Portage-Lisgar Green candidate committed to change

By: Andrea Geary Posted: 3:00 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 28, 2015

Bev Eert is personally committed to using sustainable energy.

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Bev Eert is personally committed to using sustainable energy.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/08/2015 (3665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bev Eert is personally committed to using sustainable energy.

Eert, the Green party’s candidate in the race for Portage-Lisgar, and husband Will have designed and built a house that’s heated and powered entirely by solar energy. Their house is situated next to the Assiniboine River between Rossendale and Lavenham.

Eert earned undergraduate degrees in both Music and Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba and a graduate degree in Architecture from the University of British Columbia. She operated a private music studio, and more recently ran a design-build construction company.

Submitted photo
Green Party candidate for Portage-Lisgar Bev Eert raises concerns over climate change and fossil fuel use. — Submitted photo Green Party candidate for Portage-Lisgar Bev Eert raises concerns over climate change and fossil fuel use.

She has run as a Green Party candidate twice federally and once provincially while living on Vancouver Island, but this is her first foray into politics in Manitoba.

“I am running for the Green Party once again to give my friends and neighbours the opportunity to vote for a party that is genuinely concerned for our shared future, a party that will lead us out of the fossil fuel age and into the solar age,” Eert wrote in an email message.

“I feel there’s an urgency to the situation with climate change,” she said in a phone interview.

“I’m genuinely worried that we’re doing something irreversible.

“I am also concerned about the state of our democracy. The Green Party has been proposing democratic reform for three decades. I feel strongly that all Canadians should be represented in Parliament, and that it is sad that voters feel obliged to say to me, ‘You are absolutely right, but I can’t vote for you.’ How is that democratic?” she wrote.

Eert said her grandparents farmed in the Austin and St. Jean Baptiste areas, and she grew up in Charleswood when it was still quite rural.

“Agriculture is of course of primary concern in this riding. As a forward thinker whose home is already powered and heated by the sun, I believe we have the ingenuity and motivation to move away from our current dependence on fossil fuels. Fuel is probably the biggest expense for farmers, so just think how terrific it would be to harvest solar energy instead. Canada can and should be in the forefront in the development of alternate energy, particularly for agriculture,” she wrote.

She believes that federal government investment in sustainable energy research will pay off as new technology helps to wean Canadians off the use of fossil fuels.

“It’s really time for a change,” she said. “I work hard, and I will work hard for Canada.”
She said her campaign in Portage-Lisgar is just getting underway, and she plans to contact as many voters as possible.

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