With 10 days left to the first ballot in the NDP leadership campaign, Charlie Angus took to Twitter to decry “bells, whistles, snapchat” — an apparent shot against his snap-happy rival, Jagmeet Singh.

It was one of those generational moments — the former punk rocker-turned MP pitting his desire to “get back to the grassroots” against the younger Singh’s use of the Snapchat image messaging service to share campaign moments with his own grassroots.

The 54-year-old Angus was an old federal party hand with deep party roots — 13 years as an MP and an admirable record both as ethics critic during the Senate scandals and on fighting for Indigenous rights and services. He was a natural successor to Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair. Even a month before the vote, observers believed Angus would be very competitive on the first ballot — that the record he had created over his political career likely would be enough to push him over the top.

Instead, Jagmeet Singh — a 38-year-old Ontario MPP who was little known outside his home province at the start of the race — sold the most party memberships, many of them to young people, and won the endorsements of more of the NDP’s federal caucus than Angus did. He surprised nearly everyone by winning the party leadership on the first ballot with nearly three times the votes of his closest competitor — Charlie Angus.

It was a reminder of another leadership race nearly half a century ago. Paul Martin Sr. had been around the cabinet table since the days of Mackenzie King. When Lester Pearson announced he was stepping down, it seemed to a lot of people that it was “his turn.”

Instead, Pierre Trudeau, who had been in Parliament just three years, swept to victory on a wave of what everyone recognized (afterward) as pent-up desire for a changing of the guard in both style and substance. It was sex appeal, it was flower power, it was modernization of laws on homosexuality, divorce and abortion. Angus got caught in the same generational jaws.

Now, with his victory as the eighth leader of the federal New Democratic Party, Singh makes official what Justin Trudeau’s October 2015 election first heralded: a rare and profound generational change in Canada’s political life. So rare, in fact, that Pierre Trudeau’s victory in 1968 marked the last time this happened. Everything that happened in federal politics for the next 47 years was either derivative of his views — or a reaction against them.

By generational change, we don’t mean merely a younger generation taking the reins. Generational change means the emergence of a new worldview — a zeitgeist, if you like — that changes not only who holds power but how they govern. In his 1923 essay, The Problem of Generations, sociologist Karl Mannheim argued that generational change is borne out of major social and historical developments shared by an emerging group that creates an original and distinctive consciousness.

Depression to World Wide Web

Think of the First World War and Great Depression, and the insularity and insecurity they bred. Think of the Second World War, the ravages of fascism and the culture of human rights they ushered in, followed by the post-war move to the suburbs and rise of consumerism. Or, more recently, think of the ubiquity of the Internet and the rise of dire environmental threats to the planet. Key moments like the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 and the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 occurred at roughly the mid-point in the birth of what we now call the ‘millennial generation’.

Singh has made precarious work a centrepiece of his youthful campaign and, in this age of authenticity, drew on the experience of his own family. “Maybe if you look at employment as a hobby, you can just get used to unstable work,” he said in his acceptance speech. “But if your work means the difference between putting food on the table or a roof over the head of your family, then job insecurity is unacceptable.”

Both the new NDP leader and the current prime minister represent this new political zeitgeist, though they did not create it any more than a fish creates the water in which it swims. Even Andrew Scheer is shaped by the same set of historical forces, though he is, in the tradition of the conservative, more prepared to react against them.

John Maynard Keynes argued that ”the gradual encroachment of ideas” is far more influential in political life than the “greatly exaggerated” power of vested interests. These ideas are usually honed in university seminars and coffee houses and locked in by age 25 or 30, but take decades to penetrate the thinking of civil servants, politicians and even political agitators. This is what happened with Keynes’ own economic ideas, which weren’t embraced politically until the Depression gave them currency.

The leaders who erupt onto the political landscape in times of generational change express and personify new assumptions and values. They are rarely ahead of their times; they’re only ahead of the political class. It was the late Andrew Breitbart, one of the fathers of the alt-right, who remarked (correctly) that “politics is downstream from culture.”

