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Student vote goes Green

If it were up to students, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country would be sending Green candidate Dana Taylor to Ottawa. The results of Student Vote Canada 2019, which took place the week before the election, were released Tuesday morning.
Student Vote

If it were up to students, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country would be sending Green candidate Dana Taylor to Ottawa.

The results of Student Vote Canada 2019, which took place the week before the election, were released Tuesday morning.

Nationally, the trend was similar to the results of Oct. 21, with the Liberals earning a minority government and the NDP and Conservatives second and third in the seat count.

In our riding, though, students flipped the official result, giving Green Dana Taylor 2,653 votes, the NDP’s Judith Wilson 1,506 votes, Patrick Weiler of the Liberals (who won the real election) 1,399 votes and Conservative Gabrielle Loren 1,328 votes.

Rhinoceros candidate Gordon Jeffrey landed in fourth with 490 votes, Doug Bebb of the People’s Party was next with 253 and independent Terry Grimwood was the candidate of choice for 112 students in the riding.

Students and Elphinstone and Chatelech secondary schools made the Greens their top choice, as did the students at Roberts Creek Elementary, Davis Bay Elementary, Langdale Elementary, West Sechelt Elementary and the Sunshine Coast Alternative School.

Cedar Grove Elementary students, however, bucked the trend and went NDP.

Student Vote is a program of CIVIX, a non-partisan group “dedicated to building the skills and habits of active and engaged citizenship” with support from Elections Canada.

More than 1.1 million elementary and secondary school students participated, around 1,100 of them from the Sunshine Coast.

Laura Clarke, a teacher-librarian at Elphinstone Secondary, which had the largest student voter turnout of the two Sunshine Coast high schools participating, said there was a lot of interest in Student Vote this year and some students even spent some time Monday waving signs in front of the school encouraging people to vote and volunteering at polling stations.

“There was a huge interest with the student vote this year across the Sunshine Coast,” she said.