Thank you very much for having me here.
I am Dr. Youri Cormier and I'm the executive director at Apathy is Boring.
Apathy is Boring is a national youth-led non-partisan charitable organization that has been working to educate Canadian youth about democracy since 2004.
In keeping with our strict non-partisanship policy, we do not advocate on matters of public policy, and this includes not taking a public stance for or against the Fair Elections Act.
Our goal today is to provide an accurate, impartial and balanced analysis of the youth electoral context in Canada in relation to this bill, with the hope that this will be a valuable addition to the current debate.
Youth voter participation is not a partisan issue. Youth do not form a voting block that sways as a whole one way or another. This in fact has been proven by various studies. One example of this is the student vote program, which has shown that high school mock election results roughly mirror actual electoral results. Also, a recent poll found that 18-to-24-year-olds support Canadian political parties in proportions that are similar to those for other age groups. Even the issues they prioritize are roughly the same as those of older generations, including people over the age of 60.
Despite these similarities between generations, voter turnout in Canada is not evenly distributed amongst age groups. Youth vote at a rate significantly lower than that of their elders. This is happening throughout the western world, not only here in Canada.
The other problem is that the decision to vote or not is a habit one develops at an early age. Young people who don't vote in the first two elections in which they are eligible to do so tend not to vote for the rest of their lives.
Study after study has shown that the key factor determining voter participation is motivation. Non-partisan motivational campaigns have had a measurable impact on voter turnout. And the evidence exists to back that up.
We recognize that elected officials and political parties have an important role to play in motivating citizens to vote. That said, non-partisan actors are also key, because they do not have a stake in the outcome of any given election. While political parties may choose to speak to those in their base and to undecided voters—both of which are current voters—non-partisan actors play a fundamental role by encouraging non-voters to become voters, thereby continually renewing the pool of electors and the health of our democracy.
If Elections Canada is no longer empowered to invest in and conduct outreach campaigns that promote voting, who then will actively reach out to non-voting citizens and youth who are deciding for the first time whether or not to vote? Will Elections Canada be able to continue to invest in research projects that aim to understand the trend in youth voter turnout and identify which strategies are cost-effective for turning the trend around?
Another barrier to voting is that youth have high levels of mobility. They move away from home, they go off to college, and they move again to find work—the unemployment rate in Canada for youth is very bad. As a result, these young adults are less often correctly inscribed on the electoral lists.
To make voting easier for youth, Apathy is Boring recommended in a report commissioned in 2008 that Elections Canada could capitalize on changes to ID requirements to increase accessibility to elections. VICs were deemed to be a logical choice, because even before Elections Canada piloted their project with these cards, our research found that many people thought the VIC was an acceptable form of identification because it seemed to contain all the information listed as being acceptable.
Voters may have 39 alternative forms of authorized ID, but the problem is that if high mobility results in someone's address being incorrect on one of these, it usually means that it is incorrect on the remaining ones as well. In such circumstances common to young Canadians, vouching and VICs can indeed facilitate access to voting.
If tighter ID requirements are implemented, it will be indeed crucial to ask this question. What means will be put in place to counter the potentially challenging impacts of tighter voter identification on young eligible voters who are not correctly on the voting list? In attempting to safeguard democracy from administrative risks, how can we also ensure that we do not expose our democracy to another important risk, that is, the immediate and continued decline of youth voter turnout and the impact this might have on long-term voting habits?
A democracy may be very well-administered and free of irregularities, but what worth would it have if this “regularity” came at the expense of citizens opting out of the democratic process?
Apathy is Boring hopes that engaging youth as voters will be an important part of the debate around Bill C-23. We continue to be committed to our non-partisan charitable mission of educating Canadian youth about democracy. And in so doing, we need the support of the many critical stakeholders: government, political parties, electoral agencies, community groups, donors and, of course, youth volunteers.
Thank you.