THUNDER BAY -- Christy Radbourne will be carrying the Green banner in Thunder Bay-Rainy River during the upcoming federal election.
The Ogden Community Public School principal was officially named the Green Party candidate on Saturday afternoon during a nomination meeting.
Radbourne was the only person to seek the nomination and said she was motivated to enter the political ring to work towards forming a sustainable future for upcoming generations.
“The Greens do have a long-term vision for the future. We have an economic vision for this country, we have a national strategy for moving forward in a sustainable way that will put us back as a leader on the globe,” Radbourne said.
“We’re talking about more than just the next five years, or 10 years. We’re talking about the next 50, 60 and 70 years and forward from there.”
Radbourne will run against incumbent NDP MP John Rafferty, Conservative candidate Maureen Comuzzi-Stehman who finished runner-up in the 2011 race. The Liberals have yet to formally name their candidate with Georjann Morriseau, Vince Riccio and Randy Boyd all vying to represent the party.
She acknowledges she has an uphill battle ahead of her, as the Greens had fewer than 1,000 votes during the previous election. The strategy to become more competitive starts with energizing the electorate and increasing voter turnout.
It’s all about changing the conversation and offering the voters something new. That starts with frank, honest talk and “avoiding political double speak.”
“People are disaffected, people are tuned out, people are tired of listening to politics as usual and they’re interested now in something different. We need to try to re-engage,” she said.
“We have to talk about a party that talks about allowing its members to vote how its community wants it to vote, by talking about something other than the same strategy the political pundits are talking about and sounding like a different political party.”
Radbourne joins fellow American transplant Bruce Hyer in trying to usher in a Green wave across the Thunder Bay region.
Hyer, the Thunder Bay-Superior North MP who was twice elected as an NDP candidate, is running his first campaign with the Greens and said he looks forward to campaigning alongside Radbourne.
“We are definitely a Green team,” he said following the nomination. “We will definitely have some kind of a joint approach.”
