Election 2019: B.C. youth voted in record numbers in 2015, but will they be inspired to repeat this year?
Credit to Author: Lori Culbert| Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 21:33:17 +0000
Mitchel Gamayo didn’t vote in the 2015 federal election, when he was 18. Now that he’s four years wiser he’s already cast his ballot in an advance poll — and believes he is part of a growing trend of millennials and Generation Zs who will participate in this federal election.
“Everywhere I go, (young) people know the election is happening,” said Gamayo, 22, a Simon Fraser University geography student who volunteers to encourage other young people to vote.
“We have an amazing opportunity to shape government, to be part of the solution. We feel like it’s our time to vote, to go out, because we make up the biggest voting block.”
Millennials account for the largest number of voters in this election at 35 per cent of the Canadian population, surpassing generation Xers and baby boomers for the first time.
Polls suggest the race is a tight one between the Conservatives and Liberals, so the winner of the election may be decided in B.C., where the last ballots are counted. And if millennials turn out to vote, they may play a deciding role in choosing the next prime minister, predicted Ian Waddell, a former longtime B.C. NDP MP.
“The young people in B.C. will decide the next government of Canada, if they come out to vote,” said Waddell, co-producer of the 2015 film The Drop: Why Young People Don’t Vote.
“I think there is a chance that they will go out to vote, and that they will have an enormous impact. But we’ve got to get the message to them that their vote could matter because it will affect what the government does, what their policy is.”
Waddell, chair of the Former Parliamentarians Committee, which is working on how to get more youth to vote, said the question is whether they will be inspired by this “bland” campaign to repeat — or even exceed — their impressive turnout numbers in 2015.
Swept up by Trudeaumania, two out of every three B.C. youth aged 18 to 24 voted in 2015, a massive jump over the 40 per cent who did so in 2011. B.C. had nearly the highest provincial youth turnout, second only to New Brunswick, and was above the national average for this age group.
Across Canada in 2015, 57 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted, compared to just 39 per cent in 2011. Voting by 25- to 34-year-olds also rose to 57 per cent in 2015, a big jump over the previous election.
Despite this surge, the turnout by young people in 2015 was still below the 66 per cent national average for all age groups.
Though this campaign has been lacklustre so far, youth are paying attention, argued Tanysha Klassen, the 23-year-old co-chair of the B.C. Federation of Students, an alliance of student unions from 13 colleges and universities.
“I believe it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, this youth engagement,” said Klassen, who travels to post-secondary campuses to encourage students to vote.
“Maybe we’ll get to a stage of young people feeling as empowered by the political system as older people, and I think we are starting to see that shift.”
Klassen, a Douglas College psychology graduate from Maple Ridge, argued young people may not have always voted but that doesn’t mean they are apathetic. There is a history of youth activism, including the feminist movement of the past and the recent climate strikes involving tens of thousands of teens protesting across Canada and the world.
“Now, I think, we are seeing that translate more into votes. Maybe that is because young people are feeling they have more faith in democracy or are worried that what happened in the UK or the U.S. could happen here,” she said, in reference to the controversial governments of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Gavin Dew in 2016, when he was the B.C. Liberal candidate in a Vancouver-Mount Pleasant byelection.
But Gavin Dew, the 35-year-old founder of Forum for Millennial Leadership, is worried this election could have lower voter turnout among youth.
“So far, this is a depressing, nothing-burger of an election that doesn’t appear to offer much hope. It really has become a mudslinging contest and a race to the bottom to convince voters not to vote for the other guy,” said Dew, who started the Forum a year ago after realizing how few young people were elected in B.C. at any political level.
“From my friends who I talk to, people are really struggling with who to get behind, or whether there is anyone to get behind.”
In 2015, B.C. residents elected only one millennial candidate among 42 MPs sent to Ottawa — Liberal Terry Beech, then 34, in Burnaby North-Seymour — the lowest number of any Canadian province, Dew’s research shows.
