44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 23, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to speak in favour of the bill put forward by my NDP colleague and member of Parliament for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, which proposes a lowering of the voting age to 16. I want to also acknowledge my NDP colleague and member of Parliament for Vancouver Kingsway, who has brought forward the same bill multiple times on this exact topic stretching across the last five Parliaments. Additionally, I know other parties in the House today have brought forward bills on this exact subject.
I am happy to speak today to this important bill that has once again been brought forward in Parliament. However, it is clear that it is time to go beyond debate and vote in favour of sending this bill to committee so the work can finally be done and the changes put in place to ensure the voices of young people are heard.
I am hearing loud and clear from many young people in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith that they want their vote to count in the decisions that impact their futures. When I hear the argument from some that an individual is not mature enough at the age of 16 to be given the responsibility of voting, I immediately think of Nanaimo—Ladysmith constituent, Ava.
At not quite 16 years of age, Ava has already shown maturity beyond her years. Five years ago, she travelled to China to participate in the World Youth Model United Nations, where she researched the issues before arguing passionately for the rights of those living with disabilities, as well as the rights of indigenous people. Two years ago, at 14, Ava was elected student council president at her secondary school. She served two one-year terms as president and still maintains a role on council today.
When we talked about lowering the voting age, Ava spoke eloquently about the concerns she and her classmates have. She spoke about the realities she and her peers will face as adults in just a few short years. She talked about how having the right to vote when she turned 16 would allow her to have a say in who is making the decisions for her future. Ava also talked about how important the work being done by politicians now is and how much it will impact what her life will look like in a couple of years when she is leaving for college or entering the workforce. Like most young people, Ava is very aware that the decisions made in Parliament today by those not facing the same uncertainties will greatly impact her tomorrow.
Increasingly, young people in our country are thinking and worrying about the problems they will face as they enter adulthood, but they are not just thinking about it. They are taking action. Our young leaders are stepping up and effecting change. In British Columbia alone, young people are seeing the impacts of climate change right before their eyes: heat domes, forest fires that wipe out entire communities, and droughts followed by flooding, destroying farms, crops, livestock and homes. The damages continue to build and the number of lives impacted increases.
We know the impacts of climate change are not isolated to B.C., and that these repercussions stretch the length of Canada and around the world. Hurricane Fiona, which is about to hit the east coast, is another frightening example.
It is clear that the decisions made by previous generations impact individuals today, just as the decisions we make today will impact future generations to come. Young people are seeing the dream of home ownership being pulled out from under their feet. They are losing loved ones at a tragic rate to the toxic substance supply crisis. All the while their student debts are becoming higher than ever before.
At the same time, in British Columbia, 16-year-olds have the responsibility of driving vehicles and making medical decisions around their own bodies. Many of these young people are also working and paying taxes on their earnings. Like everyone else, they work hard to earn their wages. They send taxes from their earnings to the government to support federal services, but unlike those 18 years of age and over, they have no say about who makes up government, sets tax rates and spends the taxes they pay. They have taxation with no representation, a situation that is inherently unjust and unfair.
Despite this, young people continue to be told they are not mature enough to vote. The dismissal of young people, claiming they lack capacity or maturity to take on the responsibility of voting, is a false dichotomy. It is an argument that has been used over and over throughout history in attempts to prevent women, indigenous people and other racialized individuals from gaining the right to vote. It is a false narrative made not out of concern for protecting vulnerable groups, but out of the desire to maintain the status quo.
These types of arguments reinforce an unnecessary, paternalistic system that reflects a flawed understanding of the cognitive capacity of young people. Psychological research has shown that by age 16, individuals are completely able to make informed decisions that require complex thinking, and the world is taking note.
Several countries, including Austria, Scotland, Wales, Brazil, Argentina and several states in Germany have already taken the step of lowering the voting age, with profound results. Voter turnout statistics from these countries show that 16- and 17-year-olds voted at a higher rate than their 18- and 19-year-old counterparts. Further, there is evidence to suggest that these turnout rates increase over time for all young people.
Like many young people around the world, Canada's youth are no longer content to sit, seen but not heard, while the adults make decisions around their future. Instead, they are demanding loud and clear to be heard and to have a seat at the political table. I am hearing from engaged, passionate young people in my riding who want their voices and votes to count.
Thirteen-year-old Franklin, also a constituent from my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, shared with me a speech he wrote when he was just 12 years old. In his powerful speech, he says that young people “should be given the right to vote, because they would be voting for the future as well as for the present. Voting would give new, fresh ideas and more learning opportunities.” He goes on to say that young people “play an important role in society and not having their voices heard as much will delay important matters.”
Sixteen-year-old Marina, also a constituent in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, shared with me, “What sense does it make to let another generation decide our future? Youth like us have the most at stake with political decisions being made right now, and experts say we might lose it all. Climate change is threatening to destroy our communities, while economists are warning of a pandemic recession to affect us for decades. When will we get to decide how to fix these downfalls, rather than consulting the generation who created them? I really hope to be able to decide my future, rather than being stuck in one with an irreversibly damaged world.”
