HALIFAX—Jenica Atwin describes herself as focused and ready to work collaboratively following her historic election win for the Green Party of Canada.

The day after the federal election, the 32-year-old spoke with Star Halifax to discuss some of the factors she felt contributed to her victory in Fredericton, N.B., and made her the first Green Party candidate outside of B.C. to win a federal seat.

“For it to be talked about as a historic moment is just incredible. I’m a history buff myself. It’s something I’ve been following my whole life, and now to kind of have my own little legacy is great,” Atwin said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“It’s something for me to leave to my children. It’s something that we can be so proud of in our team, that we accomplished this thing that seemed impossible to so many people across Canada.”

Born and raised in the Fredericton area, the mother of two is a researcher and program co-ordinator for a local First Nations education organization.

Atwin said while there were several factors that led to her historic win, she believes it was a result of timing and the fact that people in her city were ready. According to census data, the population of the federal electoral district of Fredericton was 83,303 people in 2016.

“We were pleasantly surprised all along the campaign trail to find support from across party lines, from all across the political spectrum,” Atwin said. “We felt this momentum very early on and it really continued to build right until the end.”

Some of that momentum was created by a wave of concern about the impacts of climate change in the region, in particular the devastating impacts of flooding in and around Fredericton. In August, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $11.4 million in new funding to help protect the city and its surrounding communities from future flooding.

“The flooding in Fredericton, that put climate change really at the forefront of the political issues and priorities for people here,” Atwin said. “Every door I knocked on we were talking about the environment, and so it is nice to see that we are kind of aligning in that way and that we’re willing to elect someone who has such a strong focus on environmental issues.”

When asked how she plans to keep climate and environmental issues on the agenda when she takes her seat in the House of Commons, Atwin doesn’t hesitate to point to the Liberal Party’s federal campaign comments and her intention to hold them — and Trudeau — accountable.

“He certainly had a lot of interesting campaign tactics and talk about how important the environment was to them and the whole ‘think green, vote red’ was quite an interesting approach,” she noted.

“I’m going to really remind them that you made this quite a top issue for you, so it’s time to deliver and we’re willing to be partners along the way.”

Atwin also credits her win to inroads made by New Brunswick Green Party leader and MLA David Coon and his fellow Green Party MLAs Kevin Arseneau and Megan Mitton.

“There are a lot of great leaders who have come before me and they’ve really blazed a trail here. And Fredericton was ready,” she added enthusiastically. “That’s really it. I think it was all about timing. People were quite disillusioned with the back and forth that we’re usually seeing, and they wanted something different this time.”

Dalhousie University professor and political sociologist Howard Ramos also points to New Brunswick’s 2018 provincial election as a factor in Fredericton’s decision to elect its first Green MP.

After the province’s historic provincial election last fall where no party won a majority, Liberal premier Brian Gallant lost a confidence vote in Province House. Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs then stepped up to form government, gathering enough seats with the support of the People’s Alliance Party, which gained a foothold for the first time last year.

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The Tories won 22 seats in the 49-seat house, one more than the Liberals. The Green Party and the People’s Alliance Party won three seats each.

“If you look at the provincial election in New Brunswick, it elected Greens, it experimented with new parties, it really shows. And when you look at the vote share, it was a pretty close race across (many) of the parties there,” Ramos said.

“So it wasn’t a decisive win for any one party, and I think that’s part of the mix, that it’s really showing that in the Maritimes, we’re open to experimenting, we’re open to looking at alternatives.”

This sentiment was echoed by Atwin on Tuesday as she reflected on the assortment of MPs her province had just elected to send to Ottawa.

“We’ve got a few (three) Conservative seats, we’ve got the Liberals (six seats) as well, and now we’ve got a nice green heart in the middle of the province,” she said. “It is really representative, I think, of the diversity and the different voices and that’s really our strength.

As one of three Green Party MPs, Atwin will join party leader Elizabeth May and Paul Manly, both from B.C., in Ottawa when the first session of Parliament convenes.

Her immediate priority will be working with her fellow New Brunswick MPs of all political stripes to focus on issues related to health care.

“We need to negotiate a fair health transfer payment for New Brunswick to deal with our aging population, our mental health crisis that we have here in the region. We’ve got to be a stronger voice, we have to work together on this,” she said. “We really need to focus on wellness and prevention.”

Her other key issue will be advocating for Indigenous rights and for Indigenous voices to be represented and heard, particularly those of Indigenous women.

“That’s what’s been kind of missing from any of the reconciliation initiatives that have been going forward in Canada, so we need to do a much better job of ensuring that Indigenous communities and their leadership are at the table, but also including those grassroots movements,” Atwin said.

“That’s going to be integral in moving forward on our environmental initiatives as well as our wellness initiative and certainly on improving that relationship in Canada between our Indigenous populations and the rest of Canadians.”

With files from Haley Ryan

Yvette d’Entremont is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on health. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

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