BC Green candidate for Prince George-Valemount, Mackenzie Kerr, has officially kicked off her campaign.
Kerr spoke about her platform and goals for her first provincial run at a socially-distance safe campaign launch event last night (Oct. 8) at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.
“With the help of this amazing team and that experience I am ready to be your next MLA,” said Kerr during the event. Her sister Jocelyn, who is a student ASL interpreter, also signed Kerr’s speech.
Kerr announced she has been selected as the BC Green Party candidate in the Prince George-Valemount riding on Sept. 26.
She will be running against incumbent Shirley Bond of the BC Liberal Party and Sean Robson of the BC Libertarian Party
The 23-year-old UNBC forestry student also ran for the Green Party of Canada in the 2019 Federal Election, where she tripled the green vote in the Cariboo-Prince George riding, with 4,998 votes.
Kerr began her speech speaking about the importance of sustainable forestry including the spraying of glyphosate, the exportation of raw logs, and preserving old growth.
She also spoke about the economy and the difference Green MLA’s could make.
“We need to create resilient communities that have strong economies. We saw how fragile our communities are with COVID-19, so we need a lot of green MLAs elected so we can be talking about a sustainable way forward to make sure we have a new green economy that will help keep our communities resilient,” said Kerr.
“That looks like investing in hemp, in solar, in geothermal and other renewable energy resources. We need to talk about ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and small scale renewable businesses to succeed in our communities.”
Kerr also said the timing of the snap election by the BC NDP, during the pandemic, seemed like a power grab.
“Most of us are really upset at the timing of this election and someone needs to hold whoever is in power next to account to make sure our deals and our Confidence and Supply Agreement (CASA) are held,” said Kerr.
The 2017 CASA agreement between the BC Greens and the BC NDP formed the basis of the minority government.
“We got a lot of promises from the NDP – site c, fracking, affordability – that were broken so we need greens in office to hold everyone accountable,” added Kerr.
“The Greens worked hard to improve politics put forward by the NDP for the last three years and we will continue to hold the others accountable.”
The BC Green Party has a total of 74 candidates running under newly-elected leader Sonia Furstenau, who took over from Andrew Weaver, which means they weren’t able to see each riding with a candidate.
Both the BC NDP and BC Liberals have 87 candidates in the running. B.C. voters will head to the polls on Saturday, Oct. 24.
- with files from Jess Fedigan, PrinceGeorgeMatters
