# Jonathan Pedneault

Jonathan Pedneault (born April 19, 1990) is a Canadian activist, journalist, and politician who has been the co-leader of the Green Party of Canada since 2025, alongside Elizabeth May. He previously served as the party's deputy leader from 2022 to 2024. He is the first Québécois to serve as leader of the Greens, and the youngest current leader of a major federal party.

## Early life

Pedneault was born an only child of a single mother in Greenfield Park, on the south shore of Montreal.
When he was 15, Pedneault co-founded the Soprege, or Société de Prévention du Génocide, a student organization dedicated to raising awareness about the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the crisis in Darfur. In 2006, Pedneault submitted the draft of a bill on the Canadian Responsibility for the Prevention of Genocide to his local MP, Caroline St-Hilaire.
That year, Pedneault received a national scholarship from the Millenium Scholarship Program and was named Personnalité de la Semaine by Québec newspaper La Presse and Radio-Canada. Following his graduation from Jacques-Rousseau high school in Longueuil, Pedneault enrolled as a political science student at the University of Ottawa, beginning his undergraduate classes in the fall of 2007.

## Journalism career

In 2008, shortly before his 18th birthday, Pedneault traveled to Chad and crossed into Sudan’s Darfur with rebels from the Justice and Equality movement to report on the humanitarian crisis and co-produce a CBC/Radio-Canada documentary.
Between 2010 and 2012, Pedneault codirected "The New Great Game," a 52-minute documentary produced for CBC/Radio-Canada, Al-Jazeera and Arte about the multipolarization of the Middle East's maritime spaces. Pedneault directed filming and reporting in the region, securing access to both Somali pirates in Galmudug’s town of Hobyo and to NATO anti-piracy naval forces patrolling the Indian ocean.

### 2011 Egypt attack

Pedneault was attacked by a large mob when deployed to cover the 2011 Egyptian Revolution for L’Actualité. Injured on the head as he tried to help American journalist Greg Palkot, he was hospitalized and later detained by the Egyptian military alongside Fox News journalists. In an interview with GQ, Palkot said: “[A] Canadian guy—he's a young guy, a 20-year-old journalist, actually—had made it to that APC okay, and he actually had gotten on top of it. And he saw me, my face full of blood, my body full of blood, getting pummeled, and he tried to pull me up over the side of the APC. And for his help he got rifle-butted off of the thing and had to find his way to safety, and luckily he did.”
Pedneault returned to the region later that year to cover the western and eastern fronts of Libyan civil war. He traveled with James Foley and John Lee Anderson to Tripoli a few days after rebel forces took the capital from Muammar Gaddafi. Foley and Pedneault shared a hotel room in Tripoli with Matthew Van Dyke and a fourth journalist, sharing rides and reporting together as rebels continued to fight pockets of Qaddafi sympathizers in the city.

### Training local journalists

In 2013, Pedneault trained South Sudanese journalists reporting with Radio Tamazuj in both Juba and Malakal. The following year, Pedneault began training journalists with the Réseau des Journalistes pour les Droits de l’Homme during the Central African Republic Civil War, then engulfed in deadly intercommunal violence. That year, Camille Lepage, a close friend of Pedneault, was assassinated. Pedneault brought her body back to her family.

### Human rights investigations

Between 2017 and 2022, Pedneault worked as a researcher with the emergencies team at Human Rights Watch. As part of that division, he worked under the radar of the authorities in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Belarus to document torture and excessive use of force by security forces following elections and protests. He also conducted research in conflict affected areas of Cameroon to produce the organization’s first report on the abuses committed by government and opposition forces in the context of the Anglophone crisis. Pedneault’s last investigative work with Human Rights Watch took place in Ukraine during the first ten days of the 2022 conflict.

## Political career

In 2009, Pedneault left the University of Ottawa to seek the Liberal Party of Canada’s nomination in his home district of Longueuil-Pierre-Boucher. Denis Coderre, the party’s lieutenant in Quebec, blocked his bid and appointed a candidate, despite then leader Michael Ignatieff’s assurances the party would hold open nominations in all ridings not represented by a sitting MP. The nomination would go to Kévan Falsafi, who would place third in the federal election. Pedneault was later offered the Liberal nomination in Verchères—Les Patriotes, but he declined. The nomination would be won by Pier-Luc Therrien-Péloquin, who also placed in third. This prompted Pedneault to co-author an op-ed in La Presse calling on Ignatieff to uphold his promise to democratize the party.
On July 16, 2022, Pedneault entered the Green Party of Canada's 2022 leadership race, running with former leader Elizabeth May on a shared platform. They supported moving the Green Party to a co-leadership model. After May won the election, Pedneault was announced as deputy leader of the party. As co-leadership is not formally recognized in the party’s constitution, and Pedneault served as May's deputy leader while the two sought to amend the party constitution.
Pedneault was nominated as the Green Party candidate in the 2023 Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount federal by-election. In the by-election, Pedneault finished fourth with 13.45% of the vote, with Liberal Anna Gainey elected to succeed Marc Garneau. The result was the highest Green Party vote share percentage in the riding's history.
The proposed constitutional change was not approved due to internal disagreement and on July 9, 2024, Jonathan Pedneault resigned as deputy leader, citing personal reasons. He returned in January 2025 to serve as co-leader, pending election by party membership, which was approved on February 4, 2025. In March 2025, he confirmed that he would run in Outremont and represent the party in leaders' debates.

## Electoral history

vteCanadian federal by-election, June 19, 2023: Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount Resignation of Marc Garneau :
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% |
| | Liberal | Anna Gainey | 11,051 | 50.87 | -2.90 |
| | New Democratic | Jean-François Filion | 3,001 | 13.81 | -5.39 |
| | Conservative | Mathew Kaminski | 2,936 | 13.51 | -0.55 |
| | Green | Jonathan Pedneault | 2,922 | 13.45 | +9.42 |
| | Bloc Québécois | Laurence Massey | 985 | 4.53 | -0.75 |
| | Centrist | Alex Trainman Montagano | 510 | 2.35 | |
| | People's | Tiny Olinga | 141 | 0.65 | -2.64 |
| | Rhinoceros | Sean Carson | 97 | 0.45 | |
| | Christian Heritage | Yves Gilbert | 65 | 0.30 | +0.17 |
| | No Affiliation | Félix Vincent Ardea | 18 | 0.08 | |
| Total valid votes | Total valid votes | Total valid votes | 21,726 | 99.25 |
| Total rejected ballots | Total rejected ballots | Total rejected ballots | 165 | 0.75 | -0.22 |
| Turnout | Turnout | Turnout | | 29.93 | -32.63 |
| Eligible voters | Eligible voters | Eligible voters | 73,152 |
| | Liberal hold | Liberal hold | Swing | Swing | +1.25 |
| Source: Elections Canada |||||||
* ↑ Ardea is a member of the Communist League, an unregistered party; "No Affiliation" is EC's term for leaving the party affiliation blank on a candidate's registration form.