Good governance, a respect for democratic freedoms and sound, science-based environmental policy are three issues that the local Liberal Party of Canada candidate thinks will be front-and-centre in the next federal election.
Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, the former mayor of West Vancouver, was chosen as the party’s nominee in the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country riding at nomination meetings from June 12 to 15. She’ll face off against incumbent Conservative MP John Weston and others yet to be named in the next federal election — tentatively scheduled for Oct. 19, 2015.
Weston, who has served as MP since 2008, was named the Conservatives’ candidate in May.
Goldsmith-Jones, who served two terms as West Vancouver’s mayor, ending in 2011, beat out Gibsons businessman Robert Cannon-Brown for the Liberal nomination.
On Friday (June 20), she said people concerned about threats to Canada’s democratic principles and to the environment posed by Stephen Harper’s policies and governing style are at least part of what motivated her to seek the nomination.
“People in the riding were talking to me about their concerns that our parliamentary democracy is threatened, about freedom of speech, concerned that public policy is being based not on science but on ideology, and that the environment and the economy are being treated as separate items,” Goldsmith-Jones said.
“When people were talking about those things, I thought, ‘Well, I couldn’t agree more.’”
Goldsmith-Jones said she thinks having Justin Trudeau as leader — she mentioned the fact that his mother, Margaret, was from B.C. — has created a fair bit of excitement about the party locally.
“In the past few months we’ve more than doubled the number of Liberal members in this riding,” she said.
