Is 2015 a Year of Change in Canada?

At cStreet Campaigns we work with progressive campaigns around the world.  We’ve helped bring a major Australian union to NationBuilder, revamped the UK-based digital campaign to ban unpaid internships, and worked with a wide spectrum of US progressives.

That international work will never stop, it’s essential to our organization; but I wanted to take a moment and put something in writing about the importance of 2015 for Canadian progressives.  

This year we’ll have a federal election that will act as a referendum on 9 years of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party rule. Either Canada will embrace more of the same or opt for something new. The stakes are clear; this is an administration that’s ignored climate change, deepened income inequality, feuded with First Nations and spied on Canadians coast to coast to coast. 

Faced with this regressive agenda, Canadians across the country are salivating at the idea of 2015. The year 2015 has come to represent something greater than a single election year.

• 2015 is when we put childcare & climate change back on the national agenda.
• 2015 is when we repair Canada’s reputation abroad.
• 2015 is when we bring fairness back to elections and democracy through proportional representation.

In the years since Amy Leaman and I founded cStreet Campaigns, we’ve taken on an ongoing stream of what we’ve called ‘themed’ projects.  2012 was all about labour and working families; In 2013 we focused on First Nations - the year of Idle No More & Respect Chief Spence and helping to crystallize a movement-moment. In 2014, municipal elections helped us put progressive solutions front and centre in the lives of working families.  

In 2015, there is no doubt; Harper & the Conservatives have to go. That’s why we’re so excited to work with a diverse group of campaigns to realize the potential of 2015.  In the coming weeks we'll be announcing a series of exciting projects lined up that squarely target the Harper Conservatives and aim at galvanizing the progressive majority.