2025 GLOCAL Vancouver Regional Showcase: Celebrating Youth-Led Civic Leadership

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Fred Cutler (Ph.D. Michigan) does research in public opinion, elections, federalism, and political psychology. He is also an educational technology leader and a startup founder who teaches courses based on teamwork. 

Fred has published in POQ, JOP, BJPolS, CJPS, Publius, Political Geography, Electoral Studies, and has chapters in various edited volumes. A recent research project involves lab experiments to understand the effects of different numbers of political parties on voters and their satisfaction with democracy (electoraldemocracy.com). He received SSHRCC funding on a project called Polls and Elections. His earlier research focused on the effect of federalism on political behaviour and government accountability. Much of his work has investigated the influence of the local social and economic environment on how people think about politics. Fred was one of four investigators on the Canadian Election Study 2011 and 2015, the flagship academic survey on Canadian public opinion and voting behaviour.

https://politics.ubc.ca/profile/fred-cutler/

Wade is currently running as the Liberal Candidate for Vancouver Quadra. Prior to this he served as the Intergovernmental Affairs Officer to the Musqueam First Nation, while also sitting as Board Chair for the First Nations Health Council and New Relationship Trust. He is a board member for Covenant House Vancouver and the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and previously sat as a member of the City of Vancouver Mayor's Budget Task Force.

Prior to working for his community, Wade spent three years with the BC provincial government as the special advisor on First Nations issues to the premier, where he convened groups to talk with the province about unresolved issues with the BC First Nations. Previously, Wade has served on the Vancouver Police Board; was an economic development officer; and band council member with the Musqueam Indian Band.

During the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Wade was Assistant General Manager of the Four Host Nations Aboriginal Pavilion. He has acted as a policy analyst for the BC Assembly of First Nations and as executive assistant to the Solicitor General of British Columbia. He holds a BA in Political Science from UBC and attended UBC Law School.

In November 2015 and 2013, he was recognized by Vancouver Magazine when they included him on their “Power 50” list. In 2012, Wade received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal for his service to his community. Wade continues to reside on the Musqueam Indian Reserve with his fiancée Marie and two children, Eli and Isla. He is a proud grandson of a Chinese immigrant who married a Musqueam woman. Part of this story was told in the 2017 documentary: All our Father’s Relations. 

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/wadegrantvancouver

Lynne Block is the MLA for West Vancouver-Capilano and the Official Opposition Critic for Education. She was first elected in 2024.

Lynne’s diverse career in education spans teaching, training and facilitating professional development at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels. She developed new and innovative programs and founded and facilitated Youth Engaged in Social Responsibility Forums. Lynne holds a BA and Master of Education Administration from UBC.

Lynne was also a co-founder of a business and education consulting company, which focused on research-based learning, corporate social responsibility, and collaborative leadership. Lynne was serving her second term as an elected School Trustee in the West Vancouver School District before being elected as an MLA.

https://www.leg.bc.ca/members/43rd-Parliament/Block-Lynne

Ron McKinnon is the Member of Parliament for Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam. Active in politics for many years, Ron previously ran as a Liberal candidate in the 2008 General Election and for Port Coquitlam City Council in 2011. Ron is a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, as has served on the Standing Committee on Health as well as the Standing Committee on Science and Research and has contributed to many important studies including national pharmacare, LGBTQ2+ health and the opioid crisis.

As a long-time resident of Port Coquitlam, Ron is a proud community advocate, from serving on the Evergreen Cultural Centre board, to working with Amnesty International. As your Member of Parliament, Ron works hard to ensure that families in the community have the resources they need, from spending more time with their kids, to making life more affordable. He meets regularly with constituents, hosts advisory councils, and attends many community events in order to better understand the issues that are important to community members. Through his annual Community Champions program, Ron celebrates the leaders in his riding that are helping to build and better Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam.