That could change after next week’s election, as more than one quarter of main-party candidates running across Canada are millennials, a larger portion of them representing the NDP and Green parties, said Dew, who collected the age data from the federal parties.
Among B.C.’s 42 races for a seat in the House of Commons, the Conservatives and NDP each have nine candidates who are either millennials or generation Z (that is, born after 1980). The Liberals have five candidates under the age of 39, Dew’s research shows. He was not provided adequate data on the ages of Green candidates in B.C.
“It’s interesting that we have the least number of young people currently in Parliament, but it is difficult to imagine that we are not going to see an increase in that number after the election,” predicted Dew, who was a B.C. Liberal candidate in a provincial byelection in 2016 when he was 32.
Vancouver Granville NDP candidate Yvonne Hanson in Vancouver.
There is a ping-pong table in the office of the Vancouver Granville NDP candidate, Yvonne Hanson, and the 24-year-old sits cross-legged on a couch in the “lounge” at the back while answering a reporter’s questions. But she is all business when discussing how the current political system “neglects youths’ needs.”
The Simon Fraser University political science graduate thought she would get into politics when she was older, but the climate crisis propelled her to fight now for greater spending to fight climate change. “I think older politicians are likely to misjudge the cost-benefit analysis. They will be around to see the costs, but not the benefits,” she said.
Often the first question she hears on the doorstep is about her age, but she responds that young candidates can generate new ideas to address increasingly dire challenges: climate change, the housing crisis, income inequality and student debt. “We need to be looking for 21st century solutions, things that haven’t been tried in the past.”
Hanson hopes young candidates like her — she’s a renter who works in retail — will inspire more young voters to cast ballots. Her largest group of volunteers are between 18 and 29 years old, some of them coming out at 7 a.m. to wave election signs with her.
“Hopefully seeing young people on TV, and being taken seriously by political structures, will inspire others to get involved (in politics),” she said.
David Cavey, 24, is the Conservative candidate for Vancouver Centre.
There is more than a 50-year age gap between the Vancouver Centre Conservative candidate, David Cavey, and Liberal Hedy Fry, who has held the riding since she first won it in 1993.
“She was first elected before I was born,” Cavey, 24, says with a smile.
Displaying a comfort level with technology that is common to his generation, he runs all his campaign social media himself and emails election videos to supporters, as he tries to reach new voters, especially young ones.
“People like to see that they are represented in government, so they are more inspired seeing someone who is part of their (age) group,” he said.
Cavey, a recent commerce grad who works in finance, says the No. 1 issue he hears from voters — cost of living and affordability — transcends every age group.
Surrey-Newton Green candidate Rabaab Khehra.
Twenty-year-old University of B.C. student Rabaab Khehra is running for the Green party in Surrey—Newton because she believes she is adding an important voice — one representing youth and people of colour — to the campaign.
“Women of colour who are young come up to me and say, ‘This is really cool,’” she said. “I think (politicians) do have an issue connecting with young people.”
Khehra can relate to voters’ concerns about tuition costs and student debt. She was raised in a low-income home by a single mother and worries about how to finance her university education.
She believes young people will come out to vote this election. “I think a lot of youth are committed to seeing policies change,” Khehra said.
West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Liberal candidate Patrick Weiler in West Vancouver.
At 33, lawyer Patrick Weiler represents an older group of millennials. The Liberal candidate for the large, diverse West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country riding says he talks daily with voters distressed over housing affordability, ranging from people in mansion-filled West Vancouver up Highway 99 to more-rural Pemberton.
“People are concerned they won’t be able to live in the places they grew up,” Weiler said, adding he thinks voters find it encouraging to discuss these worries with a younger candidate.
“I think people can look at politicians and think they don’t care about issues important to them … (but) having someone who they can relate to and lives through the same challenges and has the same priorities can turn people on to care about politics.”