Pierre Trudeau was not himself a baby boomer. Neither was Bob Dylan, for that matter. But both men, in different ways, captured the sensibility of the boomer generation in the 1960s. Canada’s baby boom generation repeatedly chose its leaders from among the men born between the World Wars. The only two boomers to ever become prime minister in this country were the fleeting Kim Campbell and Stephen Harper — the latter hardly your typical baby boomer.

Similarly, the current crop of new leaders is being lifted to prominence by people younger than themselves: the millennials, usually defined as people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. Trudeau and his entourage are Gen X — they were not born digital but came of age as the first browsers and search engines were appearing and the faltering stability of the world’s climate emerged as a known threat. They have marinated in the ideas swirling around university campuses for the past quarter-century — diversity, inclusion, digital technology and environmentalism.

In the 2019 federal election, millennials will be the largest cohort of eligible voters, finally displacing the boomers who have held the title since 1979. And their dominance will grow for many elections to come. In the 2019 federal election, millennials will be the largest cohort of eligible voters, finally displacing the boomers who have held the title since 1979. And their dominance will grow for many elections to come.

You can see the ease of a shared generational consciousness at work at the first senior staff meeting on Trudeau’s first day in power, as documented by former CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge. When the question is raised about what to say about the gender-balanced cabinet, Trudeau expresses frustration with the fact that it’s even an issue. Adviser Gerald Butts suggests that the prime minister simply “(call) people’s attention to the year” — as Trudeau subsequently did with his “because it’s 2015” line. Nobody had to ask what the line meant — certainly not members of the generation who had, up to that moment, not seen themselves reflected in power.

Millennials make the difference

The lament that young people don’t vote is a familiar one — but the 2015 federal election was decided by millennials. In a contest in which turnout increased broadly, millennial voting jumped even more — up 16 points over 2011 to a respectable 65 per cent. According to an analysis by Abacus, had the electorate been limited to boomers only, the Liberals and Conservatives would have ended up in a dead heat. But among millennials, the Liberals’ margin of victory came from shellacking the Conservatives 44 per cent to 21 per cent (with the NDP at 25 percent).

Here is a hugely potent political fact about millennials: In the 2019 federal election, they will be the largest cohort of eligible voters, finally displacing the boomers who have held the title since 1979 — a period of 40 years. And their dominance will grow for many elections to come.

So who are these people anyway? There are no empirical borderlines as to their age, but generally they are thought to have been born between the early 1980s and the turn of the millennium in 2000. In Canada, 22 per cent of millennials and Gen Xers are members of visible minorities — a 50 per cent higher cohort of visible minorities than among boomers and twice the proportion of pre-boomers.

They are better educated than members of older generations. They are far more likely to shop online and inhabit social media, according to Environics research. They’ve grown up digital and global. They were the strongest constituency opposed to Brexit.

They cite family and relationships as their most important values but — according to Ekos Research — outside of a small slice of conservative Protestants and new Canadians, they don’t subscribe to what we call “traditional family values.” For most, supporting LGBT rights amounts to simply stating the obvious.

Frank Graves, president of Ekos polling, describes millennials as “progressive, pluralistic and strongly environmental.” They manage to blend a skepticism and distrust of public institutions with a lack of ideological objections to governments tackling the issues they care about.

Paradoxically, although they expressed the fear during the last election that weak economic growth, student debt and precarious employment were condemning them to an economic status inferior to that of their parents’ generation, they also have demonstrated have an unshakeable confidence in their long-term prospects.

Trudeau to Trudeau

The easiest way to understand the significance of generational change is to look back. When Pierre Trudeau moved into 24 Sussex Drive, almost exactly a year after the opening of Expo 67 in Montreal, he broke a stultifying stalemate in Canada politics. For most of the previous decade, Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker had waged political warfare across the aisle of the House of Commons, culminating in three consecutive minority governments in 1962, 1963 and 1965.

