Sunday April 27, 2025 | COLWOOD, BC [Updated 2:06 pm]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
In a phone interview from the campaign trail in Colwood on Friday evening, NDP candidate Maja Tait chatted with Island Social Trends about her campaign in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke.
This weekend Tait and several of her teams will be canvassing in Esquimalt and Sooke. The teams will circle back to contact people who may not have been home on their first door-knocking rounds through many communities.
Phone calls will be made to households in the large Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke region which includes Esquimalt, Colwood, View Royal, Metchosin, Sooke, Juan de Fuca areas out to Jordan River, and a few First Nations.
Some of her volunteers are students who have just finished exams and are also now getting out on the campaign trail for her NDP campaign.
Today she will be at a local community celebration in the Gorge area of Saanich.
Election night fast approaching:
The 45th federal general election will be held on Monday, April 28. Just a day now to go. Polls will be open 9 am to 9 pm.
Tait will spend the day motivating her team as they get out the vote. She will settle in at a hotel in downtown Victoria in the evening, to watch the election results on TV.
Then she will head to an NDP election party at Swan’s Pub in downtown Victoria along with NDP Victoria incumbent Laurel Collins.
Locally connected:
Tait sees herself as a champion for local causes. She feels that no one political party should “have all the cards”, as that lacks diversity. Members of Parliament that go to Ottawa should “know their riding”.
“Everyone is aware of the election but they may be busy with their everyday lives include school, registering for summer camps, or getting to health-care appointments,” said Tait, indicating her awareness of the breadth of activity in people’s lives.
She hopes people won’t do ‘strategic voting’ out of fear about the Trump factor. She’s referring to a trend in this campaign where it seems some NDP (and Green) voters will instead vote Liberal to make sure that the Liberal leader (Mark Carney) ends up being the one to deal with US President Trump and upcoming trade negotiations.
She notes changes in the type of campaign that has happened in Election 2025. Not all candidates showed up for All Candidates Meetings which are opportunities for voters in an electoral area to hear from all major party candidates at one time, answering the same questions.
The new style is essentially ‘every candidate for themselves’. Indeed, Conservative candidate Grant Cool has told Island Social Trends a few weeks ago that the election is “a competition”, which in a business context is that you don’t give away any information that would be an advantage to others in the race.
Locally involved:
People have heard of Tait or have followed her involvement in a range of areas of service including as Mayor of Sooke, on the Greater Victoria Transit Commission, on the Capital Regional District (CRD) board, and as the president of the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) in 2020 during the pandemic. Some people saw Tait quite a bit in the summer of 2024 during the Old Man Lake Fire coverage as that wildfire was covered in TV news.
Just last week she met with west shore mayors for a casual monthly lunch as a way to stay connected in the region.
Some people are telling Tait that they’re glad to see a woman “stepping forward’ into politics at the federal level. She is also “the child of immigrants” (her father from Denmark and her mother from Japan), calling herself an example of “the Canadian story”.
Health-care:
Tait has worked on health-care system improvements for the Sooke region for about 10 years. She gets into conversations at the doorstep about how people are impacted by health-care system challenges.
The NDP is firm about supporting universal health-care and working against the privatization of health-care in Canada.
She wraps that into the NDP “putting people first”, a theme that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has consistently promoted on the campaign trail this month, including supports for workers. Singh held a press conference with nurses in Saskatoon during the campaign.
Housing challenge:
She hears about challenges of the cost of living including housing. She hears at the doorstep about families where grown children are living at home who might be university students or working. At other households, family members have moved in to share the cost of housing.
She points out that housing is locally developed but requires support from provincial and federal levels of government, including for infrastructure that supports housing (both structural and social).
Tait has been involved in housing developments in the Sooke municipality, including opening of an affordable housing building partnering with a non-profit society, in May 2019.
Cllmate resilience:
On climate resilience issues, Tait wants to see more houses properly fitted for winter weather and summer heat. Housing in BC for decades has not prepared for these extremes.
She has been involved in emergency preparedness issues in this coastal zone, including tsunami zone preparations.
Campaign highlights:
Tait enjoyed at special feeling of joy and hope at the NDP rally held by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh at the Beacon Drive-In on Douglas Street across from Beacon Hill Park.
She has appreciated getting to know many aspects of the large riding and greatly appreciates the support of her team of over 100 volunteers.
What may lie ahead:
If Tait wins on Monday night, she will be stepping onto the national level of politics and in a way leaving behind the coziness of focusing on local issues. But it’s precisely because she knows the local issues so well that she would have a foothold for success with broader issues.
Life schedules will change. Tait lives with her husband in Sooke. They have a nine-year-old son. Tait’s 90-year-old father-in-law is also in their household care.
Vancouver Island stronghold:
Maja Tait is running in a riding that was held by Randall Garrison as the NDP MP from 2011 through to early 2025.
Six of the seven electoral areas on Vancouver Island have been held by the NDP from 2011 up to this election: Victoria, Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Nanaimo-Ladysmith, Courtenay-Alberni, and North Island-Powell River.
The seventh riding on the island is Saanich-Gulf Islands, held by the Greens since 2011.
Endorsements and backing:
Of course Tait has strong support from the previous Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke (ESS) MP Randall Garrison; he’s the one who brought her into the federal fold.
Tait also highlights that recently she has been endorsed by former BC Green Party MLA Andrew Weaver, which may be of questionable positive impact. Weaver ducked out of provincial politics after the allure wore off (he signed the Supply and Confidence Agreement with Horgan’s NDP government and then seemed to get bored), then supported the federal Liberals for their climate policy. Weaver said in his endorsement posted in LinkedIn that he knows Tait’s work well but has never been seen as politically active in the ESS riding. He did not support the BC Greens in the 2024 provincial election.
Former View Royal Mayor David Screech has also endorsed Maja Tait. He would have seen her work at the CRD board level over the years. Screech hoped to have run as the Liberal candidate in ESS, but was passed over by the party for Stephanie McLean (who was a one-term NDP MLA in Alberta, now running for the Liberals).
Tait has also received endorsements by BC Premier David Eby and two newly elected BC MLAs: Darlene Rotchford (Esquimalt-Colwood) and Dana Lajeunesse (Juan de Fuca-Malahat). Lajeunesse was a councillor on District of Sooke councillor when Tait was District of Sooke mayor.
===== RELATED:
- Local federal campaign trail altercation in Sooke (April 24, 2025)
- Lopsided federal candidates debate in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke explores wide range of issues (April 13, 2025)
- NDP will defend health care in next parliament, says Singh (April 10, 2025)
- NDP candidate Maja Tait enters federal politics during socioeconomic shift (March 27, 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)
- Randall Garrison says farewell in the House of Commons (December 5, 2024)
- Sooke Mayor Maja Tait turning from local to federal (August 15, 2023)
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