The Green Party’s support extends to the riding’s most famous celebrity.
Pamela Anderson was among the 100 people to attend Wednesday night’s B.C. Green Party town hall at the Beban Park social centre in Nanaimo.
The former Baywatch star, who is from Ladysmith, attended the meeting with representatives from Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who are filming a documentary on fish farming.
“It’s nice that it’s on the table and that people are talking about it and people are concerned about it, because it’s a huge issue. That’s why I brought a couple of friends from Sea Shepherd to make sure they could explain what they’ve seen,” Anderson told the News Bulletin. “It was nice to be able to speak to the community and see that they have the same concerns and just make sure they have the proper information because these guys are filming and finding wild salmon in the farms and all the sea lice and everything.”
Locky MacLean, a captain with Sea Shepherd, said his group recently returned from three weeks in the Clayoquot Sound, where he alleged they found sea lice and baby wild salmon in the farms. He advocates for quicker action to take fish farms out of the water and said a peaceful protest flotilla is planned for later this month in Campbell River to raise awareness of the issue.
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Pamela Anderson was at tonight's B.C. Green Party town hall in Nanaimo. Here she is with Nanaimo-Ladysmith MP Paul Manly. #Nanaimo #Ladysmith pic.twitter.com/0pkZ3PJi1V
— Nanaimo Bulletin (@NanaimoBulletin) July 18, 2019
Anderson said she doesn’t attend many town halls, but said it’s nice to be home after travelling all over the world talking about green issues and the green new deal.
“You have to count on the Greens to get to the environmental issues and not being concerned about what all the politics [are],” she said at the meeting. “So I’m just happy to help in any way. Keep working hard.”
A range of topics were covered at the meeting including energy policy, forestry, and mental health and addictions. B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver talked about his party’s working relationship with the governing New Democrats and said there are times his party is in firm opposition, such as with LNG subsidies, but other times when it can work constructively on legislation.
“We continue to work with the B.C. NDP … to bring ideas to the table, to hold them accountable for ideas that we don’t [support] and push forward a direction that we think British Columbia needs to go,” Weaver said. “And we try to do that in a manner that’s responsible to the amounts of influence we believe British Columbians have given us. We … have been given an enormous responsibility in this balance of power and that, to us, we believe needs to be used wisely.”
Nanaimo-Ladysmith MP Paul Manly of the federal Green Party was invited to share the town hall, and he, too, talked about political co-operation. As an example, he said the Conservative Party put forward an environmental bill, Manly and Green Party leader Elizabeth May were the only non-Conservatives to vote in favour, it failed, and then the Green MPs voted in favour of a similar Liberal bill.
“Climate is not a partisan issue. It is an all-hands-on deck issue and we need to work together across party lines to be dealing with this issue,” Manly said. “I think that one of the big problems in Parliament is the way it’s dealt with in a partisan way.”
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