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Why Possible Canadas? The real reason youth don’t engage in politics

Tari Ajadi October 1, 2015 No Comments

Students from McMaster University attend Prime Minister Stephen Harper's speech at a campaign rally in Hamilton, Ontario, on Thursday, April 7, 2011. The students were invited into the rally as guests by Conservative communications staffer Andrew MacDougall. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick)
Why Possible Canadas? The real reason youth don’t engage in politics
Tari Ajadi October 1, 2015
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Dear Canada,

We have a problem. Our political discourse is poisoned.

Whether you’re basking in a victorious post-election glow or wallowing in its shadow, we cannot forget just how awful the 42nd general election campaign was. This was an election during which wedge politics was the politics. It was an election during which populist rhetoric morphed into violence on the street. Perhaps worst of all, it was the kind of election where we largely ignored the most important issues in favour of tax cuts for tiny groups of people. All the campaigns used these tactics. In fact, those tactics seem to be the one thing the parties agreed on.

We need to find a way out of this mess. The new government will lead Canada through its 150th birthday in 2017. What better way to celebrate than to rethink how we discuss our future?

Too often we leave entire groups out of national conversations. One perspective obviously missing from the campaign discourse? The stewards of this future Canada. We stereotype young Canadians as cynical, self-centred and disengaged. The media made much of the 2011 federal election’s terrible youth voter turnout rate and the trajectory of youth voting engagement. Some have even called for Canada to become more like North Korea and institute mandatory voting to stimulate youth engagement. Our politicians and our media are sending us a clear message: youth do not care about the future of this country, so why consult them?

It’s a wonder then, that 82 per cent of young Canadians are optimistic about the future. It’s curious too that youth in Canada consistently have, according to non-partisan charity Samara Canada, higher rates of participation in civic life outside of the voting booth. The evidence shows that the common wisdom about youth should be reversed – it is politicians who ignore youth, and not the other way around. It turns out that only 55 per cent of young people surveyed by Samara had been contacted by politicians in a non-election year, as opposed to 75 per cent of those 56 and older.

Ilona Dougherty, youth engagement expert and co-founder of Apathy is Boring, attributes the lack of contact to calculated political strategy. “Campaigns have a ‘weak supporter’ to ‘strong supporter’ continuum that doesn’t often include unlikely voters. Moving someone from not voting to being a supporter isn’t a dynamic that really happens, and as a result, young people get left out of the picture,” she said.  

Young Canadians’ absence in our political dialogue means that the things we value aren’t put on the national agenda. According to the Broadbent Institute’s Millennial Dialogue report, young Canadians value health, happiness, family, equality and freedom of speech. We value meaningful and sustainable societies and communities, no matter where we fall on the political spectrum.

None of the discussions in this election addressed those concerns in any meaningful way. The narrow margins that characterized much of this horse race have meant that the chattering classes have defaulted to pandering and condescending to their audiences, with minute-by-minute polling data and cynical microtargeting in place of substantive debate.

“It’s insulting to assume that all young people care about is marijuana, for example,” Dougherty notes. “Polls about what young people care about this second aren’t an accurate reflection of the issues they want to talk about in the long term.”

We are in danger of creating a nation that is not designed with our voices or our intentions as part of the project. That is a problem for everyone, young and old.

We need to shift the discourse entirely. Young Canadians don’t just want a seat at the table. To paraphrase Dougherty, we need to scrap the table and start anew. What would a Canada where young people directed the national discourse look like?

This means young people showing up at the polls, but it also means far more. It means our politicians prioritizing conversations about what young people find meaningful. It means removing the patronizing frame of “youth issues” to describe the valid and complex concerns that young Canadians have about the state of our nation. It means that we celebrate civic activities that young Canadians are already engaging in as a starting point for leadership. An overview of youth-led social change movements in Canada over 35 years shows that initiatives like civic youth advisory councils allow young Canadians to impact and influence decision-making on a national and international scale.

If we want to rebuild “our table,” it will mean working together to hold an honest, multigenerational conversation about what the future of this country looks like. What do we want Canada to be?

That’s the question at the heart of Possible Canadas. Over the next few weeks 10 student journalists from across Western Canada will tackle questions formed by consulting young Canadians at campuses across the region about what matters to them. These journalists ventured out into their communities and interviewed as many students as they could find. They took that information and ran with it, pursuing forward-looking perspectives on issues that range from Aboriginal sovereignty to climate change to building inclusive communities. They designed the scope and aim of this project. Far from “youth issues,” these articles are about our nation’s most important conversations.

We want these conversations to have true impact. We want these issues debated in the halls of power. So, Prime Minister-designate Trudeau, and the rest of the newly elected government MPs: read these articles. Work with us to develop a cohesive, meaningful way to allow youth to drive this country forward. Let young Canadians act as the stewards we know we can be, and help us to create a better vision for this nation’s future.

To the rest of the nation, young and old, we need your voices here too. We want you to engage, want you to debate with and against us. Tell us about your vision for the future by using the #PossibleCanadas hashtag on Twitter or texting “Canada” to 778 762 0809.

Let’s get to work.

Check out Arno Rosenfeld’s tongue-in-cheek article on what Canada would look like in twenty years if youth were in charge.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

What do YOU want Canada to be? Start by texting “Canada” to 778 762 0809.

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Previous Art Sterritt on Sustainable Economics
Next A vision from the future: Canada in 2035, if young people were in charge
Tari Ajadi

A recent graduate of Quest University Canada, and the founding editor-in-chief of The Mark student newspaper, Tari Ajadi has rejoined the Discourse Media team after interning in 2013 and contributing to the Globe and Mail’s Canadian University Report. Tari was named a 2014 3M National Student Fellow for demonstrating outstanding leadership within his educational community and beyond. Primarily reporting on issues of race, ethnicity and education, he has appeared on radio stations such as CBC Radio 1 and CKNW to discuss his work. Tari’s writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, The Tyee and University Affairs.


