In the 2011 federal election, five students from McGill University and one from Université de Sherbrooke rode the Orange Wave all the way to Parliament. After suspending their studies, all six served as New Democratic Party (NDP) MPs in Quebec ridings, with some even becoming critics and presenting bills.
The present federal election has also seen its share of students running in ridings across the country.
“I decided to run for my generation,” said Linh Nguyen, a candidate for the Green Party in the Mississauga Centre riding. Nguyen is currently completing her BA in international economics and finance at Ryerson University.
“It’s time for a younger perspective to restore our democracy and allow for new ideas that reflect our progressive values,” Nguyen said. “For every election I’ve been able to participate in, I’ve never once felt 100 per cent confident that the candidate I was voting for could truly represent me or the voice of an everyday citizen.”
Kas MacMillan, a Green candidate running in the riding of Lethbridge, expressed similar reasoning behind his decision to run for office.
“There are a lot of policies that I just don’t see being brought to the spotlight that they deserve to be in,” MacMillan said, “so I’m kind of using this election as a forefront to bring those policies forward.”
MacMillan is currently studying history and political science at Carleton University. He took the fall semester off to focus on his campaign.
“I’m definitely putting my life on hold,” MacMillan said.
Nguyen is continuing school through the election campaign, and said time management has been challenging for her.
“Wanting to run a full campaign with canvassing efforts that will allow me to connect with the community has been difficult while balancing my studies and a part-time job, all the while running on little resources,” she said.
Dean Harris is a linguistics student at Carleton, and is running as the Libertarian Party candidate in Ottawa Centre.
“I’m sure if I were running with the bigger parties, the fact that I’m a student would come into play more,” Harris said.
“The biggest thing I’ve learned is just about how to communicate my message more succinctly,” he added. “You have to come up
with ways to simplify your message and whittle it down to its main core principles.”
MacMillan said debates aren’t much different than school.
“[It’s] weird,” MacMillan said. “I know mainly what the debate’s going to be about, so I just do my homework, I do a lot of studying, I try to memorize as much as possible, get notes down.”
NDP candidate Stephanie Brown is running in the Ajax riding, where immigration minister Chris Alexander is also running. Brown is currently studying at the University of Toronto.
Mylène Freeman, 26, was among the five McGill students elected in 2011. While unavailable to fully comment, Freeman said in an email she is “thrilled to see many students on the ballot again this election.”
She represented the riding of Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, and was named in January the NDP’s critic for the status of women.
Charmaine Borg, 24; Laurin Liu, 24; Matthew Dubé, 27; and Jamie Nicholls, 43; were the other McGill students elected. Borg became the youngest full critic in Canadian history in 2012, focusing on digital issues. The year Borg was elected was also the first federal election she was eligible to vote in.
