Thank you.
Hello everyone.
As the chair of the committee mentioned, my name is Miriam Fahmy and I am the Director of Research at the Institut du Nouveau Monde, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that is based in Montreal. Its mission is to increase and support citizen participation in democratic life.
I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to testify about Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act.
I will now provide you with some information about the INM.
The INM organizes public debates in which ordinary citizens are invited to participate. These activities help to strengthen citizenship skills and citizens' knowledge of social issues. The INM also organizes citizenship schools for college-aged youth and young adults in their 20s.
Since 2012, the INM has been working with the chief electoral officer of Quebec in order to develop and implement promotional campaigns to encourage young people and the general public to vote.
Finally, the INM stays abreast of research on democratic life, more specifically, voter turnout. The INM is concerned about a number of aspects of Bill C-23. However, given our practices and expertise in civic education, my speech today will focus on a single aspect of the bill and that is the amendment proposed to section 18 of the Canada Elections Act, which would take away Elections Canada's public education mandate.
As you all no doubt already know, there has been a very strong decline in voter turnout in Canada. However, an even more serious trend has emerged since the 1980s, and that is a consistent, significant drop in initial turnout or turnout among members of a new cohort of electors who are eligible to vote for the first time. This rate went from 70% in the 1960s to 50% in the 1980s and 40% in the 1990s. Since the beginning of the 2000s, this rate has stayed below 40%.
All of the studies show that voters who do not vote the first time they have the right to do so are unlikely to do so later on. Given that, today, so few new voters tend vote when they come of age, the general rate of voter turnout is expected to continue to drop. According to experts, there is no doubt that the drop in voter turnout in federal elections is mainly due to the drop in initial turnout.
That is why the INM believes that an overall strategy, the objective of which is to reverse this trend that is threatening the legitimacy of the electoral process, should focus mainly on young people aged 16 to 24, or young people who are on the verge of acquiring the right to vote or of voting for the first time.
Like the INM, Elections Canada conducted research in order to understand why young people do not vote. The results of this research show that the main reason is that young people are not interested in politics. When young people are asked what could be done to pique their interest, they said that civic education would be the best way of doing so.
Elections Canada took note of this and began working to reverse this trend. In co-operation with civil society organizations, Elections Canada is piloting public education programs, innovative election day voting simulations in schools and campaigns to promote voter participation.
All of these initiatives seek to provide the non-partisan, civic education needed to encourage young people to vote. However, rather than strengthening Elections Canada's role as a non-partisan educator, the amendment to section 18 proposed in Bill C-23 takes that mandate away from Elections Canada.
In light of this information, the Institut du Nouveau Monde recommends that Bill C-23 be amended to not only maintain but reinforce the role and responsibility of Elections Canada as a provider of civic education programs and public awareness campaigns.
It is our belief that more studies should be conducted to further understand what stimulates youth voter turnout, that current education programs should be extended as much as possible, and that new initiatives should be developed targeting the issues that research results point to.
Any and all efforts that can encourage youth to go out and vote should be encouraged and strengthened, not abolished.
I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.