Walk down most streets in Ontario these days and you’ll see fewer campaign signs on front lawns and in store windows than in almost any past provincial election.

Drop into the campaign headquarters of any candidate in the current Ontario election and you will see fewer people making telephone calls than in earlier years.

And just try to find a team of eager door-to-door canvassers working these nights in your neighbourhood on behalf of their favourite candidate.

Everywhere you look, there are clear signs that our love affair with politics is fading fast. More and more people no longer participate in politics, dropping out because they’re fed up with government scandals and a feeling that politicians don’t listen to them and don’t care about the issues that matter to them.

Indeed, this disengagement is so bad that voter turnout in the June 12 Ontario election may well set a record low — a stunning outcome that would mark the seventh straight decline dating back nearly a quarter of a century. Only 48.2 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2011 Ontario election, down from 64.4 per cent in the 1990 election.

Worse, turnout for voters under the age of 30 could fall below 25 per cent in the current race.

These trends have been obvious for many years. What’s troubling, though, is that they are accelerating and could ultimately threaten the long-term health of our democracy, which relies heavily on citizen engagement to keep it honest and fair. And yet few politicians, despite bold talk, take them seriously.

Now, a new national study unveiled last week suggests that unless politicians start tuning in to the issues that interest youth, young voters will never become politically engaged.

Heather Bastedo, a post-graduate fellow in Canadian politics at Queen’s University and co-author of the study, says young voters are disengaged because too often federal and provincial politicians focus on issues that never touch their lives.

The study by Bastedo, who specializes in voter behaviour and turnout, caused such a stir in political circles that she was interviewed last weekend on the CBC Radio program ,Cross Country Checkup, which devoted its entire show to the question: “Who’s to blame for low voter turnout among youth: politicians or the young?”

Over the past year, Bastedo interviewed young people from all social and economic spectrums across Canada. She met them in community centres, shopping malls and schools, asking what issues concerned them.

Despite the often-held view that youths are politically apathetic, Bastedo found they are in fact interested in political issues, just not the ones generally that concern their parents and other older people.

“They are concerned about how to make the bus run faster or how to deal with police harassment or the high cost of food and housing,” she said in an interview. “Young people feel strongly about these issues, but they are personal and not nationally based.”

And when youths do become engaged, it’s often through protests and boycotts rather than structured debates and dialogues.

According to Bastedo, two solitudes are emerging within Canadian politics.

On the one side are older, engaged voters whose issues are national and are catered to by political parties and the media. On the other side, though, are young people whose issues are close to home and are largely ignored by politicians who can’t count on them to vote.

“These disillusioned under-30s don’t know who to turn to or how to solve these problems and when they switch on the news, no one is talking to them,” she says.

Despite her gloomy findings, Bastedo is more optimistic than pessimistic about her findings.

She points to the fact that 40 per cent of the youths who feel deeply about a personal issue say they are somewhat interested in politics.

“It’s too early to stop trying to engage young voters,” she says. “Youths are portrayed as apathetic, but their issues are truly political. It’s just that they realize that no one is paying attention to them.”

It’s not impossible to reverse the decline in youth engagement, but it will take time and a lot of work.

Encouragingly, some local politicians are taking the lead more than their provincial or federal counterparts. They are reaching out to youth, trying to tap into their concerns because at the local level they often have the power to address youth concerns.

For example, a mayor or city councillor can make the buses run more on time or get police to ease off harassment of black youths.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Such efforts should be expanded because it’s critical for younger generations to become engaged in politics, as their parents did in earlier decades.

Without them, though, Canada’s long love affair with politics will fade — and the state of our democracy will be the worse for it.