By BRIONY PENN

As you know, I want to see Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May elected to the House of Commons, but having come to know this riding well, I do not believe she can be successful in Saanich-Gulf Islands.

Further, I made my choice of candidate long before Elizabeth arrived on the scene, and would like to take this opportunity to explain why Renee Hetherington is so well suited to be, and can become, our next MP.

1) Renee has deep connections with Salt Spring and a long family history here. Both sets of grandparents and many relatives have been Islanders. Renee spent many summers with her Dodds grandparents, who lived next door to the old Hughes farm, where Meg Buckley lives now.

2) Renee’s education and training are an ideal fit for public service at this time in Canada. She has a B.A. in Business and Economics from SFU and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario. Her Ph.D. from UVic. was multi-disciplinary, in anthropology, biology, geography and geology. She received a National Sciences and Research Council doctoral fellowship for her work on Haida Gawaii, and is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research postdoctoral fellow for her work modelling the last 135,000 years of global climate change and relating it to humans.

3) This work led to her writing a university text with evolutionary biologist Robert G. B. Reid. The Climate Connection: Climate Change and Modern Human Evolution will be published next spring by Cambridge University Press.

4) Renee hasn’t spent all her time in academia; she also co-owned and managed a cattle ranch in the Kootenays, was elected executive director of the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association and was appointed by the Minister of Agriculture to the Cattle Industry Development Board.

5) Renee has also managed a number of family businesses and is now working with her husband Bob Thompson as a geological, environmental and business consultant. She is particularly interested in assisting small business owners to improve the bottom line with green ideas and technology.

6) Renee worked on my campaign last year and did an exemplary job. She completely understands how crucial it is to get green policies off the fringe and onto the national stage, and that the best (and only) route for achieving this quickly is to develop green policies inside a political party capable of forming a national government.  

This brings me to Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada, whom Elizabeth May herself believes will form government as a result of the next election. Rest assured, Michael is well aware of the urgency of the environment as an issue and can be relied on to bring to it both sanity and sense. I urge the people of Saanich-Gulf Islands to do the same. 

We need the LPC to lead the country and we need Renee Hetherington as our representative on Michael’s team!

Finally, as we all know when politically speaking, Saanich-Gulf Islands is a tough nut to crack. Though it is sometimes touted as “the greenest riding in Canada,” this is not actually true. Further, in another riding —Guelph, Ontario — the Green vote has steadily been increasing on the Liberal incumbent, making it a much better bet statistically for Elizabeth to win there. However, apparently she does not want to run against a Liberal and would prefer to oust Gary Lunn.

But the bulk of our population lives in Saanich, which has been well described as “a small-c conservative riding.” Such voters who did not support me will not support Elizabeth, but they may well decide to support Renee with her strong understanding of the economy and with Michael Ignatieff as her party’s leader. With Renee, we have a solid opportunity to challenge Gary Lunn but first, she must win the nomination. We have two Liberal candidates vying for your vote, Renee Hetherington and Kit Spence.

Voting will take place on Sept. 12 and the deadline for joining the LPC or to renew your membership in order to vote is Aug. 27. To follow through, see www.voterenee.ca or www.teamsgi.ca. 

Those who would like to hear this outstanding candidate speak and meet with her can attend a reception at Sacred Mountain Lavender Farm, 401 Musgrave Rd. on Sunday, Aug. 23 at 2:30 p.m. Thank you.

The writer was the Liberal candidate for Saanich-Gulf Islands in the last federal election.