With an election on the horizon, Poilievre's Conservatives sign up dozens of new candidates
The next federal election could be more than a year away but political parties are already deep into planning their next campaigns — and recruiting new candidates.
Well ahead in the polls and reporting record-breaking sums in political donations, the Conservatives are also leading the pack on nominating candidates new to federal politics.
To date, the Conservative Party of Canada has nominated about 40 new faces as candidates. The party currently has 118 members of Parliament.
Elections Canada records, coupled with publicly available information, show the Conservatives have been naming new candidates almost every week since the beginning of the year, especially in Ontario and British Columbia.
The newly-recruited Conservative candidates include:
Chief Billy Morin, the youngest chief in Enoch Cree Nation's modern history. He's running in Edmonton Northwest, a new riding created in the most recent electoral boundary shuffle. The poll aggregator website Canada338 says the riding is likely to go blue.
Karen Stintz, a former longtime Toronto city councillor; she's nominated in the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence. She was also the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission. The riding currently is held by Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Marco Mendicino.
Eric Lefebvre, the former Quebec government whip, who is running in the central Quebec riding of Richmond-Arthabaska. The seat currently is held by Alain Rayes, who left the Conservative caucus shortly after Pierre Poilievre was elected party leader.
Jessy Sahota, a decorated law enforcement officer, athlete and coach. He's running in the B.C. riding of Delta. Sahota has shared his story of being expelled from school at age 12 and his later career in law enforcement, where he works with at-risk youth. Sahota was named one of the top 40 police officers under 40 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The riding currently is held by Liberal cabinet minister Carla Qualtrough.
Matthew Strauss, an outspoken critical care doctor, who is running in Kitchener South–Hespeler, an Ontario riding currently represented by Liberal MP Valerie Bradford. Strauss has been a critic of the public health response to COVID-19 and is suing his former employer, Queen's University, claiming "malicious, aggressive, condescending and defamatory statements." The social media platform X has agreed to fund Strauss's lawsuit "to vindicate his free speech rights without fear of unfair retaliation."
Other new Conservative nominees include a former provincial Progressive Conservative cabinet minister, the former mayor of Trois-Rivières and a British Columbia MLA.
Pollster Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said being able to attract new candidates is a sign of the Conservative Party's political momentum.
"When you've got a 20-point gap in terms of polling across a number of different polls, there's one party that looks like it's got that momentum," she said.
source https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/elections-nomination-conservatives-liberals-ndp-bloc-1.7203859?cmp=rss