Okay.
He published what he calls the 2011 general election “National Youth Survey Report”. It was a survey of 1,300 randomly selected youth and young adults and also 1,293 youth selected non-randomly in order to get adequate sample numbers from a number of groups, including aboriginal youth.
I turn now to comments that were made there about lack of participation by aboriginal youth.
First of all, he states of the five youth subgroups:
Youth in the five subgroups reported voting at rates that were significantly lower than that of the general youth population, with the lowest turnout reported by Aboriginal youth and unemployed youth.
Then he summarizes the top number of reasons explaining why each group had a low participation rate.
For Aboriginal youth, the most important barriers to voting were lower educational attainment, low awareness of the different ways to vote, lack of interest in the election, and difficulty getting to the polling station.
He doesn't say this here, but I have the suspicion that aboriginal youth could probably be divided into two subgroups, those who live on reserve and those who live in urban centres, where they probably are just unfamiliar with things such as the polling location.
What I'm getting at when I mention all this is that the new section 18 in the proposed changes to the Elections Act would mandate the Chief Electoral Officer to have to provide some of this basic civics information, an area in which, in my view and the view of some of the witnesses we've had before us, has been woefully inadequate. They have done a very poor job of telling you such basic things as: where you should vote; what should happen if you're not on the voters list; what you do if you don't get a voter information card or if it has the wrong information on it; at what times you can vote, I think; what means you have, aside from the election day poll, for voting; and so on. These are all listed and mandated.
I have to tell you that, based on previous testimony I've heard by the Chief Electoral Officer over a number of years, the only example I've heard of outreach of this nature, giving this kind of basic information—not why you should vote, but how you should be able to take advantage of your right to vote—is of a program that was done with your own organization. There was one other aboriginal organization they worked with—I can't remember the name of the organization—