Thursday March 27, 2025 | SOOKE, BC [Posted at 6:40 am]
Sociopolitical analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
In the winter days of the new year, the federal election call was still a matter of speculation. But having been a Girl Guide, Maja Tait was always prepared for the Writ to drop.
The federal election was called on March 23, nearly 19 months after she had been acclaimed as the NDP candidate for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke.
With NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh at her side then — in a national broadcast from a local coffee shop in Sooke in August 2023, and fast-forward to now in a national announcement from View Royal focused on workers and EI on March 11 — Tait has had the party’s wind at her back.
DAILY CAMPAIGN UPDATES – NATIONAL & LOCAL
And for longer than that, as the former NDP MP Randall Garrison had been executing his exit plan for years with Tait as what the party regards as his replacement in the large coastal forested riding west of Greater Victoria.
Tait and Garrison would, over many years, share the Canada Day stage and cake-cutting in Sooke.
Tait was also often seen with the late former NDP Premier John Horgan at community events in the Sooke region. Now she has told the party faithful (in her speech at the south Vancouver Island campaign office on March 11) that she wonders why it took her so long to essentially ‘find her home’.
Tait had a career in property management as she had entered municipal politics in 2008 in Sooke. She has been on Sooke Council — first as a councillor (2008-2014) and then as mayor (2014-2025). Stepping away from the municipal front this month demarcates a significant life shift. Now embarking on the federal stage in many ways closes former doors for good.
Tait has been the president of the Union of BC Municipalities. She has done the Federation of Canadian Municipalities circuit. She has chaired the Greater Victoria Transit Commission and has hosted several regional health care forums. All of that on a track to this moment.
The mother of a nine-year-old son who has drawn her into the world of being a hockey mom — Tait began her campaign this month in a red and black lumberjack style top, surrounded that day by the national party leader and other local MPs (including three island MPs — Alistair MacGregor, Gord Johns, and Laurel Collins) with an appeal to workers.
The NDP knows their fight in this 2025 election is against the Conservatives in most of the Vancouver Island ridings that the NDP has long held. Voters in six of seven federal ridings on south Vancouver Island have elected NDP MPs since 2011.
The ‘orange wave’ that swept much of the country under the unique force of then NDP Leader Jack Layton in the 2011 federal election seems to have had found a repository on Vancouver Island but also in BC. Twelve of the 24 NDP seats at dissolution of Parliament were held by MPs elected in BC. Our inescapable connection with nature’s majesty on this island and across BC perhaps keeps people connected with larger forces that in the end favour everyone.
Unlike in most parts of industrialized and urban Ontario or most of Canada where the race is between the Liberals and the Conservatives, in BC the race is orange/blue: NDP vs Conservative. Many ridings may not even field a Liberal candidate and the Greens are only running where they think they have a chance.
The shared issues of NDP and Conservative are ground-level economics — cost of living and such. But the parties obviously take a different approach to policy. The Conservative ethos is always rooted in free enterprise whereas the NDP chant to ‘people first’.
Tait in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke is now up against a Conservative ‘parachute’ candidate… someone brought in to upset the apple cart. Tait has been steadily working the broader region for over 12 years. While anyone who has taken that approach to politics would feel in their right to be respected for that depth of community engagement, sometimes that is not the whole picture.
The NDP footprint on the Island goes farther back into the 1980s when Moe Sihota was a leading light for the party as well as former BC premier Dave Barrett. The NDP won’t be easily shaken in their island boots but the Conservatives seem especially determined in 2025 to make a dent on the island.
The Conservatives are presently enjoying momentum from the long-building campaign of party leader Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre has tapped into the basic frustrations of people and communities who feel they’ve been left out of now four decades of economic prosperity. That 40-year run has been driven by the domination of global trade (including the ease of exporting to the US) and digital finance (thanks to the Internet) since the beginning of this century.
Indeed, the financial struggles of many Canadian households today did not start with the pandemic or even the 2008 financial crisis. It was already taking root by the late 1990s.
This month Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said that this country’s economic productivity has been stuck in low gear since the year 2000. People have continued to slide farther behind; in many ways it’s impossible to now catch up in one lifetime when the opportunity to buy a home or have a steady well-paid job is now the exception rather than the rule.
Tait showed up for her campaign launch in a lumber-jack shirt and jeans. She might end up wearing a suit in Ottawa but for now it’s about blending in with the local group of voters who will help support the NDP vision for people-first.
Regardless of how Poilievre will promise the dream of a nice home on a safe street as a restored way of life in Canada that is a long-term hope by any socioeconomic measure; free enterprise has always favoured some over others. The trickle-down promise of prosperity has been proven not to work for the benefit of those further down the economic chain.
That’s why the NDP still has a good chance to maintain their ‘small but mighty’ 24 seats by realistically looking at the needs of everyday workers, households and families. In that sector of the population (which is most of us) lies the human resource for rebuilding Canada — especially now in the face of economic reformation in response to the Trump-imposed economic warfare.
Getting the country back on track to a former way of life will be a long process that requires a healthy, strong, trained and employable workforce. The Liberals have already tipped their hat to that (e.g. recently announcing 10 new programs for training people in the green-tech trades) but it’s the NDP who already speak the words of a party that will help buffer people and families from the economic storm that is already brewing and about to hit hard.
And that storm won’t be short and swift. As Canadians we’re heading into a long-term economic disruption that could take decades to pull out from.
No vote should be wasted on April 28. This is a time in Canadian history where most of the adult working population has not seen or experienced the type of struggle that their grandparents of great-grandparents experienced in two world wars and the Great Depression.
The proud and me-first baby boom generation grew from that, and they in turn raised children (X-Gen) who have known only a working world of opportunity and success and an opportunity for post-secondary education like never before. The following generation (Gen Z) has not been allowed an economic foothold — no wonder mental strain and anxiety abound; adaptive lifestyles have emerged but cancer rates are up in young adults, household debt is at an all-time high, and the idea of owning a home has become ‘never in this lifetime’.
Tough times lie ahead but also the opportunity for evolution of what it means to be Canadian. Voters will want thoughtful and brave leadership to help create a livable new reality for all Canadians.
===== RELATED:
- Tait vs Cool: NDP Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke candidate challenges ‘parachute’ choice by Conservatives (March 24, 2025)
- Jagmeet Singh launches NDP campaign in Ottawa (March 23, 2025)
- Carney announces that 45th federal election is underway (March 23, 2025)
- Liberal Leader Mark Carney to run in Ottawa-area riding (March 22, 2025)
- Fielding federal candidates in 343 ridings across the country (March 22, 2025)
- 45th federal election to be held on April 28 (March 22, 2025)
- Liberal vision to build ‘one strong economy’ in response to trade war (March 21, 2025)
- Carney & Premiers discuss interprovincial trade, economic infrastructure, more housing & being an energy superpower (March 21, 2025)
- Carney on tariff challenge: do things faster and at a different scale (March 20, 2025)
- Bank of Canada Governor: more uncertainty, tough decisions as trade war escalates (March 20, 2025)
- Jagmeet Singh launches south Vancouver Island NDP campaign office (March 13, 2025)
- Maja Tait launches her federal NDP campaign alongside Jagmeet Singh (March 11, 2025)
- Sooke Mayor Maja Tait turning from local to federal (August 15, 2023)
- NEWS SECTIONS: CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTION 2025 | CANADA-NATIONAL | CANADA-USA | COUNCIL OF THE FEDERATION