Canada's very own Youth Advisory Council agrees. Its first-ever state of the youth report from 2021 says this:
[Y]outh want to participate in the decisions that affect them and want those in the government and others to acknowledge and recognize their agency and autonomy. To give youth greater agency and participation, it is important that the voting age in Canada be lowered from 18 to 16.
The desire Canadian youth have to engage in the political process is nowhere more evident than in programs such as student vote Canada. This program, which is now more popular than ever, collaborates with schools to give students the opportunity to experience the voting process first-hand and to begin practising the habits of active and informed citizenship. In 2021, more than 800,000 young people and 5,900 schools in every riding across the country participated in this school-based version of the federal election.
It has been shown that good habits built in an individual's youth are more likely to continue into adulthood. By working to ensure young people understand our democracy, the election process and how to gather information to make informed decisions, high school teachers and passionate civics educators across the country, including in Nanaimo—Ladysmith's School District No. 68, are ensuring that our youth are ready to come to the ballot box.
There is ample evidence of the benefits of lowering the voting age. We know that when a young person is still in school and living at home when voting for the first time, they are better equipped and supported to get registered and to vote. They are more likely to have the time to become informed on the issues and to make decisions about how to vote. Once established, these habits then carry with these young adults as they move forward in life. However, the opposite is seen when voting begins at 18. Lowering the voting age would allow many young people to become engaged and register to vote with the supports of their home community in place.
Our democracy is at its best when it reflects the Canadian values of equity, diversity and inclusion, and it is time those values were more truly ingrained within our electoral processes. We have passed the point where electoral reform as a catchy sound bite is enough. Young people feel frustrated and disenfranchised by a democratic system that fails to represent them.
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Mr. Speaker, it has been such an honour to bring forward Bill C-210, the right to vote at 16 act, on behalf of all those brilliant 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds across Canada who are currently excluded from voting. They are young people like Will Cooper from Lisgar Collegiate right here in Ottawa, who is part of the #Vote16 movement.
I want to thank all of my colleagues, my brilliant colleagues in the NDP, the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith and the member for Vancouver Kingsway for their support over the course of the debate on this bill. I also thank the member for Manicouagan for her words. I, too, have a 17-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old daughter and my conversations with them have helped shape my thinking around this legislation.
To the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent and the member for Moose Jaw, it seems we have a bit more work to do to convince them to come over and support this piece of legislation. I will say that I had an interesting conversation with one of their colleagues about a month ago. I asked them about this bill, and their response was very blunt. They said they hated it. I asked them why, and this person said, “Young people are not going to vote for me,” and that very well may be the case. They might not vote for me either, but that is not the point. The point of this is that young people have a voice.
Young people care about the issues. Young people have a stake in the future, and young people deserve to be included in the voting franchise in our country.
We have heard so many points and arguments, and some of these have to do with this idea around voter turnout. I think this is a rather technical point, but it is a compelling one, because we all want our democracy to be stronger. Make no mistake, though: The international evidence from places like Austria and Scotland shows that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds vote in higher percentages than their 18-year-old and 19-year-old peers. They do that for a number of reasons. It is because 16 is a relatively stable time of life for young people.
It turns out that 18 is a terrible time to expect young people to vote for the first time. It is a time of great transition, when young people are moving away from their home ridings and entering the workforce or going to school. That is why we see lower voter turnout among 18-year-olds to 24-year-olds.
We look around the world and we see that democracy is embattled right now. I think that is something that concerns all of us in this place. More and more people are feeling disenfranchised and they are feeling alienated from our political institutions. The way we buttress our democracy against these headwinds is by including more people, not fewer, in our democratic process, and by making our democracy more inclusive, not less.
Recently, I had a chance to chat with a dynamic young leader in a small coastal village on the central coast of British Columbia. She talked to me a bit about youth engagement. She is a young person, as I said, and I know youth engagement is something a lot of members in this place are interested in. I think many MPs have youth advisory councils. The Prime Minister has one himself.
This young person was a member of a youth advisory body for another government, and she said to me that sometimes it feels as if youth engagement is a performative thing for politicians and that it is more about creating a certain perception of the elected official than it is about giving the young person agency and the ability to change the future.
I was thinking about this conversation when I came across this report from last year called “Canada's First State of Youth Report”. The federal government convened 100 youth from across this country and held 90 consultation sessions with them, and 13 of these youth formed a special advisory leadership group that pored through all of this data and came up with a series of recommendations for how the government should respond to the concerns of youth.
If we turn to page 50 in that report, we find recommendation 5(c), which is to urgently lower the voting age in Canada from 18 to 16. I think the very least we could do for these young people who engaged in this process in good faith is to vote for this bill at second reading, send it off to committee, hear from expert witnesses and show these young people that we are listening and that their voices and participation matter.
In conclusion, I want to thank all of the people who have been a part of this #Vote16 movement, who have spoken in support and my friends in all of the parties who have at least given a curious ear. I want to thank the folks at #Vote16 Canada, Children First Canada and UNICEF Canada for their advocacy in support of this bill. I want to thank my team, especially James Hammond and Ben Tassell, for their help; Senator Marilou McPhedran for her leadership; and so many others.
I ask my colleagues in all the parties to please vote for this bill. It would make Canada stronger.
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