MLA Sonia Furstenau launches bid to lead Greens
Credit to Author: Rob Shaw| Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2020 23:13:30 +0000
VICTORIA — Green MLA Sonia Furstenau launched her bid to become the party’s next leader on Monday.
Furstenau, the MLA for Cowichan Valley, is the first major candidate to declare after Andrew Weaver resigned as leader and stepped away from the party earlier this month.
“It is a time to dream big, to reach for the limits of our potential and to put working together to find solutions above everything else,” she said. “This is the future I want for my family and for my children who are just at the start of their lives. This is the future I want for every single community in our province.”
At a news conference in Victoria, Furstenau said she wants to continue the fight for political change that she first began when opposing the Shawnigan Lake contaminated soil dump in her riding.
The other B.C. Green MLA, Adam Olsen, is serving as the party’s interim leader and so is ineligible from running for the full-time position. Weaver was the lone Green member of the legislature until Furstenau and Olsen joined him following the 2017 election, marking a historic moment for the party. Weaver recently said he would sit as an independent.
Leadership candidates have until April 15 to declare. Rules call for three public debates, $16,000 in fees to the party and campaign spending limits of $300,000. The winner will be named at a convention in Nanaimo on June 28.
As leader, Furstenau said, she would continue to support the B.C. NDP minority government through the confidence and supply agreement that mandates the Greens to vote with the NDP on confidence matters in the legislature, and the NDP to consult with the Greens on parts of its legislative mandate.
She said she does not believe there is a risk that the Greens will be pushed off the electoral map by the governing NDP, which is seeking a majority government in the next election. The Greens won three seats in 2017 and hold the balance of power in the legislature amid a near-tie between the B.C. Liberals and NDP.
“I think beyond the kind of obvious separation from us from the other two major parties and their intention to continue to subsidize fossil fuel industry in 2020 which is an illogical decision from my point of view, I think there’s a lot of other ways that we distinguish ourselves from the NDP,” said Furstenau.
“We are an evidence and data driven party. We bring panels of experts together to help inform the policy that we make. We look to the most recent research. And we see this huge abundance of innovative ideas out there. And the NDP seem unwilling to really be do anything beyond tinkering around the edges.”
Furstenau said she will also have a different leadership style than Weaver.
“I will demonstrate very much that my leadership is inclusive, it is to bring people in, to widen our support, and to widen the people who can recognize that, really, the Green represent what many people in communities across B.C. would like to see in their politics,” she said.
“For me leadership isn’t about being the loudest or the most dominant person in the room,” Furstenau added. “It is about listening and creating a sense of engagement and belonging.”
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