Jennifer Rice gains endorsement of National organization on environmental issues

As the 2017 Provincial election campaign prepares to shift to a more active phase, the current candidates seeking office on the North Coast will be looking to secure support from a range of groups and organizations when it comes to any number of issues.

For the NDP's Jennifer Rice, her work on environmental files has clearly caught the attention of the Ontario based environmental action group called GreenPac, an organization that has included here in a list of their BC MLA's to watch and support.

That in itself is not something that would be surprising, considering her many themes on environmental issues both as an MLA and prior to running for provincial office.

Ms. Rice's profile in that area was clearly on the rise in recent years, and in particular following much of the events of the last few years at the Legislature where LNG, pipeline development and other issues dominated much of the discussion.

However the amount of  focus that GreenPac has put on her campaign is something of note particularly for a North Coast riding that normally is pretty far off the political radar and not often the focus of national interest.

That however is going to change this year, with the environmental action group having selected Ms. Rice as one of their six candidates to this point that meet their criteria for an official endorsement.

When it comes to their information campaign GreenPac has put a significant amount of focus on her work related to environmental matters, including her past experience prior to her entry into the political theatre.

All of it collected as part of a review of her biography hosted by their endorsement page.

And it's not just some additional publicity this interest will generate, along with an endorsement from GreenPac, comes a nudge towards the need for donations for her upcoming campaign.

Included in the GreenPac material is a link to pledge financial support for her efforts on the road to the Legislature this Spring.

The endorsement of the national organization has proven to be helpful to candidates in other election campaigns, GreenPac notes that from their 2015 federal efforts, 18 candidates were endorsed, with fourteen finding success on election day.

It's a rather new theme however for Northwest politics to have a national organization take such an interest in a local campaign and seek to become engaged with it to such a fashion.

How that attention translates into votes will be interesting to follow, as well as if it attracts any response from the Liberal party, their candidate Herb Pond and his supporters on the North Coast.

The support for Ms. Rice from the environmental group, once again offers up a reminder that so far the North Coast campaign is very much a two party race.

As we noted on the blog last week, the Green Party,  the political group that is most associated with Environmental matters, is seemingly content to sit things out on the sidelines when it comes to fielding candidates in the Northwest.

You can learn more about what GreenPac is all about from their introduction video below:




For more items related to the British Columbia election campaign for the Northwest see our North Coast Votes Archive page.

For a wider look at the campaign across the province see our BC Election Digest page from our political portal D'Arcy McGee.