Trudeau’s positive politics play well in B. C.: pundit

Justin Trudeau’s pledge to end to the partisan politics of division echoes that of B. C. NDP leader Adrian Dix and plays well in the province, according to a former Liberal party candidate and friend of the newly elected federal Liberal leader.

Recent polls show Canadians and British Columbians are increasingly put off by negative politics, said Daniel Veniez, an entrepreneur and Liberal pundit.

“Assault politics is running its course and people are wise to it, they don’t like it,” Veniez said. “They expect a different, higher level of politics.”

Veniez, who lost the West Vancouver– Sunshine Coast– Sea to Sky Country riding for the Liberals in the 2011 federal election, said his party had “stopped being relevant to Canadians for seven or eight years.”

“Dix and Trudeau have tapped into that general sentiment of just being turned off by that brand of politics and have decided, not only as a matter of inclination but strategy, to adopt the opposite approach,” he added.

Harm Sandhu, 25, was a student in Trudeau’s Grade 9 French class, when the Montrealer taught at Vancouver’s Sir Winston Churchill in 2001.

“I remember at the time he didn’t have any intentions of running for office,” Sandhu said from his home in Richmond.

“He said that the only time he’d ever run for office is if he truly believed he could make a difference and it was the right time to run.

“We all knew he had it in him, it’s just a matter of when he wanted to do it.”

Sandhu is in charge of digital media strategy for a B. C. Liberal candidate and said the positivity of his former teacher has attracted him and others of his generation to the federal Liberal Party.

Dix has pledged that in the lead up to the May 14 provincial election, his NDP will refrain from personal attacks against the other provincial party leaders.