“Out with the old” appears to be the new motto for Canadian politics at this early point of the new year. Wherever you look, it seems, older people are ending up on the wrong side of big political shakeups in the news.

It’s a puzzling development, especially when you consider that older Canadians are the most politically engaged people in the country. They usually vote and participate in politics at twice the rate of younger voters.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, in one fell swoop, this week cut the size and average age of his caucus when he sent 32 senators — all over the age of 59 — into political exile.

“It was a difficult conversation because I have personal relationships and friendships with most if not all of them and they’re people who . . . have served the Liberal Party of Canada over many, many years,” Trudeau told reporters. “But this is not about personal relationships.”

Moreover, in a month or so, Trudeau’s open-nominations rule will see older and experienced Liberals — former and current MPs — forced to fight against younger challengers for the right to carry the party banner into the next election.

“Canadians need to see that the Liberal party has understood the lessons of the past and is willing to completely reboot,” Trudeau, 42, told the Star in December.

Trudeau isn’t alone in these efforts to nudge the older political types to the sidelines.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper got that ball rolling last summer when he carried out his much-touted “reset” of the federal cabinet, which reduced the average age of ministers from 55 to 52.

Harper, who turns 55 this year, billed it as “generational” change at the top level of his government.

Trudeau and Harper — and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, for that matter — have good reasons for wanting to put a younger face on politics. For far too long, it’s been dominated by an older, mainly white demographic. (The same is true, by the way, in newspaper-column land, according to a recent study.)

What’s more vexing, however, are the ways older people are getting the back of the hand in recent moves by Harper’s government.

It won’t be easy to forget the emotional images of the news conference this week by elderly war veterans, reduced to tears by the rude reception they received from Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino.

Upset over the closing of government-service centres, the vets came to Ottawa to meet with Fantino. The minister was first a no-show at the meeting — delayed, he said, by a cabinet meeting that ran late. Fantino did arrive in time to angrily snap at the vets, saying he didn’t respond to “finger-pointing,” minutes before their televised news conference.

One of the vets, Ron Clarke, called the encounter “unbelievable, unacceptable and shameful.”

Fantino later apologized, but the damage may be done. The vets have been saying that they intend to campaign against the Conservatives in the next election.

Senior citizens are also the big losers as Canada Post carries out its controversial plans to end all home mail delivery in favour of community mailboxes. Seniors tend to be the people most reliant on traditional mail delivery and also those who will face the largest challenges making the trek to the new “superboxes.”

In what may have been one of the most tone-deaf of replies to these concerns, Canada Post chief Deepak Chopra actually tried to pass these changes off as a favour to seniors when he spoke to a Commons committee late last year.

“Seniors told me they wanted to be healthy and active in their life,” Chopra said. “The citizens and the seniors I spoke to want to be active. They want to be living fuller lives.”

Here’s a small political problem for the Conservatives, if not for Chopra: Those older Canadians may decide that it’s very good exercise to walk door to door in the next election and tell people, as the vets are saying, that this government has got to go.

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No one seems to really understand why the government is taking the political risk of picking fights with veterans or the elderly people who depend on Canada Post. Seniors vote — very often for Conservatives.

Beyond politics, though, there is the practical matter of managing the nation. Some of the biggest policy issues on the horizon — the state of pensions and the health-care system — are matters of urgent concern to Canadians 55 and older.

So while “out with the old” is the current fashion in politics, it might be worth remembering that older Canadians still have an important stake in the nation’s most pressing business. All politicians, regardless of party or agenda, need to keep those voices of age and experience in the national conversation.

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