Voting by 18- to 24-year-olds in the past four federal elections fell below 40 per cent, only breaching that mark in 2006 when 43.8 percent of eligible youth hit the polls, according to statistics from Elections Canada.
During the most recent election in 2011, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party earned a majority government with only 6,201 votes in 14 key ridings, about 1. 8 million voters in this coveted demographic stayed home.
That’s why 25-year-old Brigette DePape, an activist with the Council of Canadians, is working to mobilize young voters to, in her words, “take matters back into our hands.”
“Our goal is to ensure that we see a government that better reflects our values,” said DePape from the Student Campus Centre at Ryerson University on Monday as part of her nationwide Game-Changer Tour, which kicked off February 25.
You may remember DePape as the “Rogue Page,” who controversially held up a stop sign that read “Stop Harper!” in the House of Commons in October of 2011. Now, she is looking to make young voters the deciding factor in the next election.
“We believe that the current conservative government is not respecting our values, is not responding to youth priorities like tuition fees and youth unemployment and we want to see a government that does. So we want to see a change,” DePape said.
Canada’s increasing involvement in wars in the the Middle East, family planning, the marginalization of Aboriginals and climate change are other issues DePape highlighted as being consistently overlooked by incumbent politicians and are important to young voters.
The activist has been visiting areas near key ridings with high youth populations to foster a power base of young leaders and gain 10,000 vote pledges. As the election nears, youth leaders will mobilize, spreading information about the location of polling stations, coordinating group votes and canvassing.
Employing a campaigning technique she referred to as the snowflake model, DePape aims to educate, empower and inspire as many people as possible during this tour which has already visited Winnipeg, Regina and Vancouver with Toronto being the fourth of six scheduled stops.
“You essentially train five young people who can reach five more people and then those people can reach five more people,” she said.
On Tuesday, DePape held a training and canvassing event for youth leaders where they worked the streets near Ryerson trying to gain pledges to vote.
Those who say they will vote are more likely to do so, she said. In closely contested ridings, youth votes by those who may not have voted otherwise could have a great effect on the election outcome.
In Ontario, which is forecast to have many battleground ridings, DePape aims to gather 2,000 pledges. If the majority of those young voters who signed pledges come out on election day, “they can really be game-changers and be a critical force in electing progressive candidates,” she said.
She is quick to state that she doesn’t view voting as a solution to what she terms a failing democracy, but that it is a “strategic investment of time” to usher in a new government that is sympathetic to the concerns of the youth as well as force all politicians to adopted a policy standpoint more favorable to this demographic.
The Game-Changer Tour will visit Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario on March 30 and then Nova Scotia’s South Shore on April 26.
“I think there’s a real need to shift course and take matters back into our hands and the hands of the people,” DePape said.
The federal election is slated for October 19, unless called earlier.
news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
