SFU alumnus and former Beedie School of Business adjunct professor Terry Beech has been chosen to represent the Liberals in the Burnaby North-Seymour riding for the 2015 Canadian Federal Election.
Beech was officially named the Liberal candidate at a Nomination Meeting held at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Burnaby on July 16. The meeting included a vote, however, the process of was a formality as Beech was the only person running, winning by default.
Beech, who graduated from SFU in 2006 with a BBA in Business and Economics, is the CEO of Hiretheworld.com, an organization that calls itself “an online resource that connects employers with professional designers from around the world, allowing businesses to access top design talent quickly and easily.”
He, along with his twin brother Doug, also run the non-profit organization, Twinbro, the mission of which is “to inspire youth to be confident individuals who see the value of post-secondary education and believe in their ability to attain it.”
Beech’s motivation to run for office stems from growing up in a lower income household and having to work hard to go to university. He told The Peak, “We came from, like a lot of people, a poor background. My dad and my mom had to struggle to make ends meet [. . . and] when my parents got divorced, things got a little rocky and things got a bit harder. And because both of my parents didn’t go to university, [post-secondary education] wasn’t really talked about at the dinner table.”
“There’s a lot of potential we can unlock in our own citizens.”
– Terry Beech, 2015 Liberal candidate for Burnaby North-Seymour riding
He continued, “We were able to get the education that we wanted; we had to scrimp and save to get it, and eventually we got it. We were able to leverage that to build pretty good careers for ourselves. I want to make sure that everybody, no matter what their situation is in life, has a similar opportunity to be successful in Canada.”
Beech also stressed the importance of entrepreneurs entering government, stating, “I think there’s lot of opportunities to modernize and do things differently. There’s a lot of potential we can unlock in our own citizens to be more entrepreneurial and be more innovative.
“I think we’ve come from the last couple of generations, as a society, from where a safe career job was the way to go, and that isn’t necessarily available anymore.”
The Burnaby North-Seymour riding was recently created by the 2012 federal electoral boundaries redistribution. The new riding will be comprised of what is currently the northern part of the Burnaby-Douglas riding and a south-east portion of the North Vancouver riding.
These ridings are currently held by the NDP and the Conservatives as a result of the 2011 election, in which the Liberals, who have have traditionally lost elections in these ridings, finished second and third.
Although such circumstances may complicate Beech’s desire to become the first MP of Burnaby North-Seymour, he has beaten the odds before, running for city council at 18 — and winning. “I was captain of my debate team and we were using the city council agendas as kind of an agenda, as a way to test the group, and after a while, we didn’t agree with everything they were doing,” he said. “So, I talked to my law professor and told him I was going to take a run at this, and we took a serious shot.
“We built a campaign team, worked hard, and knocked on doors and [I] was fortunate enough to get elected.”
Although he eventually quit to focus on his studies at SFU, he believes that his experience in municipal politics has shaped him to best represent the community.
He concluded, “I think that my background, coming from municipal politics, is going to make me a better representative and I know what it takes to communicate with all the citizens in the riding, put together complex views, complex interests, and move forward doing what’s best for everyone.”
