The Ontario Green Party did not originally have a formal leadership structure, and was run in a very decentralized manner (nominal leaders were sometimes chosen for elections, but they had no personal authority over party decisions). De Jong and a broad coalition of chapters agreed to a new constitution in 1993. The legwork to facilitate the change was led by Ian Whyte in Ottawa and Jim Harris in Toronto. The actual rewriting of the constitution was led by Ken Toews Policy coordinator who headed up a team to write the new constitution. The changes to the constitution were approved with an 88% majority. There is a direct line between these changes to our constitution and the eventual election of Mike Schreiner to the provincial legislature. A small number of chapters opposed this approach, and successfully campaigned for a formal leadership contest in 1993. De Jong himself entered this contest, and defeated
Jim Harris, who later became leader of the Green Party of Canada. De Jong supported Harris's leadership of the federal party until Harris stepped down in 2006, at which time de Jong supported
David Chernushenko's leadership bid. He was challenged for the leadership of the Ontario Green Party by
Judy Greenwood-Speers in 2001. Leader,
Mike Schreiner (left) Like Harris, de Jong is an
eco-capitalist. He defines his political philosophy as "socially progressive, fiscally conservative, and environmentally aware". He has long supported conservative economic policies, including a gradual shift from the taxation of incomes to the taxation of natural resources. He has also spoken against extensive government subsidies and funding for crown corporations. At the October 2005
Green Party of Ontario Annual General Meeting, de Jong narrowly avoided a "leadership review" when 67% of voting members voted against it. The GPO constitution requires that a leadership review be held bi-annually; If more than one-third of voting members had opted for a review, a leadership race would have been held in 2006. At the 2007 AGM, de Jong survived the next scheduled review, this time with approximately 71% support from party members. This followed what was considered the strongest election performance by the GPO to date. Speaking at the Green Party of Ontario AGM in May 2009, de Jong announced that he would not be running for re-election as leader of the party. In the September 14, 2006, Parkdale–High Park by-election, de Jong received 6.2 percent of the vote. On November 7, 2006, he was nominated as the GPO candidate in the riding of
Davenport for the
2007 Ontario general election. In that election, de Jong captured 10.26 percent of the vote, his best showing as a member of the Green Party. De Jong was a candidate for Ward 18 in
Toronto's 2010 municipal election. As of December 2014, de Jong was living in
Faro, Yukon and was the
Green Party of Canada candidate in the
Yukon riding in the
2015 federal election, placing a distant fourth. De Jong was elected leader of the Yukon Green Party in September 2016. He resigned as leader in 2019. ==Election campaigns==