Matthew Marquardt, executive director of the non-partisan advisory body Catholic Conscience, kicks off an occasional column leading in the 2025 federal vote.

Canadians are likely to face our next federal election – our next opportunity to choose leaders who will gather us and govern with the good of everyone in mind – within a few months or even weeks.  Given the number of challenges facing Canada and the world, now is the time for us to start thinking carefully about how we will approach that election.

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One of our goals should be to set an example for all voters by considering all the issues from a broad and principled point of view, rather than focusing selfishly on the two or three that are most interesting to us, or which most closely touch our own personal lives.  We should consider how every one of the proposals made by the parties is likely to affect everyone, not just ourselves.  For example, one often-overlooked group is the group people who will have to live with the consequences of our choices - not just now, but sometimes for years into the future.  Our children and our grandchildren, for example.  

It has been suggested that in several ways we Canadians may be living beyond our means: that we are encouraging our governments to spend more money than they have, that we are putting more unbreathable material into the atmosphere than we can remove, and that we are  putting our children into daycare solely for the purpose of driving up our nation’s gross domestic product.  And to the extent that we are concerned that our governments are devaluing life by not only permitting but promoting the killing of human beings, before birth and in times of sickness and aging, we need look no further than the mirror to find the cause.  In a democracy, we are the ones who the big decisions.

There are external threats, too:  wars in Europe and the Middle East, military posturing in Asia and the US; threats to information and data security, to health, to employment, and to monetary systems.

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It might also be charged that we could do a better job in insisting that our children be raised in truth, that we are allowing them to be misled through partisan manipulation of news and social media, public education, and other public channels.

What kind of a world do we want to leave for our children, and how do we think that world should be built?

As it stands, we risk leaving each of our children tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt they had no voice in incurring, limited possibilities for raising children in a safe and loving home, a tenuous grasp of truth and purpose, a limited supply of air to breathe in a climate that will support plant life, and governments inclined to kill them when they are of no further economic use.

This may be overstated, but probably not much. For decades, we have passed up opportunities to make better choices, too often listening to and enabling people who appear to simply want to be in charge, rather than to pursue any coherent, principled course of social conduct.  Principled candidates do exist, but it might be charged that we tend to ignore them, or worse, run them off.  

And as Catholics, we could also be accused of complicity, in too often having allowed ourselves to be channeled into behaving as one- or two-issue voters.

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If we wish to do better for our children, we need to educate ourselves and to be engaged with the system across the full, broad range of issues.  And if we wish to be effective, we should do so with the joy that comes of possessing and sharing truth.

The key is to educate ourselves, to vote carefully, and to stay in touch with our leaders.  Our starting points should be prayer, the Gospel, and the social teaching of the Catholic Church.  And we should prepare ourselves, and witness in each moment of our lives, with a hope and a joy borne of unshakeable faith in the love of God.  If we do our part and turn to God in prayer, He will work His will through us and cause His justice to flourish.