With so much time to go, you might be wondering if it isn’t a bit early to think about the next federal election. 

But it’s not! There is a huge amount of work and opportunities for political action in the months and even years leading up to an election. In fact, there are a whole bunch of things that can have a bigger influence on the end result than casting your ballot. 

Get involved in a nomination race

Months and perhaps years before an election is held, political parties in every riding, through electoral district associations, decide who will be their candidate in the next election.  

The party with the existing MP for the riding (the incumbent) has it easy. They usually just let that candidate run again if he or she wants to. But for all other parties, their electoral district association needs to pick a new candidate. Sometimes, there is only one person who is interested in running. In that case, that person is acclaimed as the candidate. But in many ridings, especially when a party has a good shot of winning the riding, several people want to become the party’s candidate in which case the electoral district association holds a nomination race. 

These nomination races are critically important and provide a great opportunity for ordinary citizens to make an impact. 

But why? Who cares if Joe or Sally is the Conservative candidate or Frank or Lizzy is the Liberal candidate? Don’t most candidates within the same political party have similar views?  

Not necessarily. Competitive political parties are typically “big-tent” or “brokerage” parties that try to appeal to different segments of the population. Individual candidates of the same party may have very different positions on important issues. Not all Conservative MPs, for example, are pro-life and not all NDP or Liberal candidates want to expand euthanasia. 

To volunteer, donate, or vote in a local nomination race, sign up to become a member of the party and get the local riding association’s updates of what is going on in the riding. If you don’t want to be a member of the part but still get involved, you can visit Elections Canada and search for the contact information of your local riding association. The local riding association is in the best place to let you know who the candidate of the party in the next election will be or provide you with opportunities to get involved in nomination races. 

And we invite you to support the good candidates and oppose the bad with your vote, time, and resources. 

Ask your local candidates where they stand on the issues

Ask your local candidates where they stand on various political issues or persuade them to adopt a pro-life or pro-family stance. Sometimes, the local candidate of the party you usually vote for doesn’t reflect your values very well. In those cases, it might be worth looking for a candidate from another political party – perhaps a smaller political party – that better reflects your views that you can in good conscience vote for. 

You can do this by emailing, phoning, or meeting with a local candidate to ask him or her specific questions. Alternatively, organizing an all-candidates meeting where you invite all the candidates to come together before your chapter, church, or community is a great way for you to learn more about all of the candidates and help spread that knowledge to others in your community. 

If you’re looking for name of each party’s candidates in your riding, you can search Election Canada’s website. (Political parties are required to publish the winner of nomination contests with Elections Canada within 30 days after nomination was won, so this source should have all the candidates in your local area, except those selected within the past month.) 

Learn about the parties  

In each election campaign, political parties release platforms of what they intend to do if they win the election. So far out from the election, parties won’t release their full platforms for a while, but here’s a list of their recent commitments, policies passed at their last convention, their 2021 platform, and their policy handbook, all if available. 

Every election, ARPA also tracks where the parties stand on key issues that ARPA deals with. As we the release of their 2025 election platforms to build out election guide on, here is our 2021 election guide. 

Influencing a party’s election platform 

If you already have an MP that you like who is running again in the next election, you can help prepare for an election in a different way: ask them to advocate within their caucus for certain policies to be part of their party’s election platform. 

Election platforms are usually long and detailed and have a single aim in mind: to convince as many voters as possible to vote for the party. And the only way that a political party, its MPs, and its leaders know what voters want is for us to tell them the policies that are important to us. If we never mention to our MPs that stopping sex-selective abortion is really important to us and lots of other voters, parties have little reason to campaign on stopping sex-selective abortion. Or fixing Canada’s conversion therapy law. Or halting expansion of euthanasia. The list can go on. 

For example, the 2021 Conservative election platform was 164 pages long, with most pages containing many policy recommendations. Because of the advocacy of everyday citizens like you and the passion of many MPs in the Conservative caucus, that platform included seven promises to limit euthanasia in Canada. 

So, we need to meet with, call, or email our MPs and encourage them not only to introduce good laws now, but also to commit to running on good policies in the next election. Do you find the idea of meeting with your MP or local party candidate nerve-wracking? It’s often easier, and more impactful, to invite him or her to a meeting with a group, such as with your local ARPA chapter, or with a group of parents from your school or people from your church. 

If parties publicly commit to a policy in the next election, we can remind them of their public promises once they get into power. For example, you can see how well Prime Minister Trudeau has kept his election promises at Polimeter. 

You can find the contact information for your local MP on the House of Commons website. 

Volunteer!

At it’s heart, democracy is the rule of the people. Democracy relies on people to take time and participate in elections through voting but also volunteering. Volunteering for candidates provides an excellent opportunity to build a relationship with your next elected representative. In Canada, elections also require volunteers and workers to manage polling stations. Volunteering is an easy way to have an impact on your local elections. Will you be one of them?

Other helpful organizations 

Right Now – If you’re interested in helping pro-life nominees and candidates win, check out Right Now! They specialize in helping pro-life people get elected. 

338Canada – Curious what the next election might look like? Check out 338Canada for the latest polling numbers and seat projections. 

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