Why isn’t Ottawa helping to get out the youth vote?
TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – The federal government seems to be abdicating its responsibility to engage the electorate and encourage it to vote at precisely the worst time.
Aug 28 2015. By: Grace Kennedy
There has been plenty of debate surrounding the lack of youth voter participation in the past several years, but as we approach this October’s federal election, there’s reason to doubt that the dismal 42-per-cent turnout among Canadians aged 18 to 34 in the 2011 election will be improved upon this year. Lots of debate, but little apparent progress.
Some will say this is the fault of disengaged youth. Others will point to politicians who are so often insensitive to the concerns of millennials or who ignore them altogether, pandering instead to older, vote-rich constituencies. Understandably, many young voters have come to view the formal political process as irrelevant to the challenges they face.
Both these groups bear some responsibility for this worrying trend, but recent legislation may compound it. Until recently, Elections Canada was empowered by the Canada Elections Act to address the issue of lower turnout among young voters through advertising and other promotional campaigns. But last year’s Fair Elections Act bewilderingly stripped the body of that power.
While some have argued that such advertising was undemocratic in that it had the potential to benefit one party over another, I find the ban totally perplexing. How can advertising aimed at promoting turnout among all voters, regardless of political stripe, be counter to Elections Canada’s mandate to promote democracy and fair electoral process?
The new legislation supports the Chief Electoral Officer’s role in advertising information to voters on where, when, and how to vote, but nothing further. That leaves Ottawa with exactly zero tools and exactly zero funding mechanisms with which to deal with the youth-turnout crisis directly.
And that’s a shame. While individual young people and youth organizations like mine will continue working to encourage the youth vote, in the absence of legislation which supports this effort, there are inadequate resources available for such a momentous task.
We need federal support if we are going to meet the critical challenge of transforming attitudes surrounding voting. Some readers will say this is young people’s problem and it is in their own interest to solve it.
That’s missing the point. Meeting this challenge is about stalling the erosion of Canada’s democracy, not promoting youth as an interest group. The more citizens who engage in picking our government and the more who commit to holding it to account, the better suited policy is to our society, and the healthier our democracy. It is in everyone’s best interest to ensure that young Canadians reengage with Canada’s political system and again begin to vote.
Those who view this issue as one of personal responsibility forget that low voter turnout among youth is rooted in a mix of political, cultural, technological, and economic influences. It should not be characterized as an individual shortcoming, but as a sociological problem – one the government is best placed to fix.
For that reason, the recent change to the Canada Elections Act is a move in the wrong direction. The federal government seems to be abdicating its responsibility to engage the electorate and encourage it to vote at precisely the worst time. Calling on individual responsibility alone is not enough when the collective is at risk. We need Ottawa’s help.
Grace Kennedy is founder and executive director of Be the Vote, which works to encourage young Canadians to vote.
< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/08/28/why-isnt-ottawa-helping-to-get-out-the-youth-vote.html >
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, youth
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2015 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Inclusion Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments