Wesley-Esquimaux encourages youth to vote
By Rick Garrick
CHIPPEWAS OF GEORGINA ISLAND FIRST NATION — Chippewas of Georgina Island’s Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux is focused on encouraging young people to vote, the environment, transportation and reconciliation during her federal election campaign for the York-Simcoe riding. She is running for the Liberal Party of Canada in the upcoming election on Oct. 21.
“A lot of times, young people don’t vote so I am very interested in having a conversation with them; these are the places they are going to be inheriting, and certainly Lake Simcoe … is an important part of that conversation,” says Wesley-Esquimaux, who is on leave from her chair on Truth and Reconciliation position at Lakehead University for the election. “I think the environment is a critical element for everybody to be talking about right across the entire globe. I was very much a part of the Lake Simcoe cleanup and the Lake Simcoe Protection Act over the years before I moved to Thunder Bay, so I am still interested in ensuring that work continues.”
The Lake Simcoe Protection Act was enacted in 2008 by the provincial legislature to protect and restore the ecological health of the Lake Simcoe watershed.
“We’re talking about transportation and some of the changes that are going to come into this riding because a lot of people from Toronto are moving north,” Wesley-Esquimaux says. “They’re moving up because they can’t afford to live in Toronto anymore, so many of our communities up here are becoming bedroom communities. So that is going to have a lot of impact on infrastructure, it’s going to have a lot of impact on how taxation is evolving for our homes — everything goes up. That means that those people that are living in affordable housing now and paying affordable taxes, that is going to go up.”
Wesley-Esquimaux says it is important to continue the work that Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, has been doing on reconciliation.
“We’re actually heading towards reconciliation in a country that has not had a lot of education about Indigenous people,” Wesley-Esquimaux says. “If we lose this government, we will probably lose all of the momentum that has been built over the last four years, really the last decade that she has been working in Indigenous political fields.”
Wesley-Esquimaux previously ran for the Liberals in the York-Simcoe riding in 2011.
“Even though it’s almost been a decade in between [election campaigns], at least I know more now,” Wesley-Esquimaux says. “I have that experience so I know what has to happen. I’ve only been at it for a week, so we’ve got signs going out, we’ve got calls going out, we’ve got people coming in to different sessions to have a conversation. We’re trying to recruit as much as we possibly can by making some calls on my reserve to get the young people involved to help with the signs and they said yes.”
Wesley-Esquimaux says Don Valley East MPP Michael Coteau has also been helping her with the campaign.
“He did the launch of the campaign with me and now we are going to do a fundraiser together on Oct. 6,” Wesley-Esquimaux says. “There are other people that are stepping in to help out, so I think that is great.”
Wesley-Esquimaux was appointed as vice-provost Aboriginal Initiatives at Lakehead University in 2013 before being appointed as the first chair on Truth and Reconciliation in 2016. She moved back to Georgina Island and the Lakehead University Orillia campus in 2018.