Diefenbaker, 71, and Pearson, a few days shy of 70, had both served in the First World War. And here they were, still presiding five decades later over a nation where the media (television in particular) had usurped the church as the arbiter of what was important, where the sun had set on the British empire and Victorian social values were being thrown overboard by the post-war consumer boom, accessible post-secondary education, the sexual revolution and a quieter revolution in the newly maîtres chez nous Quebec. Peter Newman, the era’s most articulate chronicler of power, wrote in his 1968 political masterpiece, The Distemper of Our Times, that until Trudeau came along, political attitudes were “hardening into cynicism and despair.”

The country’s incumbent leaders hardly had a clue, but in his brief moment as justice minister, Trudeau already had staked his claim to a new generation by liberalizing the laws on divorce, abortion and homosexuality. In blowing up the ice jam of the previous decade, Trudeau would, as Newman put it, enable “the pains of passage from the safety of the past to we knew not what.”

And like his son, he was stylistically different: sliding down banisters, making a pirouette behind the Queen and, years later, telling MPs to “fuddle duddle” and giving protesters the finger.

Trudeau wasn’t just younger than his rivals for power; his formative experiences were altogether different from those of the veterans of the Great War. Although he hadn’t enlisted in the Second World War, his worldview was shaped by that epic struggle against totalitarianism. He also was the product of resistance to the state-imposed conformism of Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis, a serial abuser of the rights of trade unions, Jehovah’s Witnesses and public intellectuals like Trudeau and his compatriots.

So it’s no wonder that Trudeau arrived in power already focusing on the two policy themes that would animate his 15 years as prime minister: a real-world affirmation of the French fact in Canada’s governing institutions and a sometimes quixotic (and ultimately successful) quest for a Charter of Rights. These expressions of his generational consciousness became his sustaining issues, holding his attention throughout the inevitable gyrations of political leadership. Years later, advisers would say that multiculturalism is what they came up with to help sell the Official Languages Act.

Long after his retirement, Trudeau’s worldview continued to define Canadian politics. John Turner was the Liberal anti-Trudeau. Brian Mulroney sought to restore to Quebec the dignity Trudeau had sacrificed at the constitutional altar. Jean Chrétien represented the return of the yin of Quebecker-led centralism. Paul Martin, son of the man whose long-standing leadership ambition was mulched by the generational change of 1968, again represented the yang of a more accommodating view of Quebec.

These millennials are both pragmatic and idealistic. They are techno-optimists. They’re marked, as their parents once were, by a touch of social narcissism and a strong determination to make their opinions heard. These millennials are both pragmatic and idealistic. They are techno-optimists. They’re marked, as their parents once were, by a touch of social narcissism and a strong determination to make their opinions heard.

Finally, there was Stephen Harper — the only boomer ever to become prime minister for more than a few months, whose very political existence was born of a reaction to the economic and centralizing policies of Pierre Trudeau.

Millennial values rule

So it’s ironic that Pierre Trudeau’s son is the one now breaking new ground — not through a rejection of his father and his values, but through similar values forged in a very different age. The second Prime Minister Trudeau is a rights guy, too — but he is a product of the Charter and the social, legal and political culture it has engendered, not a voice of reaction against European fascism and Quebec authoritarianism.

In their 2013 book The Big Shift, pollster Darrell Bricker and journalist John Ibbitson described what they saw as a new coalition of western conservatives and the rejection by suburban Ontario voters — many of them immigrants — of what they called the ‘Laurentian consensus’. They saw Justin Trudeau as part of the federal government’s five-decade Quebec obsession and imagined an election pitting Harper’s suburban conservatism against Trudeau’s Laurentian elitism. What this theory missed was the degree to which the issues Justin Trudeau championed were an expression of his generational consciousness — one that extended well beyond the great Quebec/Rest of Canada faultline.

We are suspicious of any thesis that attempts to predict the course of future politics on the basis of a single demographic trend. And, of course, there may be a political cycle of reaction and counter-reaction, as with the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

But we believe this much is incontrovertible: Politicians of every political stripe will be deeply affected by the cultural and demographic rise of the millennials.

Millennials were influencing Canadian politics long before their heavy turnout in the 2015 election. It was their generational values that reframed same-sex marriage from an issue of conscience to one of rights. Similarly, the millennials — schooled in green consciousness and now dominating the discourse at family gatherings — educated their parents on the imminent threat to their generation posed by climate change.

