New Blue Party Candidate Marcin Lewandowski

Jeff Green | May 18, 2022

The COVID pandemic has made a big difference in Marcin Lewandowski's life, even indirectly leading him to do something he never thought he would do, run for political office.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the company that he works for, Ecostrat, decided to pivot to a virtual workforce. This allowed him to move to Woodlawn (which is east of Packenham) where he could afford to buy a house with his wife and new baby while still officially working out of Toronto.

At Ecostrat, he works as a manager in the area of biomass energy research, looking into creating energy from waste in the forestry industry.

But as the pandemic dragged on, he began to question government policy.

He was born in 1986, three years before the Solidarity movement in Poland took over from the Soviet backed communist regime, and grew up in post communist Poland before moving with his family to Canada in 2002.

But his parents were active journalists in Poland in the 1980s, and have told him much about life in Poland back then.

“My mother began to tell me last year that she sees the same kinds of things happening here as in Poland,” he said.

In late January he went to the Ottawa Occupation on two weekends, and he said that the “contrast between what I saw in Ottawa and what was reported by Global News and Toronto Star is hard to explain.”

“In Poland in the 1980s, the media were not part of the government. They were arm's length but they reported things the way the government wanted them to. I saw the same thing in Ottawa, he said.”

While living conditions in Poland in the 1980s and Canada in 2022 are vastly different, Lewandowski is concerned that the trends are similar.

“The pandemic restrictions in Ontario have been lifted now that an election is here, but what will happen after the election if the same party comes back into power,” he asks.

After the occupation was over, Lewandowski did some research and came across the New Blue Party and its leader Jim Karahanios and his wife, MPP Belinda Karahanios.

“They, and the party, stand for what I have come to believe in as well,” he said “more transparency in government and an end to restrictions.”

The party also advocates for an end to the carbon tax, which is designed to promote a transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources as quickly as possible.

Even though he works in the alternative energy industry, Lewandowski agrees with the policy.

“The infrastructure is not in place for this to happen right away, and all the carbon tax will do is harm the domestic oil industry, where we can at least monitor how things are done. Electric cars are coming, it is inevitable now, but the changeover will not happen overnight, and penalising people who cannot afford it will not get us where we need to go any faster,” he said.

He said that he recognises that the Ontario Party and the True Blue Party are taking up a lot of the same political, and may be splitting an already limited percentage of the vote, but said time will solve that problem.

“Each party is contesting every riding, and while the CBC only reports on us as “Others” in the polling, we are at 6% now, so it is becoming more significant during the campaign. When the campaign is over I think people in the Ontario and the New Blue Parties will start talking,” he said.

Lewandoswki has been actively campaigning since the election was called, but has been laid low in the last couple of days with noro-virus that he picked up from his child in daycare last Friday. As of Monday, (May 16) he said he was not sure if he should attend the All Candidates meeting at the Verona Lions Hall on May 18, in case he is still contagious, saying he would leave it up to the organisers. He plans on attending the meeting at Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake on May 24.

(Editors Note – We had to ask, and Marcin said his father claims that their family may be distantly related to Robert Lewandowski, the famous Polish footballer who plays for Bayern Munich, and is rumoured to be headed either to Barcelona or Chelsea next year.)