That's a great idea, Mr. Chair. I think that's fantastic.
Going along with that, I definitely take very seriously the advice that you have for all of us. I enjoyed your presentations, your enthusiasm to engage young people. I share in that enthusiasm. We definitely do not want to disenfranchise young people. It's quite the opposite; we want to engage them.
I think the Prime Minister's Youth Council is the most amazing thing ever. On my personal campaign, I engaged quite a lot with youth. I think the fact that volunteer hours are mandatory for high schools now helps drive a lot of youth to come out and find opportunities. That may happen accidentally at first, but once they join a campaign, whichever one it is—I'm sure everyone from all parties benefited from young people looking for volunteer opportunities—they become engaged and interested in the process and what's happening.
I have found, though, that a lot of schools are reluctant to let us in even after you become an elected official. There are teachers who go above and beyond; they really want you to come in, and they try to manoeuvre a way that we can come into the classroom. In the area I'm from, I've faced quite a lot of challenges—even writing to the schools—just to go in to talk to the classes.
I have read that if you catch them at a young age and you go in to speak.... We don't have to be speaking about parties. Most of the questions that come from them are not about parties. They're usually about what you do, or what life in politics is like, what you have to do to get there, and a lot of other questions about voting. There are so many interesting questions that young people have. I think it can really turn around the engagement process for them and make it exciting.
There were mock elections in my area during this campaign, and that was really interesting. As I went door to door, I saw kids who would open the door and they thought you were like a rock star. They would be more excited than the parent. They would move the parent out of the way and say they were learning about me, this is what's happening, this is what this platform is about, and this is this party's platform. It was incredible to see. I congratulate all of you for the work you do in trying to promote this to young people.
Do you have any suggestions? I know some of you have talked about voter age and some have talked about compulsory voting. For this committee, do you think there's any one thing you would recommend we do above all to increase voter participation? As you know, reading from the blues, we've heard a lot of contradictory evidence from so many witnesses. It's hard for us to figure out at this point what it is we should be doing to increase voter participation.