Sunday January 26, 2025 | LANGFORD, BC [Posted at 6 pm | Updated January 27, 2025]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Informing our readers: FEATURE INTERVIEWS WITH ALL SOUTH VANCOUVER ISLAND FEDERAL ELECTION CANDIDATES IN ALL FOUR MAIN PARTIES [Contact: news@islandsocialtrends.com]
In Cowichan-Malahat-Langford there are four Conservative Party of Canada candidate applicants vying to become the party’s candidate for upcoming federal election.
This article looks at Charles Borg’s campaign in the race to become the Conservative candidate in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford. Also see articles about Martin Baker, Jeff Kibble and Mike Harris.
Charles Borg is a Conservative Party of Canada candidate applicant for Cowichan-Malahat-Langford on Vancouver Island.
At age 32, Borg is the youngest of four candidate applicants and the longest in the race, having started his campaign in October 2023 (only pausing to help out Conservative candidates in the Fall 2024 BC provincial election).
There are four applicants to become the Conservative candidate for Cowichan-Malahat-Langford for the upcoming 2025 federal election: Martin Barker, Charles Borg, Jeff Kibble and Mike Harris. The candidate selection date is around March 8 (date to be confirmed).
Borg says there is a high level of Conservative party memberships in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford.
He says he would be a reliable candidate who delivers solutions. He outlines his campaign on his CharlesBorg.ca website.
Meeting people:
Borg has a military and business background and is proudly a new father (he and his wife Tate are parents to their new son, age three months).
He was a reserve officer for 10 years in the Canadian Armed Forces, released in July 2022. “As an Intelligence Officer, I was responsible for team planning, as well as data and information analysis. I would frequently brief high-level government and military officials on timely and sensitive intelligence,” says Borg on his campaign website.
He’s been holding pub nights and meet-and-greets. He feels well-equipped to represent the broad scope of voters in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, mentioning his connections with farmers, fishermen and hunters as well as small businesses.
“The well-being of families and entrepreneurs is important to the middle class through a thriving local economy,” Borg told Island Social Trends in an interview this weekend.
He wants to be part of sound fiscal policy as part of a Conservative government.
Eyeing the south island region:
The large Cowichan-Malahat-Langford riding area has been held by the NDP since 2004 — called Nanaimo-Cowichan in 2004 to 2015 with Jean Crowder as the MP — and since 2015 with Alistair MacGregor as the MP for Cowichan-Malahat-Langford.
The Conservatives are evidently thirsting to win that east side of Vancouver Island (Duncan/Cowichan Valley) down to including Langford which is within the Greater Victoria area of South Vancouver Island. They are relying on a ‘common sense’ wave of political momentum that has been built by Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre over the last two years.
Borg also got some exposure to political things in helping out with the local municipal election in North Cowichan in 2022.
Borg says on his website that “the NDP-Liberal government has prioritized divisive, ideologically driven policies that ignore the real issues affecting Canadians” with “misguided agendas”.
Large riding:
Now that MacGregor has highlighted the riding on the federal political map over the last nine years, the Conservative pressure is probably more intense than before.
Cowichan-Malahat-Langford is a large federal riding that spans a good chunk of the mid section of south Vancouver Island.
The growing robust City of Langford is prominent in the riding as well as the City of Duncan, as are the rural and coastal areas of the east side of the island including the Cowichan Valley. Highway 1 including the Malahat stretch that connects Langford to the rest of Vancouver Island is prominent transportation aspect.
When some Conservatives complain that MacGregor doesn’t have a second office in Langford (he’s got one in Duncan, and also had one in Langford until the pandemic dragged on), they are perhaps not looking at the cost to lease and manage two offices. The Duncan office has a 1-800 number that is reliably responded to.
Borg campaign:
Charles Borg feel he offers a unique blend of experience and values that can support voters and residents of the riding “across all generations”. He is the 32. The other candidates are in their 50s and 60s.
Borg describes himself as “one of the people” and middle class. He feels he can relate to both young Canadians and seniors. He wants to “bridge young and old”. He empathizes with the plight of fixed income and the rising cost of living.
As he door-knocks and connects with people at meet-and-greet events Borg says he hears about the cost of living, housing affordability and the problems of drugs and crime. People feel they have been “failed and forgotten about”, says Borg.
He feels he has strong communication skills — listening and speaking — which is “essential to understanding the community”.
Cost of living:
As to the cost of living, Borg says he’s heard from none of the people he’s encountered during his campaign about receiving the federal GST rebate (only low-income Canadians receive the rebate, income-tested and deposited automatically into their bank accounts). Not everyone may realize that the climate action tax or carbon tax (by whatever name) has been used for this income-support program since 2015. These supports would stop if the Conservatives form government, if Poilievre holds true to his promise to drop the carbon tax.
The Liberal government recently tried to address the carbon tax angst with their two-month GST tax holiday (December 14, 2024 to February 15, 2025), and two front-runner Liberal leadership candidates now say they would drop (but probably reintroduce a different) carbon tax program. In particular, Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney acknowledges how low-income Canadians depend on the quarterly rebate but that he is working on new ways to address that challenge.
Borg says the Parliamentary Budget Officer has stated a potential 30% drop in grocery prices if the carbon tax were to be eliminated, whereas the PBO said in October 2024 that the costs to households will be lower than it predicted in its last report — which erroneously included the industrial price on carbon in its calculations.
The Bank of Canada said in September 2023 that the carbon price was contributing about 0.15 percentage points to inflation overall. That amount was the same whether inflation was at its peak of 8.1 per cent in June 2022 or 3.3 per cent in July. “While the tax is not applied directly to food, and the bulk of carbon emissions from the agricultural sector are exempted, it can still indirectly raise costs of production and transportation of food,” as reported by The National Post in September 2023.
Food security is really more the purview of the provinces, says Borg, expressing concern that not enough food is grown locally in BC.
US tariffs:
Borg is concerned about the impact of any US tariffs that end up being imposed on Canada.
If border security is the underlying issue, Borg feels Canada is probably already overdue for making improvements there.
As for oil being exported from Alberta to the United States, Canada is currently “getting ripped off”. He wants to see oil refineries built in Canada, to have more of the financial benefits enjoyed in the Canadian economy while at the same time (25 to 30 years) reducing Canada’s dependency on oil (through research and development of other energy sources).
Housing:
As for housing, Borg says that cutting red tape in the housing construction sector is the way to increase the housing supply, adding that municipalities “create barriers”.
===== RELATED:
- Martin Barker aims to be the Conservative candidate in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford (January 26, 2025)
- Poilievre pushes free-enterprise direction for Canada (January 16, 2025)
- Jeff Kibble aims to be the Conservative candidate in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford (January 13, 2025)
- Poilievre shifts Trudeau-taunts to all potential leadership Liberal candidates (January 9, 2025)
- This is a radically transformed Canada says Alistair MacGregor MP (December 18, 2024)
- GST consumer tax holiday to start Dec 14 (November 21, 2024)
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