Emily Lowan began the BC Green leadership race as political unknown, a youth climate activist with what she freely admits was an “audacious” goal of signing up 5,000 new members. But now a month out from voting, she has momentum, money and a real shot at actually winning the race.
“I am bringing a fresh perspective to the Greens,” Lowan says in a recent sit-down interview in Victoria.
“I think we need a true organizer to bring this party back to life.”
The 24-year-old strategist at Climate Action Network Canada has surprised many with a nimble and creative campaign. She’s targeted youth under 30 (who also happen to be eligible for free party memberships) with a flood of daily memes and witty social media videos. At one event she took a pie to the face. At another, she co-hosted a free clothing collective. Her launch event included a dance party.
The result has been more than $50,000 in donations and major endorsements from figures like renowned physician Dr. Gabor Maté. Whether Lowan signed up enough new members to compensate for a traditional Green base that may be less supportive of her efforts, remains the question to be answered when vote results are revealed Sept. 24.
Still, the Lowan campaign has felt like an organizational shock paddle to the chest of the moribund BC Greens. The party has noticeably drifted in recent years, losing ground in the last two elections and watching former leader Sonia Furstenau fall to defeat to the BC NDP.
“What we've seen overwhelmingly in this campaign, is we're not carving up the existing pie, but we're bringing in a lot of new people who are just so disillusioned by the establishment parties, and a lot of young people who have just never been a part of a party before,” says Lowan.
That frustration extends to the Greens themselves. After years of helping keep the NDP in power with consecutive compromise agreements, the Greens risk becoming "redundant" against New Democrats, she says.
“It feels like we're at a crossroads, I think, of either fading into the background or bringing in a new base of people to make this a party that represents working-class British Columbians,” says Lowan.
She wants to use the Greens “as a vehicle for change” and “force the NDP to compete for their progressive voters again” in a return to the kind of ambition the party showed in the pre-2017 days under then-leader Andrew Weaver.
“I think the Greens need to be a bolder, more confrontational force in the legislature, and I think have important leverage to be a real thorn in the side of the NDP, but to also be just an unignorable beacon of bright and real solutions that speak to working-class British Columbians,” says Lowan.
Lowan’s surge has rattled some Greens, who worry she’s signing up enough new members to effectively take over the party—the same strategy that brought climate activist Anjali Appadurai within striking distance of the NDP leadership in 2022 before she was disqualified. Appadurai has endorsed Lowan, though Lowan denies the comparison.
“It's a different situation, in part because the party reached out to me,” she says, of being specifically approached by the Greens to throw her hat into the race.
“And part of the goal that they've stated many times through this leadership race is to bring in new members.”
There’s not a lot of policy differences between Lowan and leadership rivals Jonathan Kerr and Adam Bremner-Akins—though Lowan has been noticeably outspoken in calling Israel’s occupation of Gaza a “genocide” against the Palestinian people.
Her platform, summed up by the tagline “Fight the Oligarchs, Fund Our Future,” mixes wealth redistribution with progressive staples, including higher taxes on the wealthy, free post-secondary, rent controls, grocery price caps, free transit and a ban on fossil fuel expansion.
She targeted her message at renters frustrated at the prospect of never owning a home, and those feeling hopeless at being unable to afford to live in a B.C. city. Young people drifted from the BC NDP in the last election toward the BC Conservatives, she says, because the Conservatives effectively “tapped into that discontent.” The Conservatives also almost won.
“I think the NDP took the wrong lesson from that election,” says Lowan.
“We narrowly escaped a far-right government, and the NDP has moved further to the centre-right trying to appeal to those conservative voters. But I think it's a fundamental misread, and that we have a massive vacuum where we're not presenting a bold wealth redistribution agenda, we're not speaking to workers, we're not speaking about the billionaires and foreign multinationals that are really calling the shots in the premier's office.”
Her pitch to Green voters seems clear. “I think what the Greens need right now, most crucially, is someone that will bring people in and that can galvanize and leverage that energy,” she says.
Whether that energy translates into votes could decide more than just the leadership. It could determine if the Greens fade further into the political background, or gamble on a generational shift in the hopes of becoming relevant again.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 17 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for The Orca/BIV. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
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