There truly is a race now to replace John Reynolds as the nominee for the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) in the federal riding of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky.
West Vancouver resident Jean Lewis announced she plans to throw her name into the race.
Lewis joins West Vancouver lawyer John Weston in seeking the nomination. Weston announced his intentions early last month.
Lewis is married and she has two sons. Her oldest boy is 13 and her youngest son is 11. Lewis is a director of Families for Early Autism Treatment (FEAT) and she said she became active with the organization because her youngest son is autistic.
She decided to enter the race for a number of reasons but one of her primary drivers comes from her feeling that the Federal Liberals are mismanaging the country's finances.
"We have an obligation to our children and future generations to make sure the Canadian legacy is left intact," Lewis said.
Lewis worked at BC Tel for 18 years and left the company to raise her family with a plan to return to work once her children were older. The plan changed when her youngest son was diagnosed with autism. She said families dealing with autism do not get the funding they need.
"How the government has dealt with kids with autism is simply systemic," she said. "I've been dealing with fighting for resources for 10 years."
Lewis describes herself as a fiscal conservative who believes fiscal responsibility and social responsibility go hand in hand.
"We need to have a flourishing economy and we need to reduce the tax burden for families and small companies," she said.
"We pay very high taxes to get some services but the services provided are very costly because we have a huge bureaucracy. We are paying a huge amount of money for very little."
On the same day Lewis confirmed her intentions, former Progressive Conservative candidate Dave Thomas confirmed he will not be in the race to replace Reynolds.
When the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance, Thomas, who ran for the PCs in 1997, decided to step aside and allow Reynolds to carry on with his work. Thomas said he remained a high-profile figure in the constituency association so he could move into Reynolds seat when the time came.
After Reynolds announced his intentions to leave politics, Thomas was flooded with messages of support from people who expected him to take over. He thought hard about his future and decided he had to put his young family ahead of his political aspirations.
"My kids are eight, six and six," Thomas said. "I thought it was a sacrifice I was ready to make. I've been really tormented the last couple of weeks. I resigned myself that maybe in the next couple of elections."
The nomination process for the CPC kicked off on March 31. According to Alan Hackett, the constituency association president, there is no closing date at this point because of the political uncertainty created by revelations coming out of the Gomery sponsorship inquiry.
