About

As soon as I started working, I joined the NDP youth caucus thinking as many young Canadians do, that electoral politics will bring about the change working families deserve. I soon realised that this is only one tool needed for the job, politics alone simply isn’t enough.

I soon joined the ranks of protesters across Canada. We stood up against neoliberal globalization in order to keep good jobs at home and respect the self-determination of working people around the world. These early protests, along with the many others I’ve attended since, achieved various levels of success but have yet to accomplish lasting change. Although rallies are a helpful piece of the puzzle, alone they are not enough to bring the change that’s needed.

To better the lives of working people I pursued my post-secondary education. My life at university centred around the best way to educate others and get more people involved in the movement to create social change. Being a university activist, I was involved in many initiatives from bringing the first public interest research group to campus to helping organize the largest protest in Edmonton’s history at the time. I also organized and volunteered with countless student groups during this time, including continuing my electoral work with the campus New Democrats.

In the end, it became clear to me that change doesn’t come from universities — it never has, and it never will. Change can only come from those who pursue it, so I took the steps needed to make my work-life into the educational opportunity it always was.

Twelve years ago I applied to be a letter carrier at Canada Post and my journey with CUPW began. Not only did I continue my educational journey with every union opportunity, but I also sat on countless committees, occupied many executive positions, organised and went on strike, worked as an active shop steward (this meant organising and leading countless work floor actions), became joint health and safety rep and trainer and much more.

Five years ago I was elected president of the Edmonton & District Labour Council (EDLC). Here I have led the organisation through a pandemic, saw the most successful municipal election for working people in my lifetime and increased our attendance to 60%. But most importantly, I learned. I learned not only about the broader labour movement from the union leaders sitting on the executive committee at the AFL, but also heard from the lived experience of the front line workers who are delegates to the EDLC. Helping facilitate rank and file members as they talk through the issues on their work floor and compare notes with others from entirely different sectors is truly where I began to see the change happen.

But, I can’t stop here! In order to see the systemic and social change workers deserve, we need to take these actions further. That is why I am putting my name forward to represent you as the president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. We need workers from across sectors, public and private, federal, provincial, municipal, and most importantly unionised (regardless of their political affiliation) to come together and see that their similarities outweigh their differences.

This can’t be achieved through polling and advertising campaigns alone; we know this is true from decades of proof. If truth and facts were enough to make change I would have never had to start on this journey 30 years ago — we would have already been living in the world that working people deserve. This can only be done through collective conversations that build relationships. This means meeting people where they are the most comfortable and listening to them, not just having them put themselves on a scale of 1-10, or sign a petition they had no part in creating. We need to take what we hear, and come up with a plan to act with working people and show them how we can solve our issues together.

This work is long, this work is hard and it cannot be done without a concerted effort and vision. But with it we will create meaningful change. If there is one thing I have learned along the way, it’s that workers are sick of being promised change, so it is up to us to create it. Together, as we stand shoulder to shoulder, we can create a better world for working people.