Millennials are not merely a younger version of Boomers, though the two groups share some values (and even some tastes in music). They’ve been forged in a different crucible and care much more deeply about such things as their diminished opportunities for finding well-paying jobs, the impacts and consequences of income inequality, the injustices of social exclusion and the threat of climate change. Even their understanding of basic rights appears to be different: an enthusiastic embrace of freedom of expression paired — paradoxically, at times — with a sensitivity to ‘micro-aggressions’, social triggers and structural privileges.

For them, as for everyone else, pocketbook issues mingle with broader social concerns. Many millennials, after all, were just entering the labour market when the 2008-09 global recession hit. Perhaps the most striking moment of Trudeau’s 2015 election campaign was when he dispensed with the boomer orthodoxy of balanced budgets forged in the 1980s and 1990s, when millennials were children or adolescents. Instead, he embraced public investments to spur job creation — speaking to the economic preoccupations of millennials. Jagmeet Singh is now trying to take this one step further with a pledge to attack precarious work, the bane of so many young adults.

These millennials are both pragmatic and idealistic. They are techno-optimists. They’re marked, as their parents once were, by a touch of social narcissism and a strong determination to make their opinions heard. They live in the here and now; the selfie is a natural part of how they chronicle and share their daily existence. Nearly nine out of 10 respond positively to the effects on their personal well-being flowing from technological change. They expect political and corporate power to respect their values, rather than the other way around. Many of the professional athletes kneeling and locking arms in recent weeks were millennials.

They are rock solid in their support for the new, multi-hued Canada. Think there’s too much diversity now? A whopping 74 per cent of millennials think you’re wrong (by comparison, 57 per cent of boomers disagree with the claim that there’s too much diversity in Canadian society). Only one quarter of millennials would support slowing rate of immigration (versus 41 per cent of boomers).

Trudeau’s clarion call during the last election debate for the primacy of citizenship — for the principle that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” even when the Canadian in question is an accused terrorist – fit neatly into the millennial world view despite (or perhaps because) it was a politically risky position to take. Similarly, Singh’s viral “love and courage” confrontation with an Islamaphobic protester made it easy for millennials to decide which side they were on.

On climate change, public opinion research can at first seem a little baffling. One survey from Abacus showed that about 70 per cent of all generations say they are moderately concerned about the environment. But this does not quite capture the differences in the quality of their concern.

Analysis by Mark Cameron, a former senior policy adviser to Stephen Harper and now executive director of Canadians for Clean Prosperity, suggests that about one-third of 2011 Conservative voters care about climate change and want action. In 2015, more than half of them defected to other parties. These voters were disproportionately young, educated and female.

“I think among a certain segment of younger voters — Millennials and perhaps Gen X — it is something of a litmus test issue,” Cameron told us, comparing it to same-sex issues over the previous decade. “A party or leader that doesn’t have a credible policy on climate issues is seen as out of touch and irrelevant.”

What happened on Oct. 19, 2015 wasn’t simply a change in government — it also was a changing of the the generational guard. Justin Trudeau arrived in office with sensibilities markedly different from those of his predecessors. He wooed the country with selfies and zany socks and exhibited a soft spot for grand gestures. “I see images as a way to communicate,” he told journalist Susan Delacourt in an interview in his Parliament Hill office a few months after the election.

His sustainable issues — the ones to which he can be expected to return notwithstanding the politics of the moment — are arguably inclusiveness and climate change, as his father’s were civil rights and official bilingualism.

Then there’s the digital factor. Pierre Trudeau was the first Canadian political leader to effectively exploit television. He used the media to go around the media and create a direct connection with Canadians. Dramatically, he shrugged off his security and refused to be intidimated by a separatist mob hurling rocks and bottles at him as he watched Montreal’s St-Jean-Baptiste parade in June, 1968. That was a defining television moment, showing Canadians the tough guy who would bare his teeth again during the October Crisis.

Justin Trudeau has mastered the dominant media of the his day — social media — to communicate directly with Canadians. And he’s committed to the tools of the digital generation with a Moneyball-style appreciation of the power of data to yield insights. But the field is no longer his alone; Jagmeet Singh, seven years his junior, shares the same instincts.

