Camosun College alumnus Rishi Sharma has announced that he will be running in the District of Saanich fall election as a mayoral candidate. As a father of three, Sharma—who graduated from Camosun’s Major Appliance and Vending Machine Repair Technician program in 1998—says he has a strong desire to keep Saanich safe, affordable, and healthy for all residents.
As a previous chief of staff for the minister of post-secondary education, Rishi, a life-long Saanich resident, championed the first free online textbooks initiative. During his time in office, Sharma and his team were worried about the increasing financial pressure that was being put on post-secondary students, so they elected to turn their attention toward textbooks. This eventually culminated in a free online textbook database that’s currently accessible for all students.
“I remember hearing about struggles years ago when I was the chief of staff,” says Rishi. “Then we implemented the first free textbooks online initiative; I really championed that.”
He says that it was relatively cheap on the government’s end to get the database up and running.
“It wasn’t that expensive on the government’s part,” he says. “It was pretty cheap.”
Rishi’s background in academia also comes from personal experience as a former trades student at Camosun and a recent graduate from a master’s program at Royal Roads. His master’s thesis encroaches into his political background, as it’s about having uncomfortable conversations in leadership roles. Rishi says that his master’s research has influenced a remarkable amount of his campaign.
“Every single day since I’ve written it, I’ve used the tools on how to have uncomfortable conversations,” he says. “The tools that I’ve used—no bias, understanding that I may think differently but everyone is allowed to have their time to speak, everyone’s opinion should be valid, and listening—was huge.”
Rishi says that by using these tools and actively listening to his community, he has become more flexible with updating his policies throughout the campaign, saying that his work is a constant revision.
“I have all my policies, and I have what I’d like to do, but I’ve already made six or seven amendments on my website to different areas because I’m out door-knocking now,” he says.
As an example of this, Rishi recently made a change on his climate protection and environmental resiliency policies.
“I just posted a new policy on environmental protection and climate resiliency because I went through the parks, because I spoke to environmental leaders, I did more research,” he says.
Rishi feels strongly about bringing Indigenous leadership into the conversation of environmental protections.
“It’s actually quite important to me,” he says. “It’s something I think is very important in getting representation and knowledge from all our various communities, nations and individuals.”
An endorsement from Save Our Saanich (SOS) Neighbourhoods Society as their mayoral candidate has drawn attention to Sharma’s campaign. SOS is a local advocacy group aimed at enhancing and protecting “Saanich’s treasured environments, agricultural lands, and welcoming, human-scaled neighbourhoods for generations to come,” according to its website. Since their political values aligned well and he admired their previous work ethic, Rishi was open to discussing an endorsement and working alongside their team.
“I was so impressed with their ability to get out to folks, to have these open conversations, and to do that all in five weeks,” says Rishi. “They came to me and we had a conversation on what our priorities are, and our priorities were kind of in sync from what I ran last time.”
Rishi says that working on a team has also been quite valuable to his campaign, as they’ve been able to share workload and capacity.
“I’ve ran independently, which was okay, but I’ve also worked on teams in politics, and being on a team at this point is something I really needed to do and really wanted to do,” says Rishi. “They have their priorities like responsible spending, protecting greenspace, smart development, transparent decision-making, and efficient roads—and that’s all the priorities that I hold as well.”
The general municipal voting day for Saanich will be held on Saturday, October 17. Eligible voters will be able to elect one mayor and eight councillors. Find more info at saanich.ca.