With the election now behind her, the Sunshine Coast’s new member of Parliament – Liberal Pam Goldsmith-Jones – says she will reach across party lines to help people with differing viewpoints work together.
“My door will be wide open. It always has been and that’s the way in which we’re successful,” Goldsmith-Jones said in an interview Tuesday, the day after her landslide win.
The rookie Liberal candidate swept the polls in the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky riding with 54.7 per cent of the vote on Oct. 19, knocking out two-term Conservative MP John Weston, who garnered 26.3 per cent.
Goldsmith-Jones was born and raised in West Vancouver, where she now lives with her husband of 31 years, Geoff Goldsmith-Jones. The couple has three grown children: William, 27, Holly, 25, and Jane, 23.
The new MP started her political career in 1992 in North Vancouver.
“I first ran in 1992 because I had graduated with a master’s degree in local government and Canadian politics and we had moved to Edgemont Village and it was at a sort of a lull,” Goldsmith-Jones said.
“Many businesses were closing and I ran purely on a community, grassroots basis to contribute to Edgemont Village, which is so central to North Vancouver as a whole. I did that when the children were two, three and five. Jane is almost 24 – the girls are quite close in age.”
After one three-year term on council, Goldsmith-Jones took six years off to focus on home-schooling her three children. The family moved around during that time between the North Shore, Gabriola Island and California, where Geoff had a job opportunity.
When the family came back to West Vancouver in 2002, Goldsmith-Jones threw her hat in the ring once again, this time in West Vancouver.
“There was a sense that I had unfinished business. There was more to contribute. That led to nine years on council in West Van,” Goldsmith-Jones said.
She was a councillor in West Vancouver from 2002 to 2005 and served as mayor from 2005 to 2011.
After four years away from politics (during which time she completed her executive MBA at Simon Fraser University, specializing in Aboriginal business and leadership), Goldsmith-Jones decided it was time to step forward again.
She said she wanted to run in the 2015 federal election because she felt she had something to contribute.
“I really believe that our community is so strong, so connected, so committed to the place where we live, and we have that to contribute to Canada. I feel that this election was about loving Canada and our connection to one another as Canadians and stepping up and pulling together,” she said.
“And you saw that. Even with strategic voting. That’s to me a statement of pulling together and common cause, and we will continue to do that with the Liberal Party platform.”
Going forward she sees two main priorities for her newly-won riding.
“There is serious interest in strengthening environmental protection. The legacy we have inherited, as you know, has gutted multiple acts with pieces of environmental legislation in them, so we need to take a look at that. We need to strengthen that, and I think that’s key,” Goldsmith-Jones said.
“People also want greater public engagement and figuring out how to do that with community groups, with councils, with First Nations is a top priority, so that for the next four years we are working together in a renewed federal system, where the federal government, the provincial governments and cities and communities are connected and working together in understanding one another’s priorities.”
She said community engagement was a key part of her success as mayor of West Vancouver and she plans to bring that approach to her role as MP.
“It really was our approach to community engagement that fostered many ideas. What I mean by that is that we got rid of advisory groups, which were outdated, and conducted our policy development in public, led 100 per cent by citizens,” she said.
“That’s what we’re going to need to do with this new approach to open, honest and accountable government.”
Goldsmith-Jones said she would set up a constituency office on the Sunshine Coast soon, but it was too early to peg a date.
“It’s really early. We’re all meeting as a team at noon today [Oct. 20] and many things like that will start to fall into place,” she said.
Constituents can reach her via her campaign phone number (604-571-6488) or email ([email protected]) for the time being.
