🍁Canada's 2025 Federal Election

It's time to vote

Hi friends,

We have our federal election coming soon on April 28, so I wanted to share my voting intention and why and remind you that every vote matters!

Before that, let’s talk about how it’s been reinforced lately that citizenship requires active participation. A common and insidious thread going around is that your vote doesn’t matter. That all the politicians are the same. This message is wrong and it’s being spread by bad actors who want to suppress the vote for their own benefit.

Think about the things we take for granted in this country: health care, the right to vote for woman and First Nations people, the rule of law, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This all happened because the citizens were engaged and made it happen. My grandparent’s generation fought and died to protect our freedom from fascism in World War Two. The brave folks in Ukraine, and in other places, are fighting for the lives and freedom right now.

In our BC election, we had some incredibly close races. One nearby example was for the Surrey-Guildford riding. The NDP candidate won by only 28 votes. I’ll say it again: every vote matters, and we need to encourage everyone we know to vote and to get informed.

If we look at what’s happening the United States, we can see that someone with a slim margin of victory (in the popular vote at least) can utterly destroy the international reputation of a country within weeks of taking office.

I was fortunate that my mother encouraged us to be informed about elections and politics at an early age. We’d watch CBC’s “The National” together most nights, we’d talk about current events and have election parties each time. She really made it a big deal and her enthusiasm spread to her kids and now onto the next generation. I was talking to my Uncle Wayne the other day, and he told me again that it was their parents who did this, too, and started the example.

I will be voting for my local Liberal MP, Parm Bains because he has done a good job for our community. He has posted some stats, including tens of thousands of responses to inquiries from constituents, thousands of interventions, and over $600m in federal investments in our area. My previous Liberal MP knocked on my door, I shared a concern and emailed him the details. He made it happen.

I'm also confident in Mark Carney as our PM. His resume/experience is very impressive, and he is the adult in the room we need right now. He was the head of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis and is the only non-Briton appointed to head the Bank of England. He was born in the NWT and grew up in Alberta. He went to Harvard and Oxford. He worked for Goldman Sachs for 13 years. He also worked in our Ministry of Finance as a public servant.

The Liberal Party is our center-left party here. They have maintained that position while the Conservative Party has moved further to the right. The Conservative Party has little in common with the Progressive Conservative Party of the past. Pierre Poilievre has adopted Trump-style populism and division. He is not the person we need to represent us, especially internationally.

Despite what the Conservatives say, Canada is not broken. We're more unified than we've been in ages.

Here are some things to help you decide. You can look up the voting history of your MP or anyone else. Note the Conservatives have voted against things like $10/day daycare, the Canadian Dental Benefit, the start of Pharmacare which covers things like diabetes medications, and many other things that have improved the lives of Canadians. The Liberals have also raised defense spending significantly, from below 1% of GDP under the Conservatives to 1.3%+ now with real plans for more investments.

Pierre Poilievre has been a politician since 2004 when he was elected at age 25. In all that time, he has only sponsored one bill that received royal assent and that was in 2014! He’s only put up seven bills in total. He has not really accomplished anything other than getting a huge pension paid for by us, spewing nonsense, and sewing division.

You can check his record, or for any other MP, on the Parliament website.

Pierra Poilievre’s bills over 20+ years as a member of Parliament

You can also see how you align with the various platforms using the CBC Vote Compass app.

My result from the Vote Compass app

Remember, this country is what we make of it. We need to consider what’s best for the country as a whole and not just ourselves. Think of the most vulnerable members of our society and what they need. Let’s work together and keep making it better for everyone. Jack Layton, former leader of the NDP, wrote this before he passed away:

“Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”