Recognizing that British Columbia is seized by an opioid crisis, Ron introduced a Private Members Bill, the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act. His legislation became law in May 2017 after receiving unanimous all-party support in both the House of Commons and Senate. The law is saving lives by encouraging people to call 911 in the event of a drug overdose by providing limited immunity from prosecution for possession of controlled substances.

Prior to his election, he was a successful business owner and computer systems analyst for major firms in Canada, the US, and overseas. In the 1970s, he worked as a meteorological technician for Environment Canada’s Atmospheric Environment Service. Ron has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Alberta and an honours diploma in Computer Technology from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. He is married to Christine and has two daughters, Katherine and Sarah.

https://ronmckinnon.libparl.ca/about/

Hassan Yussuff is one of Canada’s most experienced labour leaders. As the past President of the Canadian Labour Congress, he was the first person of colour to lead Canada’s union movement.

After emigrating from Guyana, Mr. Yussuff worked as a truck mechanic with General Motors for 10 years before getting involved in the labour movement. In 1988, he joined the Canadian Auto Workers union as the National Staff Representative, and later became their first Director of Human Rights. In 1999, he became Canadian Labour Congress’s first person of colour elected to an executive position, as Executive Vice-President. He went on to be elected as Secretary-Treasurer for three terms, from 2002 to 2014, before being elected President in 2014. He was re-elected in this role in 2017.

In addition to his work in Canada, Mr. Yussuff is a prominent international activist. In 2016, he was elected for his second term as President of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas, an organization uniting 48 national organizations and representing more than 55 million workers in 21 countries. He was also a member of the Executive Bureau and General Council of the International Trade Union Confederation and a member of the Ministerial Council of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Mr. Yussuff served on the Government of Canada’s NAFTA Council and its Sustainable Development Advisory Council. He also contributed to numerous other task forces and organizations, including as co-chair of the Task Force on Just Transition for Canadian Coal Power Workers and Communities, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Disability Management and Research. He was recently appointed to the Net-Zero Advisory Body by the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. He has recently been part of the Industry Advisory Roundtable on COVID-19 Testing, Screening, Tracing and Data Management and the COVID Communications Partners Roundtable.

Mr. Yussuff and the Canadian Labour Congress, with their tripartite partners, are recipients of the 2021 Canadian Freedom of Association Award for their instrumental collaboration in Canada’s 2017 ratification of the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 98. Mr. Yussuff has been a recent recipient of the Pearson Centre Progressive Leadership Award. He has also received honorary Doctorate of Laws from Brock University and Ryerson University.

https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/yussuff-hassan/

Appointed to the Senate of Canada in November 2016, the Honourable Yuen Pau Woo sits as an independent representing British Columbia. He served as Facilitator of the Independent Senators Group from 2017 to 2021.

Senator Woo has worked on public policy issues related to Canada’s relations with Asian countries for more than 30 years. From 2005-2014, he was President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, during which he also served on the Standing Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and as Chair of PECC’s State of the Region Report. He is a Senior Fellow at Simon Fraser University’s Graduate School of Business, and a member of the Trilateral Commission. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Mosaic Institute and the Canadian Ditchley Foundation.

Senator Woo is a joint chair of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations and a member of the following Senate Standing Committees: Foreign Affairs and International Trade; Banking, Trade and Commerce; and Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament.

https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/woo-yuen-pau/

Kim Pate was appointed to the Senate of Canada on November 10, 2016. First and foremost, the mother of Michael and Madison, she is also a nationally renowned advocate who has spent the last 45+ years working in and around the legal and penal systems of Canada, with and on behalf of some of the most marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized — particularly imprisoned youth, men and women.

Senator Pate graduated from Dalhousie Law School in 1984 with honours in the Clinical Law Programme and has completed post graduate work in the area of forensic mental health. She was the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) from January 1992 until her appointment to the Senate in November 2016. CAEFS is a federation of local societies who provide services and work in coalition with Aboriginal women, women with mental health issues and other disabling conditions, young women, visible minority and immigrant women, poor women and those isolated and otherwise deprived of potential sources of support. Prior to her work with CAEFS, she worked with youth and men in a number of capacities with the local John Howard Society in Calgary, as well as the national office. She has developed and taught Prison Law, Human Rights and Social Justice and Defending Battered Women on Trial courses at the Faculties of Law at the University of Ottawa, Dalhousie University and the University of Saskatchewan. She also occupied the Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law in 2014 and 2015.

