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Politics and activism isn’t anything new for Saskatchewan Green Party Leader Naomi Hunter, she’s been doing it all her life.
Learning about the climate crisis in Grade 2 is what inspired her to get involved in politics.
“I’ve never stopped worrying about it and trying to figure out how we can get people to mobilize,” she said. “I read every single book that I could find on the subject, and I just couldn’t stop.”
Listen to Hunter’s interview on The Evan Bray Show:
Hunter loves to read, she’s also never had a TV.
Her favourite book series is The Lord of the Rings — if she could have a meal with anyone dead or alive, the series author JRR Tolkien would be at the table, along with Hunter’s brother Matt who passed away and Petra Kelly, the original founder of the Green Party in Germany.
But being a party leader, she doesn’t get much leisure reading time. Most of that time is now dedicated to reading news articles and, most recently, the Parliamentary Budget Report.
“I recognize that that does not sound fun,” Hunter said with a laugh.
Her busy schedule was part of the reason she no longer teaches fitness lessons — more specifically dry land surfboarding.
She specialized in teaching fitness programs mainly for seniors who had health complications.
“I still own 14 surfboards on balance balls, on bases, held on by elastic bands,” Hunter said. “Surfing is amazing for developing your core.”
Her fitness journey even led her to a brief time with a subgroup of the Cirque du Soleil.
“I can spin fire with a hula hoop,” she said.
Of course the performances had an environmental twist. One performance was on wetlands conservation.
Trying to balance fitness classes became difficult during election seasons. She decided to step away from that and focus on farming with her dad and silversmithing for her art studio — which is called ‘The Green Goddess,’ a nickname given to her by her father and the party’s previous Chief Financial Agent Dave Abbey.
“I do total old-school style silversmithing,” she said. “I cut and polish my own crystals and gemstones and then set them in sterling silver. I do a lot of wire wrapping as well.”
She has even entered some of those creations into art shows.
Green Party leader Naomi Hunter and candidate Victor Lau pose with a wooden election sign inside Lau’s 1970s campaign van — which is only used as a meeting spot, not as a means of transportation. (Nicole Garn/980 CJME)
Having a shop she’s able to step away from gives Hunter lots of time to focus on the campaign trail.
Her position is completely volunteer based, she sells frozen fruit from her farm and jewelry from her store to fund travel around the province during the election to help her candidates.
On those long road trips, she doesn’t listen to podcasts, streaming services or even CDs.
“I have cassettes that my grandfather recorded by listening to the radio and then pressing stop after a song and start and record,” she said.
Those cassettes include tunes from musical group Peter, Paul and Mary, specifically their revolutionary songs.
“Back in the old days in Saskatchewan we used to sing protest songs,” she said. “We would sing at protests, whole songs as a group, and I miss that very much.”
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Hunter has spent many hours on the picket line at protests. She organized environmental and social justice rallies while in high school.
“I have organized and showed up for protests for everything from the climate crisis to Black Lives Matter … We did massive protests in 2017 when the government tried to cut everything from libraries to pretty much every social service that there was in the province,” she explained.
You name the issue, Hunter has probably been a part of a protest for it.
“Now I’m lucky enough to run a political party where most of my candidates are activists,” Hunter said.
Out of her 58 candidates, she’s proud to say that half of them are Indigenous or Métis.
“Last year we redid our entire policy book with the help of elders to have everything based on Indigenous wisdom and and the wisdom of elders,” she said.
An activist and fellow friend of Naomi Hunter made this hairpin of her and a bear. Hunter feels honoured to wear beadwork as it takes hours of love to create. (Nicole Garn/980 CJME)
Hunter said her candidates are her greatest strength.
“Most political parties are really based on miles and miles of policy which, of course, the Greens do have, but we have six green values,” she said. “They’re things that tend to really touch people’s hearts.”
Those values are sustainability, non-violence, social justice, respect for diversity, ecological wisdom and participatory democracy.
Hunter hopes that voters will take a page from her book and read the party’s values. She thinks those values will help solve problems in the classroom, in health care, with affordability and the environment.
Hunter on platform issues
In the classroom, Hunter said people need to listen to the teachers, especially when it comes to classroom size and complexity. She’s heard horror stories of teachers being injured and even bitten by students.
Hunter said the province needs to get to net zero emissions by 2030. She is also against the proposed small nuclear reactors, saying they are expensive and harmful to the environment.
“Nuclear requires massive amounts of water for cooling, and he Saskatchewan government is suggesting that they will get that from Lake Diefenbaker, which is an already depleted water source,” she said. “Seventy per cent of Saskatchewan’s drinking water comes out of that reservoir, and we are a drought prone province.”
As for health care, Hunter believes the province needs a more cooperative approach to dealing with the federal government.
“There is federal funding, we can see this,” she said. “Manitoba recently managed to get a lot of federal funding to help deal with their health-care crisis. We could have that, except that Premier Scott Moe refuses to be accountable for where that money would go.”
She said health care needs to be repaired from the ground up, especially in rural Saskatchewan, to take the pressure off urban centres.
Hunter said Saskatchewan is in an affordability and inflation crisis. To address this problem, she would help those needing a break. She would increase what the social safety net currently offers, which is sometimes as low as $650 a month.
“This has been done in Dauphin, Manitoba, with great success,” she said. “We saw when people were given a guaranteed livable income, they managed to stabilize their lives. They got into permanent housing, they went back to school, they started small businesses, and, in fact, thrived.”
Hunter said helping homeless people get off the streets would help the health-care system.
“Poverty is expensive,” she said. “Actually dealing with the issues of poverty, ending poverty in the province of Saskatchewan and ending homelessness will save our province a lot of money.”
Naomi Hunter has lived in Regina on and off for around 20 years. Her favourite coffee shop in the city is 13th Avenue Food and Coffee House. (Nicole Garn/980 CJME)
Hunter believes the people of Saskatchewan don’t have simply two choices, despite what history says.
“What I’m hearing on doorsteps is that more and more people are sick of the same old, same old,” she said. “Both the Sask. Party and the NDP have been in power for decades at a time in this province, and yet we still have endemic problems that they have done little to solve.”
Hunter said if people want real change, they should vote Green.
“We are the only party other than the NDP and the Sask. Party that could form government on Oct. 28,” she said. “We have enough candidates to do so, all we need is for people to be brave.”
Voting week starts Oct. 22 and election day is Oct. 28.
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