By Mason Mattu, Humour Editor
Adam Bremner-Akins is not your typical politician. He’s 23 years old, works a minimum-wage job as a restaurant waiter, has run for elected office twice, and is wrapping up a political science degree at SFU.
Now he has his eyes set on becoming the next leader of the BC Green Party. Bremner-Akins, a former BC Green Party secretary and two-time MLA candidate, joins candidates Emily Lowan and Jonathan Kerr in a race to replace former leader Sonia Furstenau.
The Peak sat down with Bremner-Akins to learn more about his journey as an activist, politician, and student — and why he thinks he’s the right person to lead the Greens.
This interview has been edited for concision.
How did your journey at SFU influence the way you think about the world?
“Discovering urban planning at SFU changed how I see the world. Every time I leave my house, I can’t stop thinking about the design of our streets, the transit I am taking, or who decided suburban sprawl was a good idea. As well, I stopped viewing cities as traffic-clogged places where people work and started seeing them as living systems shaped by choices. It taught me that cities can be places where people live affordably, move safely, and belong, if we choose to design them that way.
“PLAN 300 is the course that really got me hooked on urban planning. It introduced modern planning practices like gentle density, street design, transit-oriented development, and green infrastructure, and showed me how design decisions can either build a community or pull it apart. It made me want to build cities that put people first.”
What made you put your name forward in this race?
“When I first started, there were some people I wanted to see run for the party who just didn’t have the time or weren’t going to. And so I sort of sat around. I talked to some people and told them, ‘Hey, maybe I should do it.’ I’ve been with the party for a while. I’ve been a candidate before.
“I am in an opportunity where I have the experience to go for this job, but I have the issues that everyone is struggling with on my shoulders. Living in Metro Vancouver, the cost of living is obscene.
“All of these issues compound, whether it’s healthcare, lack of transit, or the inability to afford groceries. Because everything is getting more expensive quickly. If the world was going to burn down, I need to know I did everything to stop it.”
Tell me about what drew you into politics.
“It was when the BC Liberals began to go after teachers, and when they were on strike. That was the first time I interacted with large social movements. My parents are both educators. I sat with my dad on the picket line.”
In 2019, then a student at Terry Fox Secondary School in Port Coquitlam, Bremner-Akins walked out of class with a single sign and sat on his school’s lawn to participate in a climate demonstration. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, he tells me, this started a movement at his school that saw upwards of 150 people out on that same lawn.
This transcended into local advocacy initiatives for issues such as reducing single-use plastics from the school cafeteria and lowering the voting age to 16 in BC.
How do you de-stress after a busy day on the campaign trail?
“Calling friends on the way home from an event and debriefing. It’s probably the only time I get to not talk about politics right now.
Aside from that, the conversations with voters do help, too, especially because it’s groups of people who believe in the same ideas as I do and the party does. Because of that, it hasn’t been terribly stressful. There’s still a group of people who are grounded in reality and care for our province.”
How would a BC Green Party under your leadership combat strategic voting efforts?
“Anyone who I have talked to now, whether they’re a party member or not, are frustrated by politics and feel like the government doesn’t represent them. And that means it’s time to change the way we elect politicians to proportional representation.”
On the campaign trail in the four days preceding our interview, Bremner-Akins travelled over 1,500 kilometres. Although it’s been taxing, he noted that putting in hard work is what he wants to do as leader. Bremner-Akins said the reason why Conservatives have been successful in their campaigning as of late is because “they’ve found a way to communicate with people.”
He plans to counteract that with his own communication — something he calls the “Dancing Green Tour.” It’s a plan that seeks to visit all of the electoral districts in the province to show people that he’s not like most politicians who “show up to campaign for a few hours.” Instead, he seeks to be accessible to those who wish to know about the Greens.
If you had a campaign theme song, what would it be?
“Chappell Roan’s ‘The Giver.’ Of course, I love Chappell. Part of the song is, ‘you can’t stop me,’ and I refuse to be stopped. I’m going to keep on fighting for as long as I can for the issues I care about.
“The song is a bit me too because as much as I talk about urban planning and density, I learned to drive manual on a tractor. My family and I live on a farm in Maple Ridge. Though it’s not really active right now, I have a background in a bit of agriculture and outdoorsyness that isn’t really traditionally reflected in my campaign.
“Because ‘The Giver’ is a country song from someone who lives in LA, it feels sort of fitting for me as someone who lives in a big city, but also has a bit more understanding or relatability to more rural issues.
What advice do you have for other young people who want to step up and get involved in politics?
“If you’re getting into politics, make sure you’re grounded in why you’re doing it. It gets scary and depressing, and sometimes not all that fun. You really have to, at the end of the day, just say, ‘I’m doing this because of [a particular reason] and it upsets me really bad.’”
What do you say to people who say you’re too young to run?
“Age is just a number. Young politicians work twice as hard to get half the respect of older politicians.
“I pay taxes, I have a job, I have a life. Anyone who does that is more than capable of participating in our democratic systems. And frankly, I have put the work in before this to make sure I’m politically experienced enough to do a job like this.
“No one shouldn’t be allowed to run for party leader because they’re too young. That’s a criticism that’s not grounded in anything. Look at all the young politicians we’ve had in BC. Ned Taylor on the island, an incredible young politician. He accomplished so much as Saanich Councillor. I would say that, arguably, the politicians who do the worst stuff would probably be middle-aged politicians. And we don’t ban middle-aged people from running for office because we don’t like their actions.”
Bremner-Akins told The Peak that he’s “ready on day one.” Will his campaign resonate with voters, especially younger ones? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Members of the BC Green Party can vote in the leadership race. The virtual voting opens September 13 and closes September 23. For more information about Bremner-Akins’ campaign, visit adamba.ca. For more information about voting procedures and the other candidates, visit bcgreens.ca/leadership-contest/ and the news piece published in The Peak last week.
