The BC Green Party announced a slew of candidates this week for this month’s provincial election, including five for ridings in the Southern Interior.
The cutoff date for nominates was Friday, and it appears the Greens will be running candidates in six of seven ridings in the Okanagan and area.
The only riding where the Greens won’t have a candidate is Boundary-Similkameen. Other than that, they’ll be represented in all three Kelowna ridings, Penticton, Vernon-Monashee and Shuswap.
The five new candidates are:
- Peter Truch, Kelowna West
- Amanda Poon, Kelowna-Mission
- John Janmaat, Kelowna-Lake Country
- Keli Westgate, Vernon-Monashee
- Owen Madden, Shuswap
They join Ted Shumaker in Penticton.
“I am excited by the prospect of working with this talented slate of candidates,” Sonia Furstenau, leader of the BC Greens, said in a press release. “B.C. needs more MLAs who will put people ahead of politics.”
According to the Green Party, Truch is a senior mobility engineer and urban planner, and is also a small business owner.
Poon is an analyst at Interior health and volunteers with various organizations and is president of the Kelowna Downtown Knox Mountain Neighbourhood Association.
Janmaat is described as an avid outdoorsman, a father of two and is an associate professor of economics at UBCO. He’s also the current chair of the Kelowna Agricultural Advisory Committee.
Westgate says her political goals include improving public transit and assuring a guaranteed livable income. She was also the Green Party candidate for the 2017 provincial election.
On his Facebook page, Madden says he was trained as a lawyer in Ireland before moving to Canada and Enderby, where he farms organic vegetables.