Photo credit: Ishmael N. Daro
Elections are exciting. Colourful signs pop up on lawns and along highways across the country, our mailboxes become jammed with literature full of campaign promises, the daily news is dominated by “he said, she said” exchanges between party leaders and candidates, and, occasionally, there’s a real juicy scandal. Politics is fast-paced at the best of times, but things move at warp-speed for those precious few weeks between the official election call and election day.
All this excitement and drama brings out the best and worst in many of us. Particularly in the age of the internet and social media dominance, emotions run high and it can be tempting to equate a difference of opinion with a difference in party allegiance.
The National Association of Federal Retirees is, and always has been, a fiercely nonpartisan organization. We do not endorse voting for one candidate or one party over another. We do, however, strongly advocate on behalf of our members and all Canadian seniors. We support good policy, regardless of the source, and we push those with weak policy to do better by asking the tough questions and building grassroots support for our priorities.
Our work is inherently political — particularly due to the unique administration of our members’ pensions and benefits. It is vital that we work to inform members of Parliament and candidates of all political stripes of our members’ needs, as they could ultimately be the decision-makers overseeing these programs. In the same way a social worker may advocate for systemic change to address programmatic shortcomings that impact a client in need, we must target current and potential parliamentarians in a position to make important legislative changes that could have an impact on our members.
Partisan politics is a different beast altogether. Partisan organizations seek to uphold and promote a single party or candidate’s position, in some cases, regardless of its merit. Political parties, in addition to putting together platforms that articulate their vision for this country, are in the business of winning. Sometimes, the party’s ideological stance and polling numbers can have a bigger impact on platforms than research and data.
Occasionally, our priorities and asks will align with those of one or many political parties — and this is a good thing. It means we have done our jobs in raising awareness of our priorities with the right people. We have created the groundswell of support for our priorities that makes them not only important for their party’s platform, but perhaps essential.
We aim to promote good policy that is supported by careful research and the best data available, and to have that inform the platforms of candidates and incumbent MPs — not the other way around.
Nevertheless, we are all political animals with own our opinions and worldview. What one believes is excellent policy may not appear to be excellent to another. We all hold our own opinions and beliefs, and that’s good too. It forces us to examine our viewpoints and to better understand each other’s perspectives. With 176,000 members from coast-to-coast-to-coast, it goes without saying that there will be some difference of opinion.
We do, however, always develop our priorities and positions with our members and their needs at heart. Using reliable research and the best data and expertise available, and in consultation with our elected board of directors, we aim to develop and support positions and initiatives that will benefit our members. We encourage feedback and criticism, and are always looking for better ways to represent our members.
So, as we head into this fall’s federal election with all the hype and stress it entails, we do so with you and your needs front and centre. Our association has a proud 56-year history of strong, smart advocacy campaigns that seek to protect against changes to our members’ hard-earned pensions and benefits, and to support good policy that improves the lives of all Canadians in their retirement. This campaign will be no different — in fact, we expect it to be our best yet.
In this election, we are counting on members like you to build momentum behind our campaign. Check out our campaign booklet in the centre of this edition of Sage for more information. As always, please contact advocacyteam@federalretirees.ca with any questions or to find out how to get more involved.