Liberal in Saanich Gulf Islands, Renee Hetherington, to run

1. September 12, 2009: SGI Federal Liberal Renee Hetherington’s Nomination Speech (video)

2. September 12, 2009: The race in Saanich-Gulf Islands just got a lot more interesting

2. Briony Penn:

“I am very proud to nominate Renee Hetherington to be our candidate in the next federal election. I encouraged Renee to seek this nomination because I know she has what it takes to defeat Gary Lunn – WIN this riding – and help put an end to the shame of the Stephen Harper government.

As your candidate in the last election, I had to increase the Liberal vote by 6,000 votes – and I did. I had to gain the Green and NDP vote –- and I did. What happened? The Conservative vote went up! We learned a tough lesson last October. This isn’t the “green riding” some people think it is. It’s a tough nut to crack!

What can we do? We can – we must – learn from the last election and choose the candidate who will hold the voters who supported me last time AND reach out to the moderate voters who left us. That candidate is Renee Hetherington.

In fact … if you sat down at a drawing board to come up with the ideal Liberal candidate for this riding at this point in time, you’d start with someone with a strong grasp of the economic challenges facing Canada and a really impressive business background. How about somebody with an MBA who’s run a number of successful companies, and now consults to the resource sector? That’s a good beginning.

You’d be smart to decide your candidate would be a woman – and you might dream up a woman who had the savvy and the strength to be a cattle rancher – a woman who was ELECTED by the cattlemen in BC to be their executive director. [Aside to audience: Sounds improbable, doesn’t it?]

But of course you’d want your candidate to have impressive environmental credentials, too. So you’d make her a climate scientist – a PhD – who’s written numerous papers for peer-reviewed scientific journals and even has a book being published by Cambridge University Press — and the book would be on climate change. Okay – you’re dreaming in Technicolor now, right? So go ahead and make her an absolutely unbelievably well qualified candidate.

Say she’s a business person, and a cattle rancher, and a consultant to the resource sector and a climate scientist – and now give her family roots that go back three generations in this riding, on Salt Spring Island. Okay – you’ve done it. You’ve created an absolutely amazing Liberal candidate – and she’s standing right here.

I am proud to nominate Renee Hetherington as OUR next Liberal candidate in Saanich Gulf Islands.”