Hi, my name is Dana Dolezsar.
I want to thank you for allowing me to speak today, and I particularly want to thank the Leadnow community for informing me of this event. They also sent me the link to the survey, and I did complete the survey. I sent it to several of my family members and friends who unfortunately had not heard of it at all, nor did they know about the event. I feel that there's a bit of an oversight there and that bringing people out to things like this needs to be pushed further.
I chose to speak because I'm 26 years old and I do represent a lot of voters under 30. I voted in the last election, and before I voted I watched the debates. I talked with my family, my friends, my peers, and my co-workers, and unfortunately, what I heard from a lot of them was that they were upset with the voting system and they weren't going to vote. My response to them was that unless they were standing there with a sign that said, “I'm not voting because...”, then nobody would know why they were not voting. I think that means you're giving away your vote to the winner, and that's not an effective system either.
Many people begrudgingly said, “I know the party that I want to represent Canada is not going to win in my riding, so I'm going to vote strategically”, and they encouraged me to do the same. I didn't like that at all and I had to do my research. I discovered that my particular riding had either been NDP or Liberal for the past five years, and I felt confident voting for the Green Party, which was the party that I felt best represented Canada and my priorities for this country. A lot of my friends couldn't do that and didn't do that, but when they watched the debates, and they heard what Trudeau and the Liberal Party had said, they were confident that the first-past-the-post system would be finished after this election and that in the upcoming elections, we would have a new system.
I feel that the number one reason young people are discouraged from voting is not only because of the first-past-the-post system, but because we're witnessing politicians not following through on their commitments. We have heard this commitment being made, that the system is going to change and that this was the last election in which we would have a first-past-the-post system. Even if we have a referendum, and I have not made a decision on whether I feel a referendum is necessary, it needs to happen clearly and quickly before the next election.
Thank you.