By Pepper Parr
August 17, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
She just might deliver a “barn burner” of a speech; she certainly has it in her. At the least, the members of the Burlington Federal Liberal Association are going to hear a well thought out acceptance speech from Karina Gould, a Burlington native and M.M. Robinson graduate who becomes the Liberal candidate in the federal election scheduled for October of 2015.
Gould is young – quite young, 27 – but is more than prepared professionally and psychologically for the job she is going after.
She desperately wanted to become a House of Commons page when she had completed high school – these are the young men and women who carry messages to Members of the House of Commons. “I made it to the final round” said Gould in an exclusive interview with the Gazette – “and when I didn’t get the job I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life” – all this at the age of 18.
Gould got bitten by the political bug when as a grade 10 civics student, she invited then MP Paddy Torsney to her school to give a talk. Torsney took Gould under her wing and the result is a bright, focused young woman going after the federal seat in Burlington that Torsney once held.
Torsney now serves as the Permanent Observer to the United Nations for the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She has always given that extra time to pull together groups of young woman and introduce them to a bigger world.
Gould found a place with a volunteer organization that was working in Mexico on matters of diversity. Her family background was a combination of Czech and German. There was one spot left and she got it.
Gould took Saturday morning classes from the age of five to learn German; that was the kind of thing that was done then by people who came to Canada with a different culture.
Asked if she thought we had gotten the diversity challenge right, Gould pauses and then responds: “We certainly have some work to do on this and the government has a role – what we don’t need is the slant the current government is taking – there is a lot of “identity politics” being played and that isn’t healthy.”
Gould is an expressive personality. She uses her hands a lot and is quite good at directing a conversation.
For her, progress comes from dialogue. “You talk to people and you listen”, she said. During the provincial campaign she came across a community in the Pineland part of town, where all the people on one side of the street felt they were not listened to and they did not get any literature during that election. There were significant economic differences on each side of the street.
On another occasion she was talking to a class of 15 year old students and asked them what they thought politicians were. Things were quiet for a bit then one hand went up and a girl replied “old men in suits”.
That’s an image Gould is setting out to change. And she just may be part of a significant change in the culture of the country. Justin Trudeau will never rack up the Trudeaumania his father did but whenever he appears the crowds do form around him.
The charisma is certainly there and a lot of Liberals may well ride into office on his coat tails – and those coat tails may well carry Karina Gould into the House of Commons – but expect her to play a very significant role should she get there.
This is a woman who thinks through problems; knows how to listen and is apparently a very effective speaker.
Gould looks for doers, people who get out there and get it done. She has been active every day of her life since high school and without casting aspersions on the woman it is fair and correct to refer to her as an activist.
She met the man she eventually married while in Mexico and currently works for the Mexican Trade Commission as a Trade and Investment Specialist.
When she completed the volunteer job in Mexico she went to McGill University and after that on to Oxford University for a degree in International Relations.
Gould looks at the world of politics through three different lenses; the needs of the community she expects to represent; the political party she is part of and the country that she believes that political party will lead.
One of the overriding themes to the thinking Gould does is “diversity”. She remarks on just how diverse the country has become and how we are adapting to that fact.
She also has a lot to say about the number of people in her demographic who do not have jobs. Far too many of her peers are living with their parents, struggling to find their place in the country’s economy and wondering how they are going to pay off their student loans. Gould doesn’t have a solution and she hints that there might be a role for government to play in job creation.
Governments have never been any good at job creation; the focus should be on creating the conditions that will encourage the private sector to hire more people. At this point the private sector has more in the way of manpower capacity than they need; any sudden increase in sales can be handled by the unused capacity. The federal government needs to bring about a change in the outlook employers and prospective employees have. Right now there aren’t any jobs. Those screwed up Statistics Canada employment numbers showed a decrease in full time jobs and an increase in part time jobs. Anyone looking for a job could have told them that.
Gould will bring a lot of energy and some fresh ideas to the next federal election campaign. Will Burlington shed the last of it’s “dyed in the wool” conservative history and elect a Liberal to the federal seat? No one thought Eleanor McMahon was going to pull off a win – but she did.
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