B.C. Green Leader Sonia Furstenau examines a wall of multi-coloured yarn in a Victoria yarn shop to find the one with just the right look and feel.
The 54-year-old is knitting a sweater for her first grandchild, due in November. By then, Furstenau will either be Victoria-Beacon Hill’s new MLA — after serving the Cowichan Valley riding since 2017 — or a leader without a seat in the B.C. legislature.
Sitting down for an interview at the Bee Hive Wool Shop on Douglas Street on a rainy August day, Furstenau said while she was raised in Edmonton — where the family moved so her father could pursue his master’s and PhD — Vancouver Island has always felt like home.
Her grandparents met at Victoria College and married in Victoria, where her mother, Jan Carroll of Comox, and father, Peter Furstenau of Germany, also got married.
Furstenau spent summers at her grandmother’s house in Campbell River and later her aunt’s Ravenhill Herb Farm in Saanich.
And while her family was not politically active and she had not yet set her sights on becoming a politician, the family was politically engaged, she said. She remembers dinner talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement, drought conditions and water exports.
“It was very much instilled in me by both my mom and my dad and my extended family that as a citizen in a democracy, you have a job to pay attention, to be engaged, to vote,” said Furstenau.
By age 20, she was living in James Bay in Victoria. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria and won scholarships to study either law or history, choosing to get a master’s in history.
By 27, Furstenau had a child, and had married and divorced. She was a co-parent with her former husband. She had to work her way through school running several micro-businesses, but she said she and her son lived well.
It was the same for her mother when her parents divorced in the 1970s, she said. The family lived in social housing in Edmonton geared to her mother’s income. Her mother was able to save money to buy land, build a house and run a bed and breakfast before moving back to Saanichton
“We grew up in a world where there was a social safety net, where people weren’t expected to live outside,” said Furstenau. “We had systems that made sure that there was affordable housing.”
In the early 2000s, Furstenau met Blaise Salmon and together they had two children — a son born in 2005, and daughter in 2007, for a blended family of five kids. After earning a teaching degree in 2009 she taught at Victoria schools. Offered a job at what’s now called Brookes Shawnigan Lake private boarding school, she thought she’d give it a year.
“And then one thing led to another, led to a contaminated landfill, and here we are 13 years later and I’m back in my home,” said Furstenau.
Furstenau successfully fought, over several years, for the cancellation of a waste-discharge permit that allowed a quarry upstream from Shawnigan Lake to store contaminated soil.
She became a Cowichan Valley Regional District director, and months after the environmental permit was pulled in 2017, she was elected as a Green MLA for Cowichan Valley alongside Adam Olsen in Saanich North and the Islands.
The two joined then B.C. Green leader Andrew Weaver, and the trio became king makers in propping up the NDP and toppling the governing B.C. Liberals.
In 2020, Weaver stepped down and Furstenau became leader. The NDP called a snap election and won a majority.
Now, with Olsen declining to run again, Furstenau is the lone B.C. Green incumbent in the provincial race. She’s running in the NDP stronghold of Victoria-Beacon Hill against NDP incumbent Grace Lore and lawyer Tim Thielmann for the B.C. Conservatives. Recent polling shows the Conservatives in a dead heat with the NDP, or slightly ahead.
Furstenau, however, is undeterred. “I intend to win the riding,” she said.
‘I love being a mother more than anything else’
She said her move to the capital city is mostly related to family and not because electoral boundary revisions moved her Shawnigan Lake home from the Cowichan Valley riding she represents to the Juan de Fuca-Malahat riding.
Furstenau’s youngest son, in his second year at UVic, lives with roommates in the lower level of Furstenau’s Fairfield home, while her other son, who is 30 and soon to be a father, lives minutes down the road. “Family is everything for me, my kids, my stepkids,” said Furstenau.
“I love being a mother more than anything else.”
At the same time, her political aspirations remain fierce.
Furstenau concedes that she was disappointed that her party fielded only 69 candidates in B.C.’s 93 ridings, but optimistic that if enough voters cast a Green ballot, the party could once again help shape legislation in a minority government, as it did from 2017 to 2020.
(There are also a record 40 Independent candidates — four of whom are running on the Island — who could also play a role in a minority government.)
“This province has seen a swing from right to left over and over again and I would ask people to consider how has that worked out?” said Furstenau. She said the province is “just reeling from crisis to crisis.”
Furstenau accuses the B.C. Conservatives of pandering to U.S.-style culture-war issues, and the NDP of betraying many of its progressive values over seven years in office.
The Greens, she said, would bring the focus back to health care, the environment, the economy and communities. “We’ve achieved a lot with two or three Greens in the House and with even a few more, I think we can make a significant impact.”
In announcing the B.C. Greens’ 72-page on Tuesday, Furstenau said her first demand in a minority-government scenario would be the adoption of a “well-being framework” to guide both government policy and budgets, similar to what’s done in New Zealand and Scotland.
The framework would gauge government’s accomplishments and spending more on the outcomes in four areas — the natural environment, secure and supported people, thriving communities and robust and accountable government institutions — than just on gross domestic product.
“A well-being framework moves us to a place of recognizing that the way government operates should not be the same as the way corporations operate,” Furstenau said at a news conference at Swans Hotel in Victoria. “Government is in the business of public service, of delivering public services to people, and they should not be mistaking that with what corporations are designed to do, which is to deliver profits to shareholders.”
Visions for knitting patterns — and political mandates
While Furstenau argues that “there is no reason that people should be sleeping on sidewalks in British Columbia,” she said the answer to homelessness is not building more housing that many people will never be able to afford. Instead, her party is calling for more below-market-priced and co-op housing.
They would also end private health care, reduce the number of health authorities in B.C. to one from six, open community health centres, fund six annual visits per resident to a mental-health professional under the Medical Services Plan, ban tobacco sales in pharmacies, require all hospitals to have supervised inhalation sites, and expand both decriminalization and so-called safe supply of pharmaceutical alternatives to street drugs.
The Greens would provide free public transit, increase social assistance so people can live above the poverty line and spend $1 billion more on K-12 education.
Promises totalling $8 billion in the first year would be offset by $9 billion in higher taxes on wealthy people and large corporations, doubling existing school-tax rates for homes valued at over $3 million, and an 18 per cent tax on corporate profits over $1 billion.
Whereas the Conservative and NDP leaders would scrap the carbon tax for consumers, B.C. Greens would uphold it but give bigger rebates to consumers. The Greens would phase out natural gas, prohibit new liquefied natural gas projects and stop permitting new pipelines, building toward a “fossil-free future.”
Furstenau said the B.C. Greens are the only ones who talk in a serious way about protecting old-growth forests, water sustainability, ending subsidies to the oil and gas industry, and improving democracy via a proportional-representation voting system.
“We have hugely broadened the political conversation in this province on climate change,” said Furstenau. “Nothing is going to make life more unaffordable than ignoring the impacts of climate change.”
As the wool shop nears closing time, Furstenau — who helped bring a new hospital, high school and hospice to the Cowichan Valley — said whether it’s a knitting pattern or a political mandate, she can do anything with a vision, a purpose and a plan.
“My offer to the people of Victoria-Beacon Hill is you will have a hard-working, relentless collaborator who will put the issues of this riding in front of whoever forms government.”
“I have such deep roots here,” she said. “And especially with a grandbaby coming, I’m home and where I need to be.”
> Coming in Tuesday’s edition: John Rustad
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
