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Northwest edged out of the Green debate

Northwest B.C. is set apart from the rest of the province by the Green party, or rather lack of its presence here.

NORTHWESTERN B.C. residents displayed a certain independent spirit during the last provincial election by voting in three NDP candidates to the legislature, resisting the BC Liberal hype surrounding the promise of a liquefied natural gas industry in the very region where the development was to take place.

This time around there’s another factor at play that sets the northwest apart from the rest of the province: the Green party or rather lack of its presence up here.

There’s just one Green candidate running in the North Coast riding and none in Skeena or Stikine ridings so that while there’s a lot of attention being paid to that Green’s electoral chances on Vancouver Island and elsewhere, northwest voters by and large are left on the outside of the broad examination of Green policies versus those of the BC Liberals and the BC NDP.

Of course, NDP strategists are probably happy there is no Green candidate in two northwest ridings as voters who may have gone Green are more likely to gravitate toward the NDP than the Liberals.

Whether the Greens will hold the one seat held in the last legislature, party leader Andrew Weaver’s Oak Bay riding, and/or improve will be to voters elsewhere.

But for northwest voters, with the exception of the North Coast riding, it will come down to the traditional duking it out between the BC NDP and the BC Liberals.