Kim Pate is widely credited as the driving force behind the Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston, headed by Justice Louise Arbour. During the Inquiry, she supported women as they aired their experiences and was a critical resource and witness in the Inquiry itself. She also persuaded the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to initiate the Self-Defence Review and appoint the Honourable Madam Justice Lynn Ratushny to review the convictions and sentences of women jailed for using lethal force to defend themselves and/or their children against abusive men. She then worked tirelessly in pursuit of the implementation of the many positive recommendations from both. Senator Pate has been instrumental in building coalitions across the country with other equality-seeking women’s, anti-racism, anti-poverty and human rights groups and organizations; and, in this capacity, has worked with feminist legal scholars, lawyers, other professionals and front-line advocates and activists — from Indigenous communities to transition house and rape crisis centre workers.

Kim Pate is a member of the Order of Canada, a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, the Canadian Bar Association’s Bertha Wilson Touchstone Award, and six honourary doctorates (Law Society of Upper Canada, University of Ottawa, Carleton University, St. Thomas University, Nipissing University and Wilfrid Laurier University) and numerous other awards. Her extensive list of publications, national and international speaking engagements and her strategic intervention and advocacy for substantive equality testify to her commitment to broader social, economic and cultural change. She continues to make significant contributions to public education around the issues of women’s inequality and discriminatory treatment within social, economic and criminal justice spheres.

Senator Pate strongly believes that the contributions of women who have experienced marginalization, discrimination and oppression should be recognized and respected and she seeks to credit and empower women. She maintains contact with women in prison through her numerous visits to Canada’s federal prisons and strongly encourages other advocates, scholars, service providers, judges and parliamentarians to ground their efforts in a similar way.

Senator Pate lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/pate-kim/

Dr. Jiaying Zhao (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC, Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability, and UBC Sauder Distinguished Scholar.

Dr. Zhao is a faculty affiliate of the Stone Centre for Wealth and Inequality at the Vancouver School of Economics and of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Zhao is also an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. She is a member of Canada’s Financial Literacy Research Sub-Committee, Research Advisory Group of the OECD’s International Network on Financial Education, and a public profile expert with the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab.

https://psych.ubc.ca/profile/jiaying-zhao/

Faye, the visionary Founder and Executive Director of GLOCAL, has played a pivotal role in shaping the organization's mission and impact. 

Faye founded GLOCAL with the vision of facilitating civic engagement and youth-led social innovations leveraging digital tools. Faye embarked on this journey to bridge the gap and empower young Canadians.  Faye envisions GLOCAL becoming the "UberEats of Canadian politics and civic engagement," emphasizing accessibility and convenience in accessing information and resources.

Faye cherishes the experience of working with thousands of Canadians nationwide. Each day unfolds with new insights into various civic issues, creating full-time work opportunities and providing experiential learning opportunities for young Canadians. The continuous challenge to the status quo of civic engagement inspires a fresh perspective on problem-solving and social innovation among the youth—a constant source of motivation and fulfillment for Faye. 

Leading GLOCAL requires dedication, as Faye works an average of 12 hours per day for more than 360 days per year. As an entrepreneur, achieving work-life balance can often feel like a myth, particularly in the dynamic environment of running a social startup. Beyond her work, Faye juggles the responsibilities of family and recognizes the importance of sufficient sleep in maintaining a healthy balance.

Faye's dedication to youth development, civic engagement, and innovative solutions positions her as a driving force behind GLOCAL's mission. Through her leadership, GLOCAL explores creative problem-solving approaches to address the diverse challenges within the Canadian civic landscape.

https://glocalfoundation.ca/members-spotlight