It’s official, Kevin Shaw will be the Green party candidate for Sarnia-Lambton in the provincial election set for June.

Members of the party’s newly formed provincial riding association gathered Friday around a table at the Greens Organic Café for a nomination meeting where Shaw, a high school math teacher from Petrolia who ran in the riding for the party in 2014, was the only candidate on the ballet.

“My sons told me that if I lost tonight, that was it,” Shaw quipped. “My future was done, in politics.”

Shaw, a married father of three sons who teaches at Great Lakes Secondary School in Sarnia and runs a small business providing software for high school athletic associations, ran fourth in the 2014 provincial election.

Speaking before party members filled in their ballets Friday, Shaw said, “I get asked the question a lot, ‘why would you want to run for the Green party?’”

Shaw said he has a good job and family, and enjoys being involved in his community, but added that he sees “there’s more than needs to be done.”

He mentioned a need for changes in the province’s math curriculum, something he knows firsthand, as well as the need for action on the opioid crisis, and help for those struggling with mental health needs.

Even with all of the technology available today, “people are more disconnected now than they’ve ever been before,” Shaw said.

“There’s a real problem with young people, and people of any age, feeling connected to the community.”

Shaw said he believes there is a need for more focus on what’s happening in those local communities.

“I’m also thinking about the inequity between the rich and the poor, now that divide is growing,” he said.

And, he sees the need for action on climate change.

“These are some of the things that motivate me,” he said, “and make me unsatisfied, and make me want to get up off the couch and try to be part of the solution.”

Shaw said government needs to listen, more than it is.

“I feel a lot of the problem right now is the government has gotten so big, the power is in Toronto, and isn’t listening to the people in Sarnia and other smaller communities, like they could and should.”

Bob Bailey, the current MPP, was nominated to run again by the local Progressive Conservation riding association earlier in the year.

Officials with the Liberal and NDP associations in Sarnia-Lambton have said they have candidate searches underway.

pmorden@postmedia.com