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Unfortunately, parties don’t place much effort into tailoring their platforms to youth or dedicate time addressing core youth issues, believing that the youth vote is too volatile a demographic to target in their campaigns. It’s a Catch-22; the lack of youth participation is the cause of the lack of policies directed at youth, which itself is the reason why youth don’t participate. And as a result, youth don’t feel that voting for their next member of Parliament will address the issues they care about.

This lack of participation in voting by youth has dire consequences for the health and legitimacy of our democracy.

So what are the solutions? It’s clear there is no quick fix to getting young people to the polls, and we must accept that any solution must be long-term; there’s no way we’re going to substantially boost youth participation in time for this upcoming federal election.

However, that doesn’t mean we can’t begin addressing the issue today. Urging parties and federal leaders to finally consider integrating the concerns of youth into their platforms is one way to start breaking down the barriers that prevent them from being engaged. Making voter registration and the process of voting easier is another, and so is promoting youth-led initiatives that tackle the issue of voter apathy like the University of Ottawa’s iVote-jeVote.

And education remains a top way of introducing young people to the process of voting. Those students who came to my polling station last year were very lucky to have a teacher that was dedicated to teaching them about civic engagement; even though it is a part of the Grade 5 curriculum in Ontario, not all teachers teach it because of how daunting it can be.