe that our values are better reflected in co-leadership.”

The runner-up in the race, Anna Keenan, also ran on a shared leadership platform with Chad Walcott as her running mate.

May beat Keenan on the sixth ballot with over 60 per cent of the vote, though less than 40 per cent of eligible members cast ballots.

May says the turnout was disappointing but notes there has been considerable growth within the party since 2006, when he was elected leader for the first time.