Liz White
Party Leader, Animal Protection Party of Canada
Since 2005, the Animal Protection Party of Canada has been making common cause with people, helping them turn their vegan awareness into effective activism.
In 2005, the Animal Protection Party of Canada (APPC) was founded, fielding vegan candidates in every federal election since. However, the APPC’s candidates know that the odds of voters electing them are low.
Why so low? The answer is Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system. In countries using different electoral systems, like Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Australia, voters select animal protection party candidates.
If winning a seat in the House of Commons is close to impossible, why do people run as APPC candidates? The reasons are in what is required to be vegan. From birth, family and culture determine our food preferences. Childhood indoctrination is a high barrier. Margaret Mead wrote, “It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.” To be vegan means making a sometimes-difficult choice to overcome one’s upbringing. Choosing vegan often means being aware of issues like animal rights, health, social justice, climate change, and ecosystem integrity. And, for many, it means learning how politicians decide policy.
All of the APPC’s candidates and many, perhaps most, of the party’s wonderful supporters and donors are people whose awareness about protecting animals and the environment has evolved into activism. They use election campaigns as platforms to ask people to vote for candidates who will help make better protection policies and a better world for us all.
The APPC is the only animal and environmental protection organization that can participate fully in Canadian elections.
