It seems as if everyone is in agreement that we're not experts on electoral reform, and I'm happy that we're honest, and that's the truth. So why would I be here? Fourteen years ago I'd heard that there were problems with voter turnout and there were hints that it was because of young people. I thought that maybe it wasn't the hardest thing to solve. It might have been because I was 24, and I thought that what we could do is simply to teach it in school like we teach everything else that no one wants to learn. We set out working on something that's now turned into 14 years. I was supposed to be a millionaire at this point, but we took the road less travelled. So I'll tell you a little about what we do.
We are a hundred times better at doing things than we are at talking about ourselves, so hopefully I can just tell you what we do and then we can trust that we might have a bit of expertise to offer you.
First, we thought that the most gripping teachable moment we could focus on was students under the voting age. Our main goal here is building the habits and skills of citizenship. We'd be using elections for that. Elections really are the biggest thing you can do out of politics. So we thought we could teach elections in school, and Student Vote is our flagship program. In a minute I'll go over some fun facts that I brought for you.
Basically, we empower teachers with educational resources. We've now expanded that to include online videos with the party leaders, who put democracy on the curriculum through the course of the campaign. This does not necessitate a curriculum fit. Instead, we try to find enthusiastic teachers who believe in the democratic process.
The key components of Student Vote include classroom learning, dialogue with parents, meeting the actual candidates through candidate forums—I know many of you were in them in your local schools, and I thank you for that—media consumption, and a vote on the actual candidates running in the schools' electoral district. The results of that are released through media and on television. We started in 800 schools in Ontario in 2003, and in last fall's federal election we surpassed half of all schools in the country, registering to participate 922,000 kids, who cast a Student Vote ballot.
I say that to you because throughout this, the underlying theme from Kingsley and Mayrand and Rose to the New Zealand CEOs and the two guys from Ireland is the necessity of civic education at all times, and especially in a process like this.
I worry that you're going to say that we need more civic education without knowing what progress has already been made. That's what we do around elections. We've got up to half of all the schools participating. The point is to be in every school one day, reaching every student at every election. That's how we would truly build a habit just like how you teach kids math.
We know from independent evaluations that we're having positive impacts on teacher confidence and ability to deliver Student Vote. Students are having an impact on knowledge and interest. What is now being shown is that the more they do Student Vote, the better outcomes they have. It just makes sense, but that's the goal of doing this repetitively.
What we've got now is our second indication that kids may be supporting their parents' going to the polls. The recent feedback we got that hasn't been released yet is that close to 30% of parents attributed their decision to vote to their kids' participating in Student Vote. That matters when you talk about 922,000 families. What we do know when we did the math is that 2.5 million kids who went through Student Vote in the past were eligible to vote in this recent election. That does not show any link to increasing voter turnout, but that's where our base is now—above 18.
Just for fun, I wanted to say congratulations to Elizabeth. You were ranked fifth in the number of kids casting a Student Vote ballot in your riding, at more than 6,000 students. Blake, in Banff, at just under 6,000, was in the number 10 spot; and Matt was at 5,500, in Fredericton. That matters, because you want to see that grow over time. I also think it makes you care about young people in your electoral district, and I am trying to put pressure on you to care about them.
What else do we do? We run programs around budgets—very high level, much less mass reach, but we use political actors, like the Minister of Finance; lobby groups, like the Taxpayers Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress; and finally the party leaders. Their job is to weigh in, to pitch to kids what they want to see in the budget, and then kids give those opinions back to Finance and the public. You might be shocked to know that three years in a row they felt the best thing they could do with Canada's money was pay down the debt.
We run another program called Rep Day. Some of you, and then all of you by next week, will receive an invitation to participate in Rep Day. I know some of you already did. Last year, 45% of all MPs went into their local schools, with our administrative support, the purpose being for you to humanize our democratic process. It is really easy to dislike politicians, but maybe you ask, “What about Alain?” “Oh, I know Alain. He is a great guy.” That is what we are trying to show to kids, that they can access our process through their elected representatives.
Finally, what we do is train teachers. The point of training teachers is to really seed the system with ambassadors of the democratic process who also have the capability to effectively deliver civic education programs. That comes maybe just to some summaries. When you think about civic education— and it may come up in questioning—don't depend on the curriculum. The curriculum can be poorly taught. It can be taught by teachers who aren't really meant to teach that subject, but they have been trained so they can do the things they like. Schools are political places.
It really matters who is teaching what, how they are teaching it—we would suggest that it is always experiential learning—and when they teach it. Maybe you don't want to teach an election when it isn't going on. I would also ask every educator, why aren't you doing an election simulation when there is one going on?
Then, of course, we have structural challenges. Some school boards now don't want politicians in for candidates' forums during elections. That is absolutely terrible. Do you know why? It is because—you might have seen it in the book—we can fill an auditorium in front of candidates with 400 or 500 people. I'll put some money down that you don't get that in your usual Chamber of Commerce debate.
Tips for the committee....
What is my time like?