Two-term Liberal incumbent Jane Thornthwaite says she’s running on her record of delivering needed projects to constituents as she faces two challengers in the North Vancouver-Seymour riding.
NDP candidate Michael Charrois and Green Party candidate Joshua Johnson are both looking to unseat Thornthwaite in what has been a Liberal stronghold.
Although the Liberals’ share of the vote dropped slightly between 2009 and 2013, voters here have traditionally voted in Liberal candidates by a comfortable margin. The party has typically won with more than 50 per cent of the vote.
Thornthwaite is hoping that pattern will continue, and points to her record of delivering dollars for local projects and services needed by her constituents.
“Obviously, the No. 1 issue is traffic and transportation,” says Thornthwaite. She points to the province’s contribution towards the $200-million Lower Lynn interchange – an infrastructure project being funded by three levels of government – as a major step to solving local traffic woes.
“This has been probably the biggest investment I’ve been able to secure for my constituents and something they’ve been asking for for years,” says Thornthwaite. “It’s going to start making a difference next year.
Thornthwaite also points to $38 million in provincial funding for an Argyle school replacement, funding towards youth mental health projects, including operating costs for a youth mental health centre, and the province providing $193 million towards the new $700-million Lions Gate sewage treatment plant as other major benefits she’s helped get for North Vancouver.
Charrois, the NDP candidate and long-time party member, who previously worked on the Sensible BC campaign to stop enforcing marijuana laws, is one of two candidates hoping to loosen the Liberal stranglehold on the riding. Charrois, an actor and drama teacher who moved to North Vancouver in 2001, has run for the NDP twice before at the federal level, as well as provincially in Alberta.
Charrois says he’s running on the issue that’s of concern to most people. “Life is getting so unaffordable,” he says. “People, including me, are working harder and harder and not getting ahead.
“(B.C. Premier Christy Clark is working for the people at the top. (NDP leader) John Horgan is going to work for the other 98 per cent.”
Charrois says the Kinder Morgan pipeline is a major issue in the riding, noting that B.C.’s “five conditions” for approving the pipeline “suddenly disappeared with a $771,000 donation (from Kinder Morgan and associated companies and groups) to the Liberal Party.”
Traffic congestion is another important issue, he said. “We need more investment in transit.”
This election is a first for Green Party candidate Joshua Johnson, 19 – both as a political candidate and as a voter.
“I’ve never voted in an election before because I’ve never been eligible,” he said.
Johnson first got active in politics during the teachers’ strike in 2014. As a student at the University of Ottawa, Johnson got a crash course in politics when he worked as a parliamentary page in the House of Commons.
“It allowed me to see how Canadian politics and democracy works,” he said. “I was impressed by the scope of politics but also disappointed about how unrepresentative and undemocratic a lot of it was. There’s a lot of backroom politics going on.”
Johnson said lack of affordability is an election issue “especially for my generation … people growing up in North Vancouver will never be able to live in North Vancouver,” he says. Johnson points to Green Party policies on a living wage and guaranteed income as ones that promote a more equitable society.
Kinder Morgan is a huge issue, he says, as is the health of democratic institutions. “We believe in proportional representation,” he said. “We don’t take corporate and union donations. We’re a political party that doesn’t act like political parties do.”
In the 2013 provincial election, Thornthwaite beat NDP candidate Jim Hanson by about 4,700 votes. The Green Party won seven per cent of the vote.
