Brennan Wauters refers to himself as a "dedicated environmentalist" who has been pursuing the opportunity to run as a candidate for the federal Green Party for the past few months.
Wauters was recently named as the Greens' nominee in the riding of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country -though he couldn't give the exact date that the nomination was made official.
His Green Party biography states, "He has been consistently involved with community and service organizations such as the Federation of B.C. Youth in Care Network, the Rainforest Action Network, Village Vancouver and the Vancouver Coastal Housing Network."
Wauters also is an independent filmmaker and currently works as a set designer and technician in the film industry in the Vancouver.
Though this is the first time he has run for office, Wauters isn't entirely new to politics, having been a director with the Young Liberals of Alberta when he was attending his hometown University of Lethbridge. He said he left that position to take on a posting on an agricultural exchange through the Canada World Youth in Thailand.
Wauters said he's in the process of moving to the riding -most likely West Vancouver because of his work, but if he were to win the election, he said he would likely move to either Pemberton or Squamish.
"The riding itself is probably the most interesting riding in the province because it has the greatest diversity," he said. "You have West Vancouver which is suburban and quite affluent -and then there's the Sea to Sky Corridor, which is much more small-town and rural."
Though he's hardly a youngster at age 42, Wauters insisted, "I'm young at heart, let's put it that way. I think my general demeanour is going to surprise a lot of people. I'm clearly not the archetypical hippie, but I work with those people and I'm pretty fluid with them. I'm certainly not intimidated."
Waters described himself as a pragmatic environmentalist. During the campaign, he hopes to get to and from as many engagements as possible by bicycle because he believes in minimizing his environmental footprint.
"I feel that the crisis with the environment has escalated to a pretty extreme level. I think there's a real problem when there's a disconnect between humans and nature," he said.
"There's definitely a pragmatic consideration, though. If we're running on a platform that's focussed exclusively on the protection of nature, we're not going to come anywhere close to gaining power."
