Camille Currie, a longtime Greater Victoria resident, business owner and health-care advocate, hopes to represent the Esquimalt-Colwood riding for the B.C. Greens as the provincial election cycle approaches.
Currie was born in Metchosin, and now owns a personal training business.
"I am a busy mother of two. I am experiencing everything that a lot of people in this community are experiencing," she told Black Press Media in an interview.
She has lived across the country and followed a number of career paths, including as a federal government investigator, which she says would help her if she were to represent her riding on the provincial level.
As a longtime advocate for health-care patients, she started B.C. Health Care Matters, which aims to advocate on behalf of patients, and to put public pressure on governments with an emphasis on primary care and family doctors.
If elected, she and the party hope to redistribute funds from the Urgent Primary Care Centre to reform the Esquimalt UPCC, "because it has not proven to be a model, and to be a facility that is providing what it was intended for and what it was promised to be, which was to provide primary care attachment as well as acute care attachment for people."
"There's a lot of concern around spending, I think more than other election times, and it's especially one of my motivators as well because as a small business owner, if my husband runs our business the way the government does, we'd be bankrupt," she said. Her husband runs a marine repair company.
After spending time speaking with members of her potential riding, she says transportation has become a "hot topic." She hopes to be a "champion" for transportation in the Legislature by supporting a plan for the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, and she hopes for public transportation to be more accessible to members of the riding.
"This riding has the largest strip of the rail service running through it right now," she said. "This is another area where it's as though the government has said 'if we don't know what to do, we're going to not do anything,' and that's not a legitimate excuse."
She also hopes to see free public transportation for those under 18 years of age.
"Being able to get our children to move around these communities is important," she said. "This is a measure to be able to let some of our children get into that workforce and help. It's also important because it relieves a burden on parents and families who are just being pinched right now."
Despite never holding office, she does have experience on the election circuit after running for the Langford-Juan-de Fuca seat last year in a by-election after John Horgan stepped down, which she said has helped with her confidence moving forward in the October election.
"I'm incredibly motivated to run again. We've come in second in this riding in the last two elections, and so I'm hopeful that we'll come in first this time," she said.
