GLACE BAY, N.S. — Randy Joy was watching the evening news when he decided to start his own national political party.
It was Feb. 1, 2018, and Joy, a warrant officer in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, was watching the news on TV at his home in Oromocto, N.B., where he was living while stationed at nearby CFB Gagetown. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was hosting a town hall meeting in Edmonton when Brock Blaszczyk, a former infantry soldier who lost his left foot while serving in Afghanistan, asked the Liberal leader why the federal government was in a legal battle with a veterans group that was demanding pension reforms.
“I was prepared to be killed in action,” Blaszczyk said in the exchange. “What I wasn’t prepared for, Mr. Prime Minister, is Canada turning its back on me.”
BIO
Randy Joy
- Age: 49
- From: Cobalt, Ont.
- Lives: Glace Bay
- Occupation: Retired warrant officer in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals; founder and leader of the Veterans Coalition Party of Canada
- Family: Wife Colette Skala (a retired signals corps sergeant) and daughters Miranda, 14, and Brooklyn, 12
Trudeau eventually replied, “because they are asking for more than we are able to give right now.”
The headline-grabbing gaffe outraged many people, particularly veterans and their families.
Joy, a communications specialist who had been embedded with combat units in Afghanistan, decided to take action. It was, essentially, the moment Veterans Coalition Party of Canada was born.
“I heard the Prime Minister’s response and I was like ‘That’s it. I’m done with him. I’m done with the lies,’” recalled Joy, who, as party founder and leader, is running for the Sydney-Victoria seat in the Oct. 21 election.
“I knew I was going to do something upon retirement and I knew it was going to be in the public service. Did I think it was going to be political? Probably not, but then as I thought about it and looked at it and pondered it, I was like ‘You know, if we don’t start fixing things at the top, we’re never going to change the bottom.”
The Cobalt, Ont., resident, who had been a soldier for more than 29 years, waited for almost a year until he and his wife Colette Skalaa, who was a sergeant in the signals corps, retired to her hometown of Glace Bay with their two young daughters. Then he began the methodically building the fledgling party, which will field 25 candidates in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia, a number that surprised even Joy.
“Of course I was shooting for as many as possible and to reach 25 for a brand-new party on its first time out at the federal level, I’m ecstatic,” he said.
Despite its name, Joy said the Veterans Coalition Party of Canada isn’t tailored toward veterans. Most of the candidates have no military experience and two of the main planks in the party’s platform are making the Canada Pension Plan tax-free income and creating alliances with First Nations and Indigenous communities.
“The essential foundation when I rolled it out was I wanted the integrity, the honour and the experience and leadership of veterans to be the foundation of this — not necessarily the guiding hand, but certainly the foundation,” said Joy.
“One of the greatest downfalls of Canadian politicians right now is that they actually don’t receive any kind of leadership training prior to entering this field, unless they picked it up somewhere else. Where coming out of the military after 29 years, at every rank level you receive more training on leadership. If you don’t have those skills, you’re not fit for that promotion. It’s as simple as that. So you work on them and you develop them and you learn to listen three times more than you talk, which is so essential because I don’t think the politicians are actually listening to what Canadians are saying.”
And when asked if the Veterans Coalition Party of Canada will be around to listen to Canadians beyond this election, Joy is quick to say “absolutely,” again pointing to the ex-military members who are at the core of the party.
“I think the backbone of this party is going to be that these soldiers who are with us aren’t looking to quit ever. After they made the decisions the made, they will keep at it.”
In addition to Joy, there are six other candidates running in Sydney-Victoria: Jaime Battiste (Liberal); Eddie Orrell (Conservative); Jodi McDavid (NDP); Lois Foster (Green Party); Kenzie MacNeil (Independent); and Archie MacKinnon (Independent).
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