The Optimist sat down with each of the five candidates running in Delta South in Tuesday’s provincial election to gain some insights through one-on-one interviews. The interviews are verbatim, although some have been edited for length. Below is Ian Jacques’ interview with Green candidate Larry Colero.

Q: Tell us about your personal life

A: In the early ’80s my wife and I came out to Ladner from Richmond and we had two small kids. The reason we came here is we thought it would be a great place to raise a family. We found a home by Delta Manor School and it turned out to be a fabulous neighbourhood with great neighbours. It was right by the bus stop for me so I could commute into Vancouver. We were there for 25 years.

We then followed our son and our new granddaughter out to White Rock and we were there for seven years and then came back to Tsawwassen when he left White Rock and we have been in Tsawwassen for the past two years.

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Q: What is your professional background?

A: My professional background is varied. I worked for 11 years for H.A. Simons Ltd. a very large engineering consulting firm. They were the largest in Western Canada at the time. Then I worked for SkyTrain for a short time and then I went out on my own and I have mostly been an independent process facilitator. Most people don’t know what that is, but essentially it is running meetings, usually large meetings with multiple different parties trying to determine how they will work together.

For example, the last six expansions at the Vancouver International Airport, I would facilitate discussions at the beginning of a project between the engineers and contractors and the airport as the owner and I’ve done similar, or what I call project partnering, for hospital expansions and various non-profit groups, but mostly engineering construction projects.

I also over a period of 10 years taught corporate ethics at UBC and SFU. I don’t have a PhD, but UBC to start learned about some of the materials that I had developed for teaching ethics in corporations. They needed someone to fill in temporarily as the ethics chair, so that’s how I got started and I eventually taught a course for MBA students on global wealth management.

From 2004 up until now, my main client has been the Institute of Advanced Financial Planners. I started as their executive director and now I’m consulting on a part-time basis to them as policy advisor.

Q: What motivated you to run for office?

A: After running the baseball league here in Ladner and chair at the Delta Community Living Society back in the ’90s, my further volunteer career has mostly been about human rights in Southeast Asia, which is a long story I won’t go into. But I’ve been doing that for 25 years. I was chairing a meeting in Montreal and going around the table each organization was giving an update on what was happening with them and each of them said they were under attack by the Conservative government. I didn’t think I was hearing them right. Why is my government attacking these well-known and respected human rights organizations around the world and have a role to play in defending human rights activists? I was very upset by that. So the opportunity came up to get into politics when the Green Party was looking for a candidate in White Rock. I ran in the 2011 federal election and again in 2015 hoping that I could make a difference.

Q: Why did the Green Party choose to run a candidate in this election in Delta South instead of supporting independent Nicholas Wong as it did in the past with Vicki Huntington?

A: In this election it was a tough decision for the Green Party as to whether or not to run a candidate because, as you know, the Green Party deferred to Vicki Huntington in the last election. She was such a strong ally with our party leader Andrew Weaver. The party felt confident that she was very clearly aligned with what our objectives were and felt if we could keep her in and keep the Liberals out for another term it was worth not fielding a candidate. In the last election, a lot of Green voters supported Vicki. The Green Party was going to defer to Vicki again when she said she was going to run again, but when that changed and she announced that she would not be able to run again, I asked Andrew Weaver to make a decision and he did. He felt we needed to offer a choice to Green voters here simply because Vicki was so well known and Nicholas Wong is not at this point. Not to say there was any concern with Nicholas. He’s a great candidate, but we felt it would be the fairest thing to do for Green supporters to give them a Green choice here.

So they asked me to run and I just felt like it would be an opportunity to present a different perspective on things.

Q: Why is a green candidate good for the riding of Delta South?

A: The Green Party presents a unique choice for voters in Delta South because we are the only party that currently does not accept any donations from unions or corporations. That allows us to speak our minds to represent the constituents in this riding without being influenced by big business.

Secondly, the Green Party is the only party that is a global party connected with Green politicians serving in parliaments around the world and many of our issues today have global implications, particularly around climate change and environment protection. We have these global connections, so we can represent the people of Delta South at that global level and with the global implications in mind.

We are also held to account to a set of global, green principals that are again worldwide. So that means when you elect a Green politician you know what to expect. We can’t say we are against the bridge now and then change our minds after we are elected. We feel we are presenting an option to voters here that they can rely on, that they know what they are going to get. Our current slogan is “Change you can Count On.” I think that is something that no one else is offering.

Q: There has been a suggestion by some in the community to form a coalition to defeat the Liberals. What is your opinion of creating a possible coalition?

A: We hear about coalitions and strategic voting all the time. Specifically with a coalition, it cannot happen because each of us represents something quite different. You can’t have a coalition between the NDP, the Greens or the independent and the Greens because voters would not have a choice. It’s up to voters to decide who best represents their beliefs about what is best for this province, so forming a coalition removes that choice and in my mind it would not be a democratic thing to do.

If the voters want to coalesce themselves around one candidate versus the other, that’s great — that’s entirely up to them, but to form a formal coalition would not be fair to Green supporters who just want to vote Green or independent supporters who want to vote independent. Then again if we form a coalition, who would end up serving in government? You would have to pick one. Certainly the Greens would not be comfortable picking a candidate that does not represent Green principles. I would be concerned that whoever is the largest party would be the one to take over. No one else has an obligation like I do as the Green Party candidate to actually follow through on a set of commitments based on a well-articulated philosophy and platform.