Friday October 11, 2024 | SOOKE, BC [Updated 4 pm]
BC ELECTION CAMPAIGN DAY 21 of 28
BC Election 2024 news coverage by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Your 28-day voter’s guide for BC Election 2024
To represent Juan de Fuca-Malahat as MLA is the goal of BC Green candidate David Evans in this 43rd BC provincial election.
He says he arrived at politics as a career option by way of “a slow burn”. But his depth of analysis on the widest range of issues that impact the riding is clearly long-steeped.
Evans has been a business owner in Sooke for over 25 years; still percolating in the background is his Stick in the Mud Roastorium coffee wholesale business. Through that business adventure he has connected with the community on a daily basis through the previous people-facing retail The Stick in the Mud Coffee House retail coffee shop in town centre. It was always a place that people felt they could hang their hat and be part of a supportive community.
This essence of Evans has carried forward into his politics with the BC Greens. He brings thoughtfulness and attention to detail while searching for and embracing the root causes of big picture complex issues.
During this campaign David Evans has been getting to know other parts of the vast new Juan de Fuca-Malahat electoral area. With a 3,116 sq km footprint, the newly-boundaried riding reaches as far beyond Sooke as Port Renfrew, and from one side of the south island at Metchosin and East Sooke to the other side at Mill Bay, Cobble Hill and Shawnigan. Juan de Fuca-Malahat touches urbanizing town, small town, farm and trail, seaside and wilderness.
Driving the riding to meet folks in their local communities has been a huge challenges for candidates in Juan de Fuca-Malahat but with an electric car that eliminates any carbon footprint impact by Evans in his many campaign trips.
“The riding is so big and diverse,” says Evans. He points to issues that affect residents across the area including health-care and the cost of living.
And in terms of issues, Evans says he’s glad that Langford is no longer part of the riding (i.e. formerly Langford-Juan de Fuca) as that fast-urbanizing city has vastly different local concerns than say Sooke or Shawnigan or Otter Point.
That sample principle applies to other areas that have been separated like Shawnigan, Mill Bay and Cobble Hill are no longer with Duncan, and Metchosin is no longer combined with Colwood and Metchosin.
All-candidates meetings:
Here’s where David has participated in all-candidates meetings during this campaign:
- Students at Edward Milne Community School (EMCS)
- East Sooke (Sept 16) by the East Sooke Neighbourhood Association
- Otter Point (Sept 29) organized by the Otter Point and Shirley Residents and Ratepayers Association
- Sooke (Oct 7) at EMCS Theatre, organized by Sooke Multi-Belief Initiative and the Sooke Region Chamber of Commerce
- Mill Bay (Oct 13) organized by the Mill Bay Community League, at Kerry Park
Most of the all-candidates meetings — and there have been several in Juan de Fuca-Malahat — have had a format where issues and views are presented, without much if any traditional debate or challenge to the other candidates. But the October 13 debate in Mill Bay will be in the traditional debate style, a format that tends to highlight how the candidates respond in real time to addressing a range of viewpoints.
Evans appreciates the many community organizations and volunteers who have organized the all-candidates meetings. It one of the best ways to reach a lot of people who are obviously paying attention to the issues and very likely plan to vote.
Door-knocking is also very important for meeting people where they are, but the investment of time and travel is hit and miss.
What people look for in a candidate is “you the person, someone you can know and trust”, says Evans.
Green leadership:
In this election BC could end up with a strong number of MLAs from each of the three major parties.
But most indicators now point to no majority for the BC NDP after seven years as government, but likely a minority government (47 or more seats in a 93-seat BC Legislative Assembly) led by the BC NDP or the BC Conservatives (a party that is resurrected but essentially brand new in the past year).
The BC Greens hope to achieve more than the two seats they won in 2020. BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has been waxing long about winning five or seven seats. That would certainly have a balance of power impact for whichever Green MLAs get elected on October 19.
“Sonia is quick-witted,” says Evans, something she demonstrated during the televised BC leaders debate on October 8. “She is a strong woman who stands up for things,” says the Juan de Fuca-Malahat candidate.
Political discourse:
With a nod to the importance of news media within the landscape of democracy, Evans feels that political discourse in this election has suffered because “media is struggling”.
“We used to have things that would bring us together but those are so few and far between now,” Evans told Island Social Trends this week.
That’s why he has participated in as many all-candidates events as possible, to spread the word about what he offers with the opportunity for comparison to the other candidates.
Three-way race:
The work to become the next MLA for Juan de Fuca-Malahat is a three-way race.
Two of the candidates are well known in Sooke — Evans and also the BC NDP candidate Dana Lajeunesse.
The other candidate is Dr Marina Sapozhkinov for the BC Conservatives; her campaign is perhaps stronger on the east side of the riding where she built her medical practice.
Why he’s running:
Evans says the BC NDP has over the years made a lot of “large premature announcements that have not followed through” and that he’s worried about the impacts of the massive shifts in housing that new BC legislation would bring to the communities in the Juan de Fuca-Malahat area.
He feels the BC Conservatives would take the province back to a “colonial economy”.
But after selling his coffee shop last year, what ultimately pushed him over the edge to run is to be “a better quality of politician” — to be available, accountable, thoughtful and diplomatically disruptive. He’s got some creative ideas that could lead BC in some robust new directions in health-care and education.
Seven more days:
The heavy-lifting policy work of the campaign is done. The marketing plans are baked in, the big Team Evans fundraiser has happened, and most of the all-candidates events are done.
For Evans what comes in these last seven days of the 2024 BC election campaign is waving signs along traffic corridors, that last all-candidates event on October 13 in Mill Bay (12 noon at Kerry Park Arena, 1035 Shawnigan Lake Rd, Mill Bay), getting to a Voting Place to vote in advance this Thanksgiving weekend (advance voting runs Oct 10 to 13 and Oct 15 to 16), and answering any other questions from voters that come in.
And maybe one more BC Green press conference in person at BC Green headquarters in Victoria.
“This is so important, this is a change election,” says Evans. You can feel the drive. He wants this.
===== RELATED:
- Voting & governance in BC: two-party system evolving to three-party framework (October 6, 2024)
- BC Greens push for well-being framework in Election 2024 (October 1, 2024)
- BC Greens: schools need more funding for youth drug education & supports (September 24, 2024)
- BC Greens campaign kickoff in Victoria Sept 21 (September 21, 2024)
- Early push: Elections BC says people can start voting today (September 21, 2024)
- Greens support Juan de Fuca-Malahat candidate David Evans at fundraiser in Metchosin (September 11, 2024)
- NEWS SECTIONS: BC ELECTION 2024 NEWS | POLITICS
- ELECTION CALENDAR: 28-DAY BC ELECTION CAMPAIGN ITINERARY CALENDAR