Jesscia Wegg_ Why Green votes matter

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Green Party candidate Jessica Wegg came to Gorge Hall, on Wednesday, April 16th, 2025. She won’t be the next Member of Parliament for North Island Powell River.

“We commissioned a poll at our riding level. I think they made the phone calls March 20th to 24th, and it matched what 338Canada is saying. The Conservatives will likely win and the progressive vote will be split pretty evenly by the NDP and the Liberals. As long as the NDP and the Liberals are both running, neither party will get in,” she explained.

“My numbers were less than 10%. If you added me to either one, it wasn't going to cross the threshold of the number of votes the Conservatives were expected to get. We are actually saying this is a great time to feel like you can vote Green because it's not a wasted vote.  We need 2% nationally to maintain official party status, which means we get resources in Ottawa, we get to participate in the question period, we get to be on committees, that kind of thing. Without that 2% national level, we lose official party status and we lose the ability to really participate in government in an effective way.  It really, really matters to us and if you want to be able to have a Green party in the future, when we do get proportional representation, we need to keep as many votes as possible.” 

Cortes Currents: How important is it to have a Green presence in the election? 

Jessica Wegg: “So, so important.  Shakespeare said, ‘Though she be but little she is fierce’ (A MIdsummer’s Nights Dream). Greens are little, but we use that little power that we have to come up with big, wild ideas that the big parties aren't going to have.”

“They don't want to make people think they're thinking too far outside the box. People are happy with the status quo, generally speaking. They don't want to waiver. That's how the big parties feed, is ‘how do I keep the people who we already have in this box.’ But we are thinking of big ideas that nobody else is thinking of and we bring them to the table, we bring them to the big parties that have the power in parliament and we say,' have you even thought about doing something like this?’ Or, ‘where is that in your planning?’"  

“We do what we can to hold them to account. All of  the Green candidates across the country  are showing up and they're showing that there are people who care. There are people who acknowledge the climate crisis that we're in and we're going to keep showing up.” 

“I think it's also important because  Canada  is getting awfully close right now to  a two party system, which is not healthy for a democracy. It's dangerous to have just two parties and we're all falling into one camp or the other. We cannot let that happen. We need to keep showing up as these small parties. We need to keep fighting for presence so that we can have these creative big ideas that nobody else is going to say out loud because they don't want to step on anybody's toes or make anybody uncomfortable with the idea of something new or different or big. We cannot progress as a country without doing new and different and big things. So we need the Green party to show up and keep bringing our creative ideas across the country.”