Politics isn’t always about the rational. Even if Pierre Trudeau extolled reason over passion, his boomer voters identified just as powerfully with a public figure who reflected their sensibilities and aspirations. The son is not the father — that’s the whole point, even if their values are much the same. Justin Trudeau proclaimed himself a proud feminist, and told his ministers in their mandate letters that they were to “help ensure gender parity and that Indigenous Canadians and minority groups are better reflected in positions of leadership.” His politics, like the milliennials it represents, is two parts realism to one part idealism.

On electoral reform, the workplace and the legalization of drugs, Singh is positioning himself as the generational champion on steroids — or as Trudeau without the complexities of government to worry about. On electoral reform, the workplace and the legalization of drugs, Singh is positioning himself as the generational champion on steroids — or as Trudeau without the complexities of government to worry about.

Trudeau senior’s first cabinet had no women, but it did have 11 Quebeckers and 11 francophones. His initial approach to what he called “the Indian problem” was to address it through the gradual elimination of treaty rights and special status. Justin Trudeau’s cabinet is not just gender balanced, it has acknowledged the place of people of colour and Indigenous Canadians in key ministries such as Justice, Immigration and Defence. And his government seeks a still ill-defined nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples.

One of the first pieces of film to be dredged from the archives when Justin Trudeau formed his first cabinet shows his father, the old constitutional battler, bantering in 1983 with Aboriginal leader Bill Wilson, the father of current Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould. Wilson speaks of his young daughters’ shared ambitions to become prime minister someday. “Tell then I’ll stick around until they’re ready,” Trudeau quips.

Trudeau Sr. was a product of his times, of course; that can be easily seen in his closing essay to the 1990 book, Towards a Just Society. Reflecting on the need for a Charter to support the “difficult advance” of Canada’s fragile mosaic, he cites as examples intolerance toward francophones, Indigenous Canadians, non-white immigrants and political and religious dissidents … such as communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The latter two examples are striking; the mention of Jehovah’s Witnesses may even seem odd to a contemporary Canadian. But Trudeau had been horrified by the Duplessis government’s notorious Padlock Law, which gave the government the authority to shut down any premises deemed to be the site of communist activities, and by his denial of a liquor license to a tavern owner who had covered bail for some Jehovah’s Witnesses exercising their free speech rights. Decades later, they remained top of mind. Justin Trudeau’s Jehovah’s Witnesses are Muslims — particularly the niqab-wearing Muslim women who wanted to exercise their right to vote.

None of this is to suggest that generational ambition equates either to accomplishment or to political success. Justin Trudeau’s reorganization of the Department of Indigenous Affairs is a tacit admission that he’s not achieving his lofty reconciliation goals at anything like the pace he had hoped.

It remains to be seen whether this Trudeau will be more successful in arriving at justice for Indigenous Canadians. Certainly, though, the attitude of reconciliation and nation-to-nation relations is a far cry from the assimilationist instincts of the past. Meanwhile, his sweeping promise of electoral reform has been unabashedly swept aside — something polling shows actually offends boomers more than younger voters. In the longer term it is more likely that the taint of cynicism implied by abandoning electoral reform — rather than the policy act itself — could hurt Trudeau with millennials.

On electoral reform, the workplace and the legalization of drugs, Singh is positioning himself as the generational champion on steroids – or as Trudeau without the complexities of government to worry about.

The most narrow and difficult path Trudeau has to walk is on climate change and the economy. Millennials, with so much of their lives ahead of them, are far more exposed to the potentially catastrophic effects of higher temperatures, rising sea levels and ravaging storms. At the same time, they are more vested in the job market as they launch their careers and the boomers retire.

Trudeau is trying to pick and choose his pipelines. Millennials — surprisingly, perhaps — tell pollsters they support the development of more pipelines, although with less enthusiasm than boomers. And while they clearly want a price on carbon, their reaction to the practicalities of policy may be influenced by what happens to their own jobs and livelihoods, and how effectively politicians frame the debate.