Weiler recently spoke with students at Collingwood, a private high school, where he heard sophisticated questions from engaged teens. And in Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, he participated in an all-candidates debate held for people under 40 years old, where the themes discussed included transportation and child care.
“I would argue the hearts and minds of suburban parents are the electoral battleground of 2019,” said the Dew of the Forum for Millennial Leadership, who has a young daughter.
“Young suburban parents are the swing vote in this election. There have been policies and politics designed by each party to appeal to that cohort of somewhat unclaimed voters that don’t necessarily have a partisan or ideological identity. But it remains unclear whether millennials are taking those policies and those politics seriously, or whether they perceive them as being token gestures.”
Polling conducted for the Forum found four-fifths of respondents across Canada — of all ages — agree that “younger people need to step up and take leadership in politics,” he said.
“There is a tendency to believe that young candidates are catnip for young voters, but there is a least a strong theoretical demand from 55-plus voters for younger candidates,” said Dew, who works in public affairs.
Waddell, the former MP, believes politicians increasingly realize the youth vote is “crucial,” and sees them putting more emphasis on issues such as climate change, tuition and jobs.
“I think the problem is not with the youth, it’s with politicians now. They’ve got to show the young people they are listening and they are prepared to deal with some of their issues,” he said. “It used to be we just talked to old people because they voted.”
The main parties do appear to be wooing youth, to a certain extent.
Liberals have sent get-out-the-vote messages to young supporters, and advertised which post-secondary campuses will have advanced voting stations. The party has committed to increasing Canada Student Grants by 40 per cent and to implement a two-year grace period on student loan repayment.
The Greens have promised to eliminate post-secondary tuition, and to provide $1 billion annually to municipalities to hire Canadian youth.
The NDP says the party will work with the provinces to cap and reduce tuition fees, and support Indigenous youth, those in foster care, and people from remote communities to better access education.
The Conservatives plan to increase the government’s contribution to a Registered Education Savings Plan from 20 per cent to 30 per cent for every dollar invested, up to $2,500 a year, to help post-secondary students.
Tanysha Klassen, 23, (from left), Mitchel Gamayo, 22, and Mandy Wan, 23, are with the B.C. Federation of Students. They are encouraging other young people to vote.
Klassen, the B.C. Federation of Students co-chair, believes politicians are starting to take young voters more seriously now, and is heartened to see three relatively young leaders in this campaign — the Liberal’s Justin Trudeau is 47 while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Andrew Scheer are both 40.
Although some youth still don’t know a lot about the candidates, and others are turned off by the squabbling during the leaders’ debates, Klassen still believes that today’s youth are feeling more empowered. “People seem so excited,” she said.
She attended an evening election panel about affordability in Surrey this week, and was pleasantly surprised to see many young people in the audience asking questions. “It was awesome not feeling like the youngest person in the room.”
The Federation of Students produced a report last month that found the youth vote has also increased in provincial politics, and noted that voting becomes a habit — if you vote once, you are more likely to vote again.
“Some of the common barriers faced by young voters is a lack of clear information on when and where to vote, identification requirements, and lack of accessible voting stations,” says the report, “The Youth Vote: Why Young Voters Can’t be Ignored.”
“Elections Canada can help alleviate these concerns by continuing its voter engagement campaigns, having polling stations on campuses, and providing information for people voting outside their home communities.”
Mandy Wan, 23, said it is easier in 2019 to track the parties and candidates through social media, and has found many youth are talking about the election. For example, on the day of the massive climate action protests, she saw posts from young people who thought Trudeau cared about the issue because he took part in the protests, while she saw other posts from youth who argued the Liberals had four years to do a better job of tackling climate change.
“They want that accountability, and they are aware that what they do (at the ballot box) will affect the future,” said Wan, a hospitality management student at Vancouver Community College and a Federation of Students member.
“We want to be more involved with the decisions being made. We want to be heard.
“There is that encouragement now to say: I can be involved. My decision, my voice — it matters.”
Twitter: @loriculbert