By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 22, 2013
The dust has settled on BC’s provincial polls, but for one young Abbotsford-Mission candidate, last week’s election was just the beginning.
Marcus Halliday, age 18, ran for MLA as a member of the Excalibur party in Abbotsford. His father, Michael Halliday, formed the party in February as an independent option on the Fraser Valley ballot. The party’s ideals align themselves with the legend of the sword Excalibur, standing for truth, honour and justice.
“Those are values that we really wanted to bring into politics because right now there are a lot of liars,” Marcus Halliday said. “We wanted to bring those in and make legislature more transparent.”
With time to reflect back on the campaign, Halliday is surprised the votes went the way they did.
“I’d spent days and days and days knocking on doors and nobody was happy with the Liberals. Now they’ve gained seats this election. That seems a little odd to me,” he said. “I was hoping for, well, hoping to win. Realistically looking at five to ten per cent, I ended up with below one per cent. That was a bit disappointing.”
However, the results have not dissuaded Halliday from an interest in politics.
“Just because you won’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you,” he said.
“The thing is, to understand life more or less, you have to understand politics, understand your government, understand what’s making the rules,” he continued. “That way you can understand the rules better and make your own opinions off them.”
Halliday still hopes to act as a role model for getting youth interested in politics. He plans to stay active in the community by visiting high schools and middle schools, acting as representation for the younger population.
“If I had been elected, I would have been the first 18-year-old MLA. I think a lot of youth would go, ‘Whoa, he’s 18 and he’s an MLA? I can do that too,’” he explained. “I think that would encourage them to start running. It would let them see how their democracy is working.”
Halliday was involved with Air Cadets for six years, gaining leadership and public speaking skills through the program as well as by working as a customer service manager at Wal-Mart. Both experiences have given him a broad perspective on the needs of community.
One of his plans as MLA would have been to extend rail transit to Chilliwack and improve small business and tourism for Mission’s downtown core.
He positively reflected on the campaign process, everything from advertising to all-candidate debates.
“One of my favourite parts about the debate was that I was the only one talking off the top of my head. Everybody else was reading off a piece of paper that somebody else wrote for them,” he explained, adding that he is more comfortable without a piece of paper in front of him thanks to his time as an Air Cadet.
Halliday noted that if he could make changes to the way he ran his campaign, he would.
“I would start earlier because starting your election campaign in March doesn’t give you that much time to get up there. [I would also] look more for volunteers and support, probably go to the universities and talk to people there,” he said. “I went door to door, talked to a lot of people. I wish I’d had the funding for mass advertising like billboards and signs and stuff, but unfortunately that’s not something I can muster out of a Wal-Mart paycheck.”
Halliday went on to discuss the relationship between advertising in election campaigns and a party’s money management.
“You know those signs run between $18 and $24 a piece for the small ones. They’re expensive, that’s why I didn’t have any,” he laughed. “Some of the intersections they have … 30 signs for the same party all through the one intersection … If they can’t manage their signs, how are they going to manage their money?”
