Another look at youth voting in Canada
Voting age disparity between parties and elections reveals an uneven division of political responsibilities for young people
Roughly a year ago, I discussed litigation filed by young Canadians against the federal government calling for the national minimum voting age to be lowered from the current 18-year-old requirement. Youth participation levels are disproportionately low compared to how affected the demographic is by political issues.
Since then no new word has gotten out in regards to the lawsuit. Perhaps the matter is currently tied up in the justice system’s queue? Either way, my opinion on the topic has not changed and has been fortified by a particular quirk that has been brought to my attention.
With the winner of the upcoming BC NDP leadership contest set to also be acclaimed as the province’s next premier, it should be brought to notice that the BC NDP’s minimum age of voting membership is 12-years-old. Grade Seven students are permitted to vote in this leadership race so long as they pay the minimum annual membership fee of $10.
And the NDP isn’t alone in this.
Both the BC Liberal Party and Conservative Party accept 14-year-olds as members in exchange for $5 donations, and the BC Greens take in the same age group at no charge.
Of the three parties just mentioned, the Liberals and Greens have seats in the Legislative Assembly, and the former even saw a leadership election in 2011 after the resignation of then Premier Gordon Campbell in November 2010. Christy Clark won and was subsequently made Premier and party leader.
Now, these are fairly special circumstances. Leadership elections determining a new head of government is a norm in our parliamentary system but not a regular occurrence. Also, the functions of a political party are not equal to those of government, so what works for one will not necessarily work for the other.
However, consider the exact purpose of elected parties. They provide the seats their leaders need to have the confidence of the Legislature and administer their stated policy platforms. Who is it that consents to both the leaders and the policies that govern a partisan association? The paying party members, the very ones who can be as young 12 or 14.
The message being sent is clear: young people can be trusted to elect their preferred politicians and policies, as long as it remains confined to their chosen ideological camps.
That young peoples’ political influence and agency is only allowed to go so far before others begin to object due to a supposed “lack of maturity” or that we ought to “let kids be kids.” At a certain point it really starts to get arbitrary.
All of this falls into the larger issue of how society tends to view people under the age of 18.
We trust youth to work certain paying jobs, gain access to post-secondary education through studying and quite a few other responsibilities. The teenage years are formative ones, it’s the time when “children become adults” via education and socialization. We cannot discount the political variants of learning and culture that teens get exposed to during this period, but it seems that we do this all too often.
Perhaps we have somehow decided that teenagers are an inherently apolitical monolith who care little for electoral affairs. Or have we let established politics leave our youth in the dust in pursuit of other interests? Either way, something has to give eventually.
