Canada’s Federal Election: Who they Were, What they Stood For
- Nov 10, 2015
- 3 min read
For last few months of 2015 you’ve hardly been able to turn on the television, watch a YouTube video, or even walk down the street without seeing a sign or commercial about the federal elections. Needless to say, they are a huge deal for Canadian voters. But what about for us high school students? We get no say, so many of us mute the commercials, skip the YouTube ads, and the names on the signs are soon forgotten. However, even though we don’t get to vote, whoever the majority of eligible voters chooses will be our new Prime Minister, and they make decisions that affect us too.
So isn’t it important that we understand what the top priorities of these candidates were, and how they planned to accomplish their goals? Most importantly, we should know what promises were made by our new prime minister, how he plans to carry them out, and whether his promises will be kept.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate was Tom Mulcair. The first of his main four goals was to bring in quality and affordable child care at $15.00/day by eliminating unfair and abused tax loopholes and making corporations pay the amounts due. Another promise of his was to make improvements to the health care system by cutting prescription drug costs by 30%. He was also big on environmental awareness, and he planned on leading Canada in COP21—a United Nations conference on climate change—as well as starting a home retrofit program to make homes more energy efficient. Among these things, he planned on keeping the retirement age at 65, lowering ATM fees and interest on credit cards, and keeping a stricter watch on government expenses.
This all sounds pretty good, but this party leader also had his cons. He planned to pass the Unity Bill which would allow the discussion about Quebec separating to be brought up again, wasting time on a less significant issue.
The next party is the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau. They have many issues they want to cover so we’ll focus on the ones which will affect us, youths of Canada. Many young people don’t vote and one of the reasons is they feel like their concerns aren’t being taken seriously. To try to remedy this, Trudeau plans on having a youth advisory council which will include 16-24 year-olds giving their point of view on issues. He also plans to increase the number youth jobs by 40,000 positions which will especially help students saving for college or university. He is also planning to help students by making more people eligible for student grants and loans, as well as increasing the amounts they could receive. However, he plans on doing so by eliminating education and textbook tax credits that allow people to get a certain percent of the money they spent on these items back. This will affect people who don’t necessarily need grants or loans but do put tax credits to good use.
The last major party was the conservatives with their former leader, the reigning champion Stephen Harper. His biggest priority was balancing the budget, which means the amount of money the government has to spend lining up with what they’re spending which will keep Canada out of debt. This would allow the government to lower taxes, especially on families, seniors, and small businesses. It also would let them make more investments in areas like education and health care instead of putting that money into paying off debt. However, his fault may have also been his biggest asset - experience. He served for almost 10 years, and maybe it’s time for some new ideas. As well as this, the things he has done while he’s been in power aren’t all good. For examples we need look no further than the Mike Duffy trial and the Alberta tar sands pipeline, which has become a huge environmental issue.
By the time any of you are reading this, this article will only serve as a reminder of who the candidates were, as we already have the results of the election. Drumroll please…
The liberals are the winning party with 184 seats, which means they have a majority government and that their leader Justin Trudeau is our new prime minister. So make sure to take a close look at the goals he’s set, as they’ll be the upcoming changes made to Canada.
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