Cariboo-Prince George Green Party candidate Mackenzie Kerr has no illusions about the high-powered competition she is facing in her bid to become the area’s next MP .
“We’re up against the big guys,” Kerr told about 40 people gathered for the party’s office opening Friday in Prince George. “We’re being taken seriously and that is really, really exciting.”
Her passion is sustainability, she said.
“If you’ve known me for longer than few minutes, you’d probably figure that out,” she said.
Sustainable forestry, local agriculture and a new economy are the three things she will be focusing on during her campaign.
“The new economy is something that is the future,” she said. “I think we need to be investing in renewable energy and talking about it at every level of government, pushing it forward every chance we get … Prince George has the potential for that.”
Kerr said it was a newspaper article about her that led her, eventually, to the Green Party. The article was about a 4-H trip she had made to Ottawa and in the article she “casually” mentioned that she wanted to be environment minister someday. That caught the attention of a local Green Party official who invited her to meet party leader Elizabeth May during a trip to the city.
She ended up sitting beside May at a dinner and asked her the party could get more people involved.
“She said start a campus club,” said Kerr. “Well, you can’t say ‘no’ to Elizabeth May, so I started a campus club.”
She ended up running the Green Party Club at UNBC for more than a year. That led to her being asked to be the candidate.
“My background is in forestry and agriculture. I’m studying forestry at UNBC, but I’m taking a semester off to run the campaign full time. If I’m not elected I go back in January, but I probably will be … right?” she said with a chuckle.
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