Janice Harvey: “It’s kind of odd to be running for politics and not actually want to be a politician.” (submitted)
Harvey wants to put environment on province’s political agenda
Janice Harvey sits in James Dunn Hall sipping her coffee and picking at her muffin.
She’s been a professor of environmental studies at St. Thomas University since winter 2009. Now, as the candidate for the Charlotte-Campobello riding for the Green Party in the next provincial election, she sees politics as only the means to an end.
“It’s kind of odd to be running for politics and not actually want to be a politician,” she laughs.
In 2008, Harvey and some of her colleagues formed the Green Party of New Brunswick. A passionate environmentalist since the early 1970’s, she “just felt the real way to do it [was] to become involved as a political party. And then, you’re on a different [level]. You’re in a new arena.”
Harvey finds it hard to balance time between class preparation and campaigning for the Green Party, but campaigning is the backbone of any provincial election. It can be anything from putting up signs on highways to talking in front of hundreds of people. Harvey says she has “no problem standing in front of 250 people and giving a speech.”
“I can do that in a heartbeat. But, knock on someone’s door…shake the hand and…say, ‘Would you consider voting Green?’ My nightmare,” she says, admitting that this is how most politicians are elected.
Although she has never personally run for a federal election, Harvey believes provincial candidacy makes it easier to get a message across to the people.
“The closer the decisions are made to where it affects people, I think it’s where you’ve got a really good [sense of] democratic engagement,” she said. “The more distant the decision making, the less people engage.”
Harvey says that politics itself isn’t a career. She believes that politicians need to find a reason to be involved in politics other than self-advancement.
“You need to find something you believe in that is represented by the politics you’re involved in,” she said. “It has to be on the basis of [a] personal conviction around a goal, other than careerism…[which] is not a legitimate political goal.”
Harvey plans on running in the next federal election. For her, the difference between running in a federal and a provincial election is clear: it’s all about the territory.
In a provincial election, “you have the advantage of really knowing your riding well” and the federal territory is “sprawling and rural.”
