Mathieu Fleury, City Councillor | Running for Council at 25

Mathieu Fleury, City Councillor, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Hi bonjour my name is Mathieu Fleury, I'm a city councillor in Ottawa. I represent the best part of town, je represente le meilleur quartier La Basse-Ville, La Côte de Sable, Vanier. Nothing better than Lower Town, Sandy Hill and Vanier. 

0:20 - 1. What would have been a useful resource to have as a young candidate running for city council?

Lots of, lots of elements. Obviously the technical aspect, social media, website, video making, understanding best campaign offices location, volunteers... There's lots and lots of stuff that are important to know. I don't expect every candidate to know it, but certainly you need people in and around you your friends your family other other acquaintances would have would need to have that knowledge.

0:51 - 2. What was the number one challenge you faced as a candidate?

Financial. So the first time I ran was in 2010 at the age of 24. During the election I turned 25. You're, I was young fresh out of university with not a lot of money trying to beat an incumbent. It's just a lot of a lot of things that we were trying to print, pamphlets for example, finding money to do that. Doing fundraising at the same time as trying to knock on every door which we did twice. 27,000 doors twice in our area. Lots of complexities financially because if you don't have the dollars it brings you back to square one that it be from in terms of promotion that'd be in terms of printing pamphlets you always go back and then organizing fundraisers which can be timely if you don't have enough campaign support. 

1:41 - 3. What does it mean to get more young people involved in politics?

in city politics we need young folks we need more women, we need more people that are representative of the demographic that we have. So yes I'm a male, yes I'm white, but we need less of us, theoretically, and at the same time we need more young folks so it's a balance that we need to strike. At the same time we need candidates to run and to win elections so certainly those tools can go a long way in making if not successful at least giving every candidate a fair chance.