Riding Profile: Vancouver Fairview
Posted May 9, 2013 3:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – One of the hottest ridings of this campaign has gone back and forth from the Liberals to the NDP in every provincial election since 2001.
News1130‘s “Your Vote” riding profiles continue with a look at Vancouver-Fairview.
The incumbent here is Liberal Margaret MacDiarmid, the sitting minister of health, who hopes she’ll have name recognition on her side this time around.
“Last time I ran I wasn’t very well known,” she admits.
“I’d only lived in Vancouver for a short time and it’s different this time, you know, because I have had some different cabinet portfolios and I think there’s some very good things that have happened in Fairview in the last four years,” she adds.
The NDP has something of a star candidate in George Heyman, former head of both the BCGEU and the Sierra Club.
Fairview has the largest number of film industry workers of any BC riding, and Heyman hopes the party’s plan to boost subsidies to the sector gives him the edge May 14th.
“Frankly, I was surprised at the number of people I met knocking on doors who said, ‘Well, I work in the film industry so that’s my main concern. We’re seeing the jobs go east or south and we need them here. We’ll lose the infrastructure, we’ll lose the training, we’ll lose the skills, and I need to stay here with my family.'”
The only other candidate from the four major parties running here is Matthew Pedley of the Greens. The Conservatives are not fielding a hopeful here.
