Canada’s Green Party has admitted to editing a photo of party leader Elizabeth May to make it look like she’s holding a reusable cup when she was really holding a single-use cup.
The doctored image shows Ms. May smiling and holding a plastic reusable cup with the Green Party logo on it and a metal straw inserted in the lid. The archived image, however, shows Ms. May holding a single-use paper cup with no logo.
Ms. May said she was “completely shocked” when she learned that staff had edited the image without her knowing.
“I was completely shocked to find that the party had photoshopped an image of me from last year’s Sidney Street Market,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “My personal daily practice is to avoid single-use plastic items 100% of the time. I never drink from plastic water bottles. I always carry my own reusable coffee cup. I carry my own bamboo utensils.
“I walk the talk every day,” she added. “I hope that despite this misstep by well-meaning party staff (who hoped to brand the image with our logo), people can believe that in the original photo there is nothing I would have hidden.”
Ms. May defended her use of the single-use cup because paper cups are compostable. Her party is pushing for a ban on single-use plastics.
