New Westminster-Burnaby candidates (some of them) attended the biggest all-candidates' meeting thus far in the 2015 federal election campaign – in a place where few votes were to be found.
The Green, Liberal and NDP candidates attended an all-candidates' meeting on Sept. 30 at New Westminster Secondary School. More than 200 people attended the meeting – most of them too young to vote.
“It’s to get them engaged and get them caring about things,” said Green Party candidate Kyle Routledge. “They have the longest life to live – young people have the most to gain from getting involved and getting engaged.”
Routledge said there were a handful of students at the meeting who were of voting age, but they’ll all be voting age by the next election.
“We each did speak of our platforms, our parties’ views on things and why we are doing this,” he said. “Obviously we’d like to get people to see why we think our respective parties are important to us. It’s pretty much to get them talking about it right now.”
While the students may be too young to vote on Oct. 19, it’s important to get them interested in elections now.
“Seventy-five per cent of people under 25 in the last election didn’t vote,” Routledge said. “If you can get someone to cast a vote when they are young, they’ll be lifelong voters.”
NDP candidate Peter Julian was more than happy to return to his alma mater (mine, as well) for Wednesday’s all-candidates' meeting.
“It was interesting to have that dialogue with them. A whole bunch of them want to volunteer on the campaign, so that’s exciting,” he said. “I told them, ‘I joined the NDP and got active when I was 14. You don’t need to be voting age to be active politically.’ Given the fact that about 75 per cent of voters under 25 didn’t vote last time, if they had voted, Jack Layton would have become prime minister instead of Stephen Harper. I think they understand that mobilizing those two million lost voters would make a huge difference in the campaign.”
Julian, who has served as New Westminster’s MP since 2004, said it’s exciting to see some of the young people “take up that torch” and decide they want to be active in this election campaign. While the majority of students at the meeting may be too young to vote, he said they’re still able to influence other voters and talk to people about the issues that matter to them.
“It’s extremely important that they get involved for the future of the country,” he said. “Statistics have shown that when people miss their first election and they don’t vote, that they are mostly unlikely to vote for the rest of their life. They become fossilized non-voters.”
That, said Julian, is something that the Conservatives count on, as they would prefer that lower income and younger people don’t vote. He said it’s a strategy that the Republicans have perfected in the United States.
“It’s when voting turnout goes up that you can get progressive change,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to talk to 15-, 16- and 17-year olds as well as 18-year-olds to say, look, you have an opportunity to get involved. I was really quite impressed with how enthusiastic they were for getting involved.
Julian said the students asked “really great questions” about issues such as accessibility to post-secondary education, the environment and Canada’s policy regarding acceptance of refugees.
“I asked how many of them wanted to say goodbye to Stephen Harper and over 80 per cent of the folks there raised their hands,” he said. “I think they feel the same way most Canadians feel; they want to start rebuilding what Mr. Harper has broken.
