There is officially a race to represent the BC Conservative party in the Stikine riding with two familiar faces going head to head.
Jonathan Dieleman is no stranger to the role and he wants to try again. Most recently, he was the candidate in 2013 but lost the provincial election to then-incumbent NDP MLA Doug Donaldson.
After ten years out of the political spotlight, he said he is ready to jump back in.
Things have changed in the last decade for Dieleman. He was busy with competitive swimming for five years and went to the Pan Am Games in 2015 (hosted by Canada in Toronto) and the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
He has also since gotten married, moved around the province and recently he and his wife had a baby.
He said part of what inspired him to get back into politics was moving around and looking for housing.
“Housing has just gotten so expensive,” he said. “And it’s near impossible for people to even find a place to rent. And it’s the role of the government to make the opportunities for places to be built. Things like inflation need to be brought down and policies need to be made so that it makes it more incentivized to build housing. And all kinds of housing, everything from houses to apartment buildings to rental houses. Investment needs to be put into it.”
If chosen to represent the party, Dieleman also said he wants to campaign on improving healthcare in the province and pushing for a review of healthcare.
He also wants the provincial government to change some of the policies surrounding resource-based industries.
“There is enough forestry and mining around here to make northern B.C. very much [a] great economy,” Dieleman said.
He criticized the policies of previous governments as being driven by environmentalists and working for Vancouver, but not for the North.
“Rather than somebody coming up and actually seeing how to go through forestry and looking at things that we can improve on forestry and mining and how to approve things to go through, rather than just sitting back and saying, ‘We just can’t touch it, because this is our pristine environment’,” he explained.
He called it “completely a lie” to think if protected areas aren’t touched they will stay safe forever
“No matter what’s going to happen, the environment will change,” he said.
Former Telkwa Mayor Sharon Hartwell is also trying to represent the Conservatives in the 2024 election. Hartwell ran in the 2009 provincial election for the then-BC Liberals but lost to Donaldson.
Hartwell was the Mayor of Telkwa from 1995 - 2009.
She also served in a variety of leadership positions in the Stikine region. She is a former Director of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and former chair of the Northwest Regional Hospital District.
She was not available to comment prior to press time.
A vote to decide who will represent the party will be held at the end of November.