Sylvain Longpré

I'm not going to put you to sleep with great stories telling you about my academic background and all my university degrees, I don't have any! I attended the Collège de Sherbrooke in human sciences, following not having been selected for the course of police technique, positive discrimination obliges. My goal was to continue my studies in criminology. The economic context of the early 90s meant that I had to work 2 jobs in order to meet my needs, one in the restaurant business as a dishwasher and a position in the corps des Fusiliers de Sherbrooke of the Canadian armed forces reserve. Coming from a family with very modest incomes, I had no choice but to manage financially. So my hope of studying at the university level quickly faded.
I started working at Bombardier (now BRP) at the age of 18 for a few years and later became a truck driver. After 6 years in the business, I bought my first truck in 2003, and I worked as a driver-owner until the end of 2008, when I suffered a work accident.

In 2009, I prepared a very large GHG reduction project in transport. A project overseen by the defunct Agence de l'Efficacité Énergétique du Québec. Project which, if it had been adopted, would have allowed the reduction of tens of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases each year.

At the same time, I started another company, Vaporium Inc., the first vaping company in Quebec, and one of the first to open a physical store in Canada. This small business quickly grew in size. So in 2011-2012, I had 25 full-time employees. We were then the biggest of its kind in Canada and we supplied the majority of the vaping market with the Vaperz division. Despite my numerous representations to the governments of Canada and Quebec, to whom I recommended the regulation of the manufacture and supervision of the sale of vaping products, to whom I demonstrated the effectiveness of the products and demonstrated our protocols for strict manufacturing, the adventure of Vaporium Inc. and Vaperz Inc. was destroyed by the Canadian government. In 2014, a raid took place in all our premises simultaneously. Dozens of RCMP and CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) officers stormed in and seized more than $ 1.5 million worth of inventory. We tried for almost 2 years to get back on our feet but the damage was too great. I closed Vaporium Inc. and Vaperz Inc in June 2016, I filed for personal bankruptcy the following July, losing everything, even the family home where I grew up.

The ups and downs concerning the seizures stretched out until October 2017, when due to lack of funds, I was forced to give up and plead guilty to charges of illegally importing nicotine, used in the manufacture of vaping products. . I got 45 days in jail and $ 10,000 in fines. Something that I still try to dispute since the Canadian government changed the laws a few months later and it now allows the importation of nicotine for manufacturing purposes. I would have been the only Canadian citizen in history to be convicted of these offenses.

Today I am seen as a bankrupt man with a criminal record and a catastrophic credit history… all for helping and enabling tens of thousands of people to quit smoking.

There are a few things that I did not lose in this adventure, my determination and my courage, on the contrary, after placing one knee on the ground, I got up and here I am.

I can present myself as a proud and strong person. I am a go-getter and I have the determination to do my duty. My actions are intended for posterity and not for notoriety, in other words, I do it for us and not for myself.

Politics is an important cog in society, even an essential one.

It is the means by which citizens communicate its demands and expectations and decisions are taken with the majority in mind.

But everything is changing, and not always for the better. Not everything gets better over time and a day comes when things need to be straightened out.

For several decades, the trend has been the election of public figures, career politicians and political parties based on image only. The people elected are, in the majority of cases, a thousand miles from their voters, as much by their ideologies, their financial realities and their working conditions.

How do you expect a career politician to understand what real life is like, this life that you live as a private citizen.

Political parties are firm organizations. They each have their ideology, their line of thought and their political agenda. No matter your name, notoriety, or ideas, once you get into the gears, you will need to adjust to party guidelines.

It is now increasingly difficult for a government to be elected with a majority. Ideologies are diversifying and more and more politicians refuse to be muzzled. This is why there will be more and more independents who will seek the votes in order to bring a breath of fresh air to current policies. These independents will be able to carry the balance of power to the elected political party. The freedom of action of the independents threatens the foundations of the major political parties.

Now is the time to support the new policy, the new ideas and to give ourselves the tools to move forward.

Request this information from us.

Request this information from us.