My name is Shelby. I'm here on behalf of BYTE-Empowering Youth Society.
For those of you who are visiting the Yukon, BYTE is a by-youth, for-youth organization that has been invested in Yukon youth for nearly 20 years. Through our work, we aim to empower youth, have youth voices heard, and help youth create change in their communities.
We do this in a couple of different ways, one of which is through a campaign called Yukon Youth Want. We talk to youth in the Yukon about their vision for Yukon's future, and we typically do this around campaign time. We post those photos to our social media to try to show politicians what youth are thinking.
I was invited here today to speak a little bit about youth engagement. After several years of conducting this campaign, we know that the notion that youth are apathetic towards political and civic engagement is a myth. We see this every day in our territory, and there have also been some formal studies that prove this as well. I'm not sure if you guys have read the Samara Canada study, but it found that rates of formal political engagement among youth in Canada are actually much higher than among their older counterparts. The report also looks at other forms of civic engagement such as activism and volunteering for charities. Some of those participation rates among youth are much higher as well.
That leads me into a question many of you are asking: if youth are so engaged, why don't they vote? Probably nothing I'm going to say today will come as a big surprise, but I think there's a vicious circle of youth not voting because politicians don't speak to them, and politicians not speaking to them because they don't turn out to vote.
Turnout for youth contacted by political leaders was 15% higher than for youth who weren't contacted, so parties and candidates really have a direct line to improving the youth voter turnout. As well, youth are more likely to vote if it's easy—if they have the required documents, know when and where to cast the ballot, and can get there easily. It can be difficult for a lot of youth to prove their address, especially if they are in university or college or since they are moving around nearly yearly. In some cases polls might not even be accessible. I heard of a community that didn't have a polling station in their town, and people were expected to drive to a place an hour away to cast their ballot. A lot of youth are not going to be able to do that.
That brings me to the topic of electoral reform. I strongly believe in lowering the voting age. Young people pay taxes, and they are affected every day by the policies we're engaged in. In our territory, they are politically and physically engaged. They form social justice clubs at their schools. They raise money for issues that are important to them. As well, there's that study that proves they are engaged.
Additionally, voting is a habit. If we teach them to vote when they are in high school and there are fewer barriers since they have a permanent address and they have the school and their caregivers who are able to help them, we might be able to form their habits at a younger age and then increase their voter turnout as they move forward.
Another thing I would like to add is that youth voter turnout goes up when youth believe there's a big issue at stake and when they believe that every vote counts. I think we're all here today because we know the first-past-the-post system does not count every vote equally.
In closing, I would just like to say, as a representative of youth and also as a voter under 30, that as young people we want to be contacted by our politicians outside of election time. Aside from electoral reform, we want voting to be more than a transactional experience. We want to hear from our representatives not only when they want something from us. I think a way to engage youth in bigger voter turnout is to be there the other years of your term.
That's it for me.