- Incumbent: none (NDP | 2005)
- Candidates:
- NDP: Dana Lajeunesse
- Conservative: Marina Sapozhnikov
- Green: David Evans
- Results:
- NDP – 52%
- Green – 33%
- Liberal – 14%
- Description:
- One half of the Cowichan Valley Regional District and the other half the western edge of the Capital Regional District, Juan de Fuca-Malahat is a newly created riding sprawling across the southwest of Vancouver Island. With John Horgan no longer on the ballot for the first time in two decades and no incumbent running to hold the seat, the NDP, Conservatives, and Greens are all putting their best foot forward.
- To keep the riding orange, the NDP is fielding Sooke councillor Dana Laejeunesse, who’s also been endorsed by former BC United candidate Herb Haldane. The Green candidate, David Evans, a local entrepreneur, is also from Sooke. Finally, the Conservatives are fielding Marina Sapozhnikov, a doctor with a clinic in Cobble Hill.
- The Greens scored an impressive 33% of the vote during 2020, and outright won the southern half of the CVRD. While a good portion of that can be attributed to Furstenau’s local appeal in Shawinigan Lake, David Evans could hold onto some of that goodwill and marry it to his Sooke roots to claim a respectable second.
- The NDP, meanwhile, shouldn’t have any delusions of replicating Horgan’s landslide 70% showing in Sooke. Lajeunesse’s path to victory does run through blunting Evans’ advance into his home community of Sooke as it grows from a natural resource town into a bedroom community of Victoria, much like Metchosin nearby.
- For the Conservatives, the battle here may moreso be to claim second. Sapozhnikov is the only one out of the three major candidates to hail from the northeastern part of the riding, which contains CVRD communities like Cobble Hill and Mill Bay. With its wealthy hippies and retirees, some of that vote could follow their environmentalist instincts while others could gravitate to the Tories as the next natural party of protest.
- With this the first election since Furstenau vacated Cowichan Valley and Horgan resigned from Langford-Juan de Fuca, the electorate here may be more volatile than ever. As the Conservatives surge and the NDP hunkers down, anything could be possible in this orange patch of turf.
Hugh Chan is a second year student at UBC studying International Relations and Data Science. You can find more coverage of the 2024 BC election as well as politics across East Asia and the Anglosphere at https://x.com/shxnhugh.
