Show your cards: Quebec entrepreneur urges young customers to vote in the upcoming elections

For the next week, Quebec-based customers of Womance and Sans-Façon Cosmétiques will find a little something extra when they unbox their orders: cards encouraging them to vote in the Oct. 5 provincial election. 

The message on the card can be summed up as follows: When you buy our products, you support the local economy. You have the power to do more: by voting in the next election, you can influence the decisions that will shape our future. 

And it’s not just online shoppers who will receive that message. In-store customers will be handed the same card.

According to Elections Canada, youth between the ages of 18 and 34 have the lowest voter turnout in provincial elections—only 54 per cent of this demographic votes. That’s something Andréanne Marquis wants to do something about, and she has the reach to do so. 

A millennial, Marquis is the founder of the women’s clothing brand Womance and the Sans-Façon Cosmétiques make-up line. Her customers tend to fall into that same 18- to 34-year-old demographic. Beyond that, Marquis is one of Quebec’s most beloved and high-profile influencers. 

In 2012, she and Hubert Harvey won the racy reality TV show “Occupation Double.” In 2014, she was a deputy press attaché to the Quebec minister of education. 

While many non-profits, such as Apathy is Boring, The Catherine Donnelly Foundation, and L’Institut du Nouveau Monde, have it as their mission to invite young people to participate in democracy at large, it is less common for companies to make visible political calls. 

A few that have done it include: 

• Patagonia, Levi’s, and PayPal, which launched the “Time to Vote” movement in 2018 in the U.S. to encourage companies to give employees time off to vote. Employees from the outdoor clothing company also serve as poll watchers and poll workers.
• 90 French companies created the non-partisan campaign #onvote in 2019.
• Lime offered free e-scooter and bike rides to people who wanted to get to the polls during the 2025 federal Canadian election.