- Incumbent: Adam Olsen (Green | 2017)
- Candidates:
- NDP: Sarah Riddell
- Conservative: David Busch
- Green: Rob Botterell
- Independent: Amy Haysom
- Results:
- Green – 53%
- NDP – 29%
- Liberal – 19%
- Description:
- As the Greens slowly declined in polling over the past year, Saanich North & the Islands has gotten closer and closer. Adam Olsen’s retirement has only further complicated things, and now the Greens now find themselves in a tight race to hold their safest seat in all the land.
- While the Greens have nominated a rookie candidate in retired government lawyer and environmental organizer Rob Botterell, he’ll have help from incumbent MLA Adam Olsen, who dominated here and won an outright majority of the vote. The other two parties aren’t playing around either: the Conservatives have nominated two-time federal nominee David Busch, a lawyer who’s hoping to be third time lucky against the Green machine. For the NDP, they’ve scored a good get in Central Saanich councillor Sarah Riddell, who defeated fellow councillor and 2020 nominee Zeb King in a knife fight of a nomination. Rounding out the challengers is Amy Haysom, a spurned Green nomination contestant now mounting a bid of her own.
- Given the sheer volatility of this riding, even figuring out where the candidates will do well is hard. While the Greens will suffer from a lack of incumbency, Olsen is making up for it with his fierce campaigning for Botterell across the riding. Still, weaknesses exist - for example, Sarah Riddell will be hoping that with the former Central Saanich councillor now retiring, she’ll be able to run up the vote in the village cores of the District such as Brentwood Bay and Saanichton. Meanwhile, the Conservatives will be looking to translate Busch’s federal strength in affluent North Saanich, rural Central Saanich, and the condos of waterfront Sidney into a provincial win.
- Of course, that’s all just the Saanich Peninsula. What will really make or break the contest here, as former NDP MLA Gary Holman can attest to, are the Gulf Islands. Unpredictable and undecipherable, these islands have an anti-establishment, hippie streak to them that leaks through into both their activism and views on vaccination. Holman won the riding against Olsen in 2013 thanks to his support on Saltspring Island, and Elizabeth May also got her ticket to Parliament by wracking up landslide margins there against the Conservative MP at the time. With Botterell’s roots on Pender Island and their natural environmentalist lean, the Greens should be able to maintain their advantage though. After all, the most important part of politics here is showing up.
- The issues in this riding are driven by the age of its inhabitants and its agrarian nature. Villages, small suburbs, and reserves dot the Peninsula, and the annual harvest fair is a marquee event to boot. It’s one of the oldest ridings on Vancouver Island and is filled with retirees - though these tend to be moreso hippie types with eccentric politics than conservative Albertan snowbirds further north. This means healthcare is a big issue, and Riddell, who helped design the province’s new family doctor hiring model, hopes to capitalize on it.
- She’s also symbolic of a newer trend to the riding. Recent years have seen an influx of younger families moving here to escape rising inner Victoria housing costs, which has led to the rise of the dreaded d-word: development. North Saanich in particular elected an anti-development council in 2022, and some residents believe that overdevelopment would threaten the food security and agrarian lifestyles many have built up over the years, which has only fed sentiment against the NDP’s housing policies. Whether that dissatisfaction goes to the Greens or the Tories is anyone’s ballgame though.
- Ultimately, this is truly an unpredictable riding. While lefty in vibes, many of the people there are first and foremost conservationists, localists, and hippies irritated by the NDP’s permissive policies towards old growth logging and LNG. If Botterell wants to emerge from this threeway victorious, he’ll have to hold up Green numbers on the Gulf Islands and hold off the Conservatives and the NDP from making too many gains on the Peninsula.
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.