Tweet us at #PossibleCanadas

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  • How do we change who we’re really voting for?
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  • Can universities lead the movement towards reconciliation?
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CREDITS

Produced by DISCOURSE MEDIA | Editor TARI AJADI | Contributing editors ERIN MILLAR, COLLEEN KIMMETT & CHRISTINE MCLAREN | Web development CAITLIN MILLAR | Engagement NELLY BOUEVITCH | Design MAGGIE CASPAR | Audio ALEXANDER KIM | Reporting ARNO ROSENFELD, KEVIN REY, CHRIS ADAMS, MICHAELA CATHERINE SLINGER, CAMERON RAYNOR, JOSIE LUKEY, CHANDLER WALKER, ALEXANDER KIM & KATE BLACK
Join the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #PossibleCanadas.

About

Possible Canadas is a partnership of diverse organizations that share the goal of supporting forward-looking conversations about the future of Canada. The project is produced by Discourse Media and Reos Partners, in collaboration with RECODE and the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Partners’ support does not imply endorsement of the views represented. Contact us at possiblecanadas@discoursemedia.org.

©2015 Discourse Media - Collaborative solutions journalism

From 1870 to 1996, more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were placed in residential schools and forbidden to speak their language and practice their culture. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) estimates there are 80,000 former students living today, and that the ongoing impact of residential schools are a major contributor to challenges facing modern Aboriginal populations.

Canada’s TRC is one of many commissions worldwide to undertake revealing and resolving past wrongdoings, mostly by governments. Other examples include:

South Africa

In 1996, President Nelson Mandela authorized a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to study the effects of apartheid in South Africa. The commission allowed victims of human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, but also allowed perpetrators of violence to request amnesty from criminal prosecution.

Argentina

The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, initiated in 1983, investigated human rights violations, including 30,000 forced disappearances, committed during the Dirty War.

Guatemala

The Historical Clarification Commission was created in 1994 in an effort to reconcile Guatemala after a 36-year civil war. The commission issued a report in 1999 which estimated that more 200,000 people were killed or disappeared as a result of the conflict.

In June, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 “calls to action” to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.”

The scope of recommendations range from child welfare to education to Indigenous language rights, and has recommendations targeted for private and public spheres of Canadian life alike. The document calls upon law schools in Canada to require all students to take a course in Aboriginal people and the law, for example. Notably, the document calls upon the federal government to appoint a public inquiry into the causes of, and remedies for, the disproportionate victimization of Aboriginal women and girls.  

The 11-page document can be read here.             

http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

MMP

STV

Canada’s employment statistics are much better now than they were 20 years ago. In 2012 for example, 61.8% of working-age Canadians were employed as opposed to 58.7% in 1995. The unemployment rate has gone down from 9.5% in 1995 to 6.8% in 2014. Youth unemployment has gone down too, from 16.1% to 13.5% in the same time period. The outlier in these trends is labour force participation, or the amount of working-age Canadians who are either employed, or unemployed and looking for work. Right now, participation is at the lowest rate since the year 2000, mainly because the “baby-boomer” generation is moving towards retirement. Read more about that here.

Housing preferences among Millennials, however, tend towards smaller, higher density housing close to activities, signs that changing economic realities and the generation shift will create more demand for housing in compact, walkable neighbourhoods.

Belfry-Munroe suspects that youth disinterest has to do with political parties. “There’s been a lack of engagement one-on-one with people since the 1970s, and a greater focus on mass media and now things like social media,” says Belfry-Munroe. “The other thing is that parties have become uncool,” she continues, “and I think that getting excited about the election without parties is like getting excited about the World Series without the teams. If you weren’t excited about the Blue Jays, you would not be concerned about the World Series.”

To extend this analogy, young Canadians currently aren’t even interested in baseball. What could work to change this would be getting other types of fans — soccer, golf, darts, you name it — engaged in baseball due to their passion for sports in general. Politically, this is the bridge that is missing for youth. The Blue Jays don’t matter if youth are removed from sports. Similarly, political parties and leaders would have little relevance if youth are removed from electoral politics.

“The generational effect is even larger [than the life cycle effect]. At the same age, turnout is 3 or 4 points lower among baby boomers than it was among pre-baby boomers, 10 points lower among generation X than it was among baby boomers, and another 10 points lower among the most recent generation than it was among generation X at the same age.”

— An excerpt from “Why Was Turnout So Low?” in Anatomy of a Liberal Victory by Andre Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte.

Rock The Vote also published a Youth Voter Strategy Report in 2007 that compiled many scholarly findings on this subject. You can find that here.

According to Elections Canada, “people are less likely to cast a ballot if they feel they have no influence over government actions, do not feel voting is an essential civic act, or do not feel the election is competitive enough to make their votes matter to the outcome, either at the national or the local constituency level.” Read more here.

The trend of youth voter disengagement persists across much of the developed world. According to the Economist, for example, in 2010 just 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 voted in Britain’s general election compared to 76% of those aged 65 and over. America saw its lowest voter turnout ever in its 2014 midterm elections, where just 19.9 per cent of young people voted, compared to an overall turnout rate of 36.4 per cent. This trend tends to change, however, when charismatic politicians reach out to youth. According to Politico, Barack Obama would have lost the 2012 American presidential election without youth voting — overwhelmingly for him. Read more here.


 

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