Despite glum results for Burnaby’s Green party candidates, cheers still rang out through the Admiral Pub on Monday night as a group gathered to watch the election results come in.
Of Burnaby’s three federal ridings, only Burnaby North-Seymour’s Green candidate Lynne Quarmby was able to secure more than five per cent of the votes.
Quarmby was calm and collected as she entered the Admiral Pub. Her supporters cheered and applauded the SFU professor, waiting their turn to greet the fourth-place finisher.
“To be honest, it was the worst-case scenario. I didn’t expect it to be this bad,” she told the NOW when asked what she thought of the results in Burnaby North-Seymour.
“I believed, when I set out to do this, that I could win, and I still think that I could have won, but the key thing that was missing was enough other people also believing that I could win,” she added. “I think that if enough other people could have believed, we might have been able to make it happen.”
When asked what she thought went wrong, she said she and her fellow Green candidates were hit hard by strategic voting.
Like other Green candidates in Burnaby ridings, Quarmby encountered many people during her campaign who told her they wanted to vote Green but were too afraid to, fearing it would split the vote in favour of Conservative candidate Mike Little.
“I tried to tell them that if everybody who said that actually voted Green, we would do great,” she said.
But fear was too great in the newly minted riding of Burnaby North-Seymour, according to Quarmby.
“This election it was the strategic voting to get rid of Harper. I think people were so afraid of Harper, that that dominated everything,” she said.
“I think we’ll do much better next time, when we don’t have that spectre hanging over us. I think the spectre of Harper is what killed us this time,” she said.
Whether that next time includes first-time candidate Quarmby, it’s too early to say. The SFU professor turned activist and now political candidate said it was still all too fresh.
“I think I had a big impact at every debate, at every event. I think that was a really important thing,” she said.
Other Green candidates suffer tough losses
Green party candidates in Burnaby South and New Westminster-Burnaby were upbeat Monday in the face of two tough defeats.
In New Westminster-Burnaby, first-time candidate Kyle Routledge finished with a preliminary result of 4.6 per cent of the votes or 1,782 cast in his favour. With 160 out of 198 polls reported, Wyatt Tessari, Green candidate in Burnaby South, had secured 936 votes – 2.8 per cent of the vote.
“I think the strategic voting worked beyond what people expected, and in essence I think they missed their objective of going for a minority,” Tessari said.
Tessari echoed Burnaby North-Seymour candidate Lynne Quarmby’s thoughts that the threat of another government led by Stephen Harper was too much for voters and so many chose to vote strategically, which hurt the Greens greatly.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the end for the Green Party, in fact it’s more like the beginning, Tessari said.
“It’s going to come,” he added.
And Routledge couldn’t agree more.
“Even the biggest waves start really small, and I think a big wave is building and it might take a few more elections but the momentum is there,” Routledge said over the phone late Monday night.
