‘What these cuts were doing to my students, I needed to speak out’: Flamborough-Glanbrook NDP candidate Allison Cillis

Millennial Politics is a series about young political candidates. We discuss their political origin stories, passions, and thoughts on issues facing millennials and Gen Z voters ahead of the Ontario provincial election.

Allison Cillis, 35, was lying in bed feeling hopeless. An announcement had just been made about education cuts, she did the mental math, and knew she was about to lose her permanent teaching position. She was right.

“When Doug Ford and the Conservatives came into government, like so many others, my life was changed. I was one of the 99 teachers in the Hamilton board who lost their jobs,” Cillis told Canada’s National Observer.

Cillis didn’t stay in bed for long. She used the heartbreak to fuel her political aims: it was about more than her job, it was about more than herself. It was about her students and the vulnerable families who would suffer from the cuts.

“I’ve always been very politically engaged behind the scenes, but what these cuts were doing to my students, I needed to speak out,” Cillis says. “There needed to be a change, and I thought maybe that’s something I can be a part of.”

Like many young rising stars in politics, she turned to social media to voice her opposition to Ford’s austerity. It paid off.

“I was surprised by how much traction my voice gained.”

Cillis hasn’t looked back since.

Growing up in Hamilton, Cillis was raised in a trade union house. Her father, now retired, was an ironworker who travelled a lot, moving wherever the work needed him. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom for the first few years of her life, but by the time Cillis was in high school, she had returned to the factory, working at a printing press. During those years, Cillis watched as her mom sacrificed 18 months of work on the picket line for the benefit of herself and her co-workers.

“I’ve seen first-hand what it’s like when workers aren’t treated fairly and what it means to stand up for yourself and others around you,” she says.

Cillis says her family has always been an NDP household due to her family’s labour roots. And like many folks in labour, politics was an open process, and there was no shying away from political conversations at the Cillis dinner table.

“There was no doubt for me that the NDP fit with how I viewed what should be taking place in Ontario, and the change we can do for the better,” Cillis says.

During the day, Cillis teaches at an alternative high school educating young parents and pregnant teens on life and parenting skills, nutrition, along with the standard subjects needed for graduation. But weekends and evenings — when she’s not busy parenting her two children — she canvasses neighbourhoods.

Through teaching, Cillis says she finds hope and excitement in the political engagement she sees in youth today.

“Youth are using their voices to speak out on issues,” Cillis says. “They’ve been personally affected by decisions of this premier and government. They’ve already been through so much in their lives, they want a change.

“And I hope that means more people will put their names forward, that they won’t be intimidated to enter the political arena, and that they’ll be candidates in the future,” she says.

Matteo Cimellaro / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer