Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today as the youngest member of Parliament in Canada to discuss the matters before us related to the proposal to lower the voting age in Canada. There are three key messages that I want to attribute to this debate on how I think we can reinvigorate the interests of young people in our democratic process.
To begin, I would like to make some overall observations about the bill before the House that calls on the reduction of the voting age to 16.
First, I can understand the frustration that some young people might feel with the possibility that they might not be allowed to vote. A federal election could arrive before they reach the age of majority. I recall that in 1997 I turned 18 the day after the election. I missed the opportunity to vote by one day, and remember how deeply frustrated I was at that time.
With age and a few grey hairs along the way, I have come to learn a few things and to believe that along with rights come responsibilities. Certain responsibilities are afforded to our young people at the age of majority. The responsibility to work and pay taxes usually arrives around the age of 18. Until that age, most citizens of our country have the vast majority of things provided for them. The values such as thrift, responsibility and hard work are most exemplified in the years that follow, having reached the age of majority.
Why is this important to the overall discussion before us? We want our voters who choose the government to have all those values I just described. It is very difficult for that to happen until young people have reached the age of majority. As I try to balance rights with responsibilities, I have come to believe that the age of majority is a good age at which to give voting rights to our young people.
That being said, I encourage young people from all across the country to do what many in this Conservative caucus did in their teenage years, which is to join a political party, become politically active and engage not only at a partisan level but in issues that matter most to them. As a young person and as the youngest member of Parliament in Canada, I proudly say that I do not support reducing the voting age but rather increasing political involvement on other levels among young people.
I also will make note that I am part of the youngest caucus in the history of Canada on the Conservative side. We have 20 members of Parliament under the age of 40. We have five members of Parliament 30 years of age and under. When I look across the way, what do I see? I see another generation. I see yesteryear. I see yesterday's government. We on this side of the House see tomorrow. We see the future and I proud to be part of that future.
Let me say a few other things that might interest young people and get them involved in the democratic process.
One issue that concerns young people and young families in general is the fact that there is a minister on that side of the House who would take away their right to choose how to raise their own children, who would impose upon them the costs of an institutional day care bureaucracy that they must pay for even if they do not want to use it. This $10 billion day care bureaucracy will affect young people more than anyone and will discourage them from partaking in the democratic process because of the cynical nature that underlies it.
Young people want choice. They want a party that will put child care dollars directly into their pockets, allowing them to decide how to raise their own children. That is a hopeful policy. That is a policy of the future. That is something young people in our party could really get behind, and we should applaud that.
My hon. colleagues around me should never feel badly about interrupting my remarks with their applause. However, I will move on to something else that deals with involving young people in the democratic process.
When young people turn on the television and they see that their government has spent their tax dollars to pay ten months of rent for an empty building, two months without even a signed lease, to a company that just happens to be run by a Liberal senator, that kind of cynical politics, that kind of Liberal corruption, turns our young people off the political process.
I suggest that a second solution for involving young people would be to put an end to Liberal corruption, to Liberal theft and to Liberal bribery. If the government wants to get its priorities straight in a way that would truly inspire our young, instead of spending millions on rent for an empty building, it would give the Queensway Carleton Hospital control of its own land. Imagine how people in west end Ottawa, particularly young people, would view such an act of integrity. They would be surprised but also honoured to see their government do the right thing and allow a community hospital, which serves my constituency, to have control over its own land. It would no longer pay rent to a federal bureaucracy. All the revenues it could generate on that land would go back to patient care and innovation. That would truly inspire young people in my riding and get them interested in the democratic process.
I have mentioned three very practical examples: giving child care dollars to parents; ending rent payments for empty buildings; and giving a community hospital control of its own land. Those are three altruistic acts the government could undertake that would truly inspire the nation's young and make all of us proud to serve and to be in this place.
The final suggestion I will make is that all political parties, if they want to attract young people into the democratic process, should do what the Conservative Party has done, which is to put its money where its mouth is and act out that goal rather than just talk about it.
When young people turn on a television and they see only people of a generation distant from their own, they begin to believe that politics is not for them, that politics is for somebody else, that it is for another generation, that they will start to get interested in it in about 30 or 40 years. When they start to see people their own age who speak their language and talk in terms that they can appreciate, they would get interested in the democratic process.
That is why I will reiterate my congratulations to our leader and his effort in a very democratic way to involve young people in the leadership of the party as opposed to sidelining them in a youth wing which makes them second class citizens.
I look around this place today and I see a number of young people in this chamber. They are here because they were given a chance to be equals. They were not set aside to be second class citizens in a third tier sandbox as other political parties have made them. We have 20 members of Parliament under the age of 40 in this caucus. We have five members of Parliament who are 30 and under. The Conservatives have the youngest caucus in the history of the country, and the best I am proud to say.
I will conclude on a hopeful note that we in this caucus will continue to build policies that inspire the next generation, that we will work toward a future free of Liberal corruption and one that is dedicated to the interests and the values of the next generation of entrepreneurial young Canadians, of which I consider myself a proud member.
