Private Members’ Business: Charmaine Borg

Politicians are more than just politicians — they are also mothers, fathers, students, hunters, and cyclists.

Once every few weeks, The West Block will take you behind the scenes with an MP to get a better idea of who our elected members are.

This week, we bring you Charmaine Borg, a Quebec NDP MP elected to the House of Commons on May 2.

She was an NDP supporter with high hopes for the party – just not in the riding where she was running.  

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Charmaine Borg waged no campaign in the district she would eventually win.

Still, she and three other McGill University undergraduates found themselves swept up into that orange tidal wave that flooded Quebec and catapulted the NDP into official Opposition in Ottawa – obliterating the Liberal party and Bloc Quebecois in the process.

At 21-years-old, Borg is now one of the youngest members of Parliament, representing a riding that was foreign to her just months ago.

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Since moving to Terrebonne-Blainville, a riding about 31 kilometres north of Montreal, Borg has found it relatively easy to fit in.

“I love it. I come from a small town that’s pretty similar to this one, so I really love it. It’s very peaceful,” she said in an interview with The West Block. “The one thing that’s a little difficult is driving everywhere because I’m used to taking public transit or walking or biking.”

Instead of getting to know the area during the 2011 campaign, Borg spent those five weeks in Montreal.

There, she campaigned for Thomas Mulcair, who, until May 2, was the lone drop of orange in the province.

Soon after the election, Borg bought a car, took a detour from pursuing a degree in political science, and moved instead toward representing youth, women and her constituents on the federal stage.

Although moving into public office has caused some changes in her life – living alone, having two apartments and commuting to Ottawa for work, for example – the busy schedule isn’t too unfamiliar.

Before taking her seat in the Commons, Borg was always volunteering, working or studying, she told The West Block.

Now she works 12-hour days, and is very happy to have two assistants at her beck and call.

“I did it alone for the first month, and it was pretty crazy,” she said.

Borg was born in Keswick, Ont., as part of a large family, where she held jobs throughout high school to save money for university.

At McGill, Borg was co-president of the NDP student group (her co-president, Matthew Dube, was also elected to the House on May 2) and a labour-relations officer for the Association of McGill University Support Employees.

“In a sense, it was kind of a small scale of being an MP because you go around to the workplace, you inform people about your rights, ask them if they have any problems in the workplace,” she said.

Borg represents almost 108,000 constituents in Terrebonne-Blainville, where she won the contest with 49.37 per cent of the vote, defeating the Bloc incumbent who had held the riding since 2000.

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