Inclusion is a touchstone for the second Trudeau as much as bilingualism was for the first. Justin Trudeau embraces bilingualism but has pushed beyond it. Inclusion, for him, involves much more than the state being constrained from denying the rights of individuals, or outlawing hate against identifiable groups. It means the state being enlisted to ensure groups are actively brought into the tent without constraint. It goes well beyond Federalism and the French Canadian.

The Conservative dilemma: the base vs. millennials

Like all politicians, Trudeau and Singh included, Andrew Scheer is both shaped and constrained by his political circumstances. At age 38, he is at ease with the diversity the Harper Conservatives embraced until their dalliance with fear-mongering in the last campaign. Under Scheer, Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander — the Harper caucus figures most closely associated with the barbaric practices snitch line pitch — have been exiled from the front benches, a step along the road to the party’s rehabilitation with millennials.

The Conservatives had better hope that millennial voters don’t turn out as they did in 2015. Failing that, the party should hope it can find new ways, outside generational fundamentals, to connect with these voters. The Conservatives had better hope that millennial voters don’t turn out as they did in 2015. Failing that, the party should hope it can find new ways, outside generational fundamentals, to connect with these voters.

Yet Scheer is also the product of the resource-producing province of Saskatchewan and a growing anti-carbon tax mood among members of his rural base. Whether he’s the avatar of Conservative reaction or its prisoner may be a moot question; he has little room to maneuver on what Mark Cameron cites as a “litmus test” for millennial credibility. His best hope is that other non-market approaches to climate change fall apart.

You can measure the generational challenge he faces in numbers. In 2016, Abacus asked millennials about their voting intentions; sixty-seven per cent said they would not consider supporting the Conservatives. Perhaps that’s merely a reflection of that old line of Winston Churchill’s: “Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.” Still, just 28 per cent said the same about the Liberals; the NDP did almost as well, even before Singh came along.

The Conservatives find themselves offside with millennials in the run-up to a 2019 generation election in which this rising generation will eclipse the boomers as the largest voting bloc in Canada. Should millennials also retain their recent propensity to actually turn out at the polls, the cost of being offside with them could be extremely high. The Conservatives had better hope that millennial voters, who will be the largest cohort in the 2019 election, don’t turn out as they did in 2015. Failing that, the party should hope it can find new ways, outside generational fundamentals, to connect with these voters.

Then again, perhaps the inevitable disappointments that accompany rising expectations will inflict their own damage on the representatives of generational change. Politics is a dynamic business, one where the balances are constantly shifting. The Trudeaumania of 1968 was followed in 1972 by Trudeau’s political near-death experience. But the underlying values and aspirations of the boomers held steady.

Make no mistake about it: The millennials are the new drivers of Canadian politics, influential in so many ways that go beyond voter behaviour. For 50 years the pre-occupations of the boomers dominated the national conversation. That’s about to change. It’s already changing, and the pace of that change is liable to grow as leaders and political parties re-arrange themselves to appeal to millennial values and interests.

This past August, Abacus asked Canadians whether they preferred to support older or younger leaders. Sixty-five per cent said they preferred younger party leaders to older ones. Among respondents aged 18-29, the preference for youth was 79 per cent — but even half of voters over age 60 said they would opt for the younger leader.

The boomers aren’t done yet. But they have begun the descent down the far side of the arc of their political influence. Generational power has turned over in Canada. We may still see a counter-reaction — as Nixon and Reagan followed Kennedy or, more radically, as Trump followed Obama. Tensions over international trade, a bumpy ride on carbon pricing, the importation of anti-immigrant anxieties, climate change effects or even some new ill wind from Quebec — any number of things could dramatically influence the issues moving millennials at any given moment. Millennials could start getting high-paying tech jobs, start resenting taxes and turn to the Conservatives.

If that happens, it will be simply a reaction, nothing more. However they turn out (and their generational consciousness indicates that, in critical ways, the die is already cast), millennials are the new boomers. The factors that shaped their political consciousness are likely to produce the dominant narratives of our politics for a long time to come.

Get used to it.

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