BC Greens add a candidate to Abbotsford-Mission byelection

PENTICTON — The BC Green Party has named Abbotsford teacher Stephen Fowler as its candidate in the September 26 Abbotsford-Mission byelection, returning the man who ran in the same riding in 2020..BC Green Party Leader Emily Lowan announced the choice in a party email Saturday morning. She said volunteers had already moved this week to get Fowler on the ballot. Elections BC closes nominations at 1 p.m. Saturday, meaning the BC Greens were able to get their man on the ballot hours before the cut-off.Fowler teaches at Rick Hansen Secondary in Abbotsford. The party says he has spent "30 years in classrooms." Local coverage put his Abbotsford School District tenure at 22 years in 2019 and 25 years, mostly at Rick Hansen, in 2021. He will be running for the legislature for a second time.On October 24, 2020, Fowler took 2,667 votes in Abbotsford-Mission, 10.57% of a five-name ballot, on $1,113 in reported expenses. Pam Alexis, who is running her own campaign in the byelection, won that night for the NDP. Simon Gibson finished second for the BC Liberals. The then-small Conservatives ran Trevor Hamilton at 7.88%..The Greens sat 2024 out in the Abbotsford-Mission. riding They had floated Aaron Bayes at the time, but his campaign manager told the Fraser Valley Current they could not collect enough nomination signatures. Former BC Conservative MLA Reann Gasper ended up beating Alexis 13,523 to 10,894, 55.38% to 44.62%, with no Green candidate on the ballot.Gasper recently gave up her post as MLA in the riding to offer Findlay an opportunity to get a seat of her own in the Legislative Assembly ahead of the fall session..CentreBC named Lakhwinder Jhaj on August 30, the party’s first candidate in any riding. .Jhaj is a Fraser Valley resident who has also lived in Penticton. CentreBC Leader Mike Bernier called her a “strong, community-minded candidate” who would put local priorities first. She told The Canadian Press her family has a farm and runs a car dealership and a construction company, that she left the NDP more than a decade ago, and that after BC United collapsed “CentreBC seems to be the home for me.”BC politics veteran Paul Ratchford called her a “party-hopper and serial candidate.” .Lowan’s email doesn't even mention CentreBC. Instead, it casts the byelection as a choice between Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s “harmful culture wars” and “status quo NDP half truths.” Lowan won the leadership in September 2025. She does not hold a seat. The two Greens who do have seats in the legislature — Rob Botterell and Jeremy Valeriote — ended the party’s confidence-and-supply arrangement with the NDP in early 2026. With Botterell and Valeriote, the Greens just enough seats in the legislature to maintain official party status. The Abbotsford-Mission byelection should provide an intriguing litmus test for the province's appetite for a Lowan-led BC Green Party..A 212-person snapshot fielded August 29 and 30, before Fowler’s name was public, gave a then-unnamed Green candidate 5.6% among respondents who picked someone. Findlay led Alexis 49.4% to 34.0% in that group. The tables the Western Standard obtained named no firm, mode or weights..Fowler has also run three times federally in Abbotsford for the Green Party of Canada against Conservative Ed Fast. He took 2,416 votes (5.02%) in 2015, 3,702 (7.57%) in 2019 and 1,517 (3.37%) in 2021.The 2026 party copy says he worked four years at a Maple Ridge mill before teaching and watched family-supporting mill work leave in raw logs. In 2021 he told the Fraser Valley Current house prices were too high, floated non-market “council housing,” backed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action, and said large projects crossing indigenous land need consent, not only consultation.Advance voting runs September 18 to 23. Polls on September 26 are open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Elections BC will post preliminary results after 8 p.m. that night and has set the official count for October 1.The legislature is set to return on October 5.

BC Greens add a candidate to Abbotsford-Mission byelection

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