As a 2013 graduate of Fraser Heights Secondary, June Liu, NDP candidate for the South Surrey-White Rock riding, acknowledges she is considerably junior to the candidates she faces in the current federal election.
But she’d like voters to know that as a community activist, she’s been “around for a while.”
“I’ve been a taxpaying, participating member of society since I was 16,” said Liu, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SFU.
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Liu moved to Canada with her family when she was just six months old. They came to Surrey in 1999, and she grew up in the community apart, from a spell when she moved back to Taiwan during her Grade 5, 6 and 7 years.
She said that being involved in her community started at the age of four, when she would accompany her mother on street clean-up activities as part of Surrey’s Adopt-A-Street program.
“I’ve always been an activist,” she said. “My family has always had progressive politics and I was raised with those values. It’s hard to break the habit – not that I’d want to. “
An early example of her involvement goes back to her Grade 12 year, when she became a youth ambassador with Surrey’s Social Policy Advisory Committee.
“I was on that for two-and-a-half years,” she said. “We were focused a lot on poverty reduction, on social advocacy for new arrivals, on how to alleviate crime through education and the best way to provide services for youth.”
It was a logical progression for her, she said, to her current job, which is field fundraiser for the provincial NDP.
But she was particularly inspired to take a look at federal politics, she said, after working briefly for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh as constituency assistant in his Burnaby South riding.
“It opened my eyes to a lot of issues,” she said. “It made me realize that, as much as we love this country of ours – and it gives us so much – it’s by no means perfect, and it could be made better.”
Another inspiration, she said, was a project she launched with a couple of friends after the pandemic hit – a Surrey COVID mutual aid online group.
“When I heard about people whose income had been reduced and who were unable to pay their rent, something snapped,” she said. “I thought, why don’t I do something about it. But it dawned on me bit by bit that I shouldn’t be taking on the responsibility personally – that it should really come from government initiatives, and that’s what got me into running.”
Noting that South Surrey-White Rock leans toward a more senior demographic, Liu said there are issues locally, such as health care and housing security that have “fallen through the cracks.”
“There’s a stigma about it and people don’t want to admit it, but when they planned for their retirement the cost of living wasn’t nearly as high. They shouldn’t be being priced out of their own community.”
