More than a few people enter politics with a hope of exercising power or advancing their careers. For some, the choice is an economic one. They expect rewards by way of salaries, allowances, expense accounts and pensions.

However, some politicians see wrongs and want to make them right. BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is one of those. She provided a discussion of her motivation for entering politics in a lengthy article published in the quarterly journal BC Studies. The entire piece is attached but excerpts follow:

In 2013, I was teaching at a school in Shawnigan Lake when the provincial government issued a permit to South Island Aggregates that allowed it to fill the giant hole it’d made in its quarry pit with 5 million tonnes of contaminated soil.

The quarry is located on Stebbings Road, partway up a mountain at the south end of Shawnigan Lake. Shawnigan Creek, a salmon-bearing waterway, wraps around the quarry site on its way to the lake, which is a source of drinking water for approximately twelve thousand people. Many on the lake have drawn their water directly from it for decades, and the Shawnigan Lake region had long been a gathering and trading place for South Island First Nations, including the Malahat, T’Sou-ke, and Cowichan Tribes.

…[the permit] listed the contaminants that would be allowed at this site: metals, dioxins, furans, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, styrene, methyl tertiary butyl ether, volatile petroleum hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chlorinated hydrocarbons, phenolic substances, chloride, sodium, and glycols…

That… was the beginning of my journey into the world of politics and governance on a mission to try to restore my own trust in how decisions are made. …I was focused on the mission to get Permit 105809 revoked, but I also focused on the mission to make sure this did not happen to any other community in British Columbia.

Just over a year later, in August 2014, the tailings dam collapsed at Mount Polley, contaminating Hazeltine Creek, Polley Lake, and Quesnel Lake with 24 million cubic metres of tailings and wastewater.

We could not ignore the parallels with Shawnigan Lake. Quesnel Lake is a drinking water source for the people of Likely and an important habitat and migration route for salmon. What had been one of the most pristine lakes in British Columbia, and a critical habitat for sockeye salmon, now has a lake bottom contaminated with mercury, selenium, copper, arsenic, and other heavy metals.

…The conclusion of the auditor general was that the cause of this was “over-reliance on qualified professionals.” The government of British Columbia had become a passive actor in regulation, compliance, and oversight. The report went so far as to say that the Ministry of Energy and Mines was at risk of regulatory capture – that the regulatory body tasked with oversight of industry had itself become dominated by that very industry.

In Shawnigan Lake, professional reliance was a part of the permitting process for the contaminated landfill. The provincial government had relied on the engineering reports from Active Earth, the company that had been hired by South Island Aggregates (later renamed as Cobble Hill Holdings). A few years into the battle, which involved two court cases…, a document was delivered by a whistleblower to the Shawnigan Basin Watershed office.

The document was a fourteen-page agreement between the owners of Cobble Hill Holdings and engineers at Active Earth, agreeing to a fifty-fifty split of the profits from the contaminated landfill…

The Mount Polley disaster and the threat posed to Shawnigan Lake made it clear that I had another mission – reform of professional reliance…

After the 2017 election, BC Green Party support allowed NDP leader John Horgan to form government. The Confidence and Supply Agreement between the parties required the Horgan government to address failures in the professional reliance model.

Of course, that is only part of what interests Sonia Furstenau. As leader, she and the BC Greens are focused on

• accessible public healthcare,
• affordable housing,
• public transit and transportation systems,
• encouragement of small businesses,
• a truly progressive and fair tax system without loopholes and frivolous tax credits,
• building social and economic equity,
• carbon neutrality and renewable energy,
• protection of biodiversity,
• conservation of forest ecosystems,
• improved oversight of resource extraction industries.

Reading through Green Party statements and policy documents, an approach different than BC’s right-wing opposition parties is apparent. Instead of rage farming, we find well reasoned policy positions.

The question is whether or not people are willing to drop long-held voting choices and support a party with policies that aim to protect the province for future generations.

Postscript: I have had the opportunity to talk with Sonia Furstenau a number of times, most recently in her Legislative office in Victoria. Each time, I have been impressed with the breadth of her knowledge and her focus on improving the lives of all citizens of the province. Here is a podcast where Sonia talks about DOING POLITICS DIFFERENTLY.