Yes to Keeping The Voting Age at 18
Plus a new ATIP on the CMHC, my thoughts on Motion 11, and more
Yes to Keeping The Voting Age at 18
My Speech on Bill C-210, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (voting age)
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on Bill C-210. This is a difficult bill to debate because it is a responsibility of citizenship and that is the fundamental question before us. What is a citizen? What are their duties and responsibilities? Often times, people talk about what rights they have as a citizen. They rarely address the responsibilities of a citizen.
I, like many Canadians, did not have the benefit of having been born in this country and, therefore, gifted with citizenship. I have taken an oath of citizenship to gain it and to have and enjoy all the freedoms and rights that every single citizen of Canada enjoys. However, with this comes the responsibility to vote. Our civic duty goes beyond just voting. There is much more to being a good citizen than simply voting, forgetting about it between elections, and moving on. This is where a lot of people should and could get involved.
I have concerns with the way this legislation is drafted. I have concerns also with some of the arguments I have heard here and online from advocates and academics who are pushing the idea of reducing the age of voting from 18 to 16. I want to show that I have done my homework on this and that I am approaching this thoughtfully.
The election reform committee report in late 2016 did not recommend reducing the age of voting from 18 to 16. The minority dissenting report filed with the House of Commons by the Liberal Party, the Liberal government caucus members, only asked that 18-year-olds be registered. The minority report that was filed jointly by the New Democrats and the Green Party asked that future referendums on electoral reform allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, which I guess is an idea they got from the Scottish experience.
Prince Edward Island's legislature actually considered reducing the age of voting in its provincial elections to 16 just last year, and that was voted down at the provincial legislative level.
The voting age restriction in Canada has actually been charter tested before, not at the Supreme Court of Canada level, at least not that I am aware of, but in Fitzgerald v. Alberta. It was tested in that court and the judge found that, while it was a violation of the right, he could, under section 1 of the charter, find reasonable grounds for it and explained the reasoning therein.
One of the examples I have heard was the Austrian experience. In the last federal election in Austria, the voter turnout was about 75%. If we go back 40, 50, and 60 years, voter turnout was over 90% in Austria, and that has actually been the experience until very recently when voter turnout started to dip. It is true that before the 2019 federal Austrian election, Austria did have a voter turnout that was higher. It has gone down, so I do not think that is a good example to use, this unique situation of reducing the voting age to 16 being the cause of voter turnout going up, because it has gone down since then. Looking at it historically, it is lower than it was 40, 50, and 60 years ago.
The issue of 14- to 17-year-olds voting in partisan leadership elections in political parties has been raised. I have seen this repeatedly, so I want to address it. Typically, people have to pay to join a political party in Canada to be eligible to vote in a leadership race. They do not pay to become a citizen. Let us very much hope that people do not engineer a situation where they are essentially paying for the rights and benefits of a citizen of Canada. It was definitely not the situation in my case. That is a fundamental difference between becoming a member of a political party, and paying to vote at the age 14, and being a citizen of Canada, which comes with responsibilities and duties. I will lay claim that these duties are a lifetime of responsibilities to our democracy, our Parliament and our monarch, which every citizen of Canada bears the responsibility to protect.
I have heard the argument that it would improve voter turnout as well. I have a concern here with how the argument is being framed. It is just basic mathematics. The potential could be a million or a million and a half new voters being added onto the voter rolls. I will go into a bit more about these voter rolls and the actual Elections Canada campaigning. Unless every single 16- and 17-year-old were to vote thereafter in a federal election, effectively, voter turnout would go down if only half, or even 75%, of them voted. Everything else would be exactly the same, but because the pool would be increased and all the new additions would not all vote, the voter turnout would actually decrease. There might be a high level of enthusiasm for their first election, but it would still effectively decrease the overall voter turnout. That is just a word of caution.
I spoke about the responsibilities of citizenship. One of them is serving in our military. Some choose to take up the responsibility by wearing the uniform of our armed forces and serving Canada. People cannot join the regular armed forces at the age of 16. They can only join the primary reserves with parental consent if they can prove that they are a full-time student. They can join at age 17 with just parental consent, and at the age of 18 they can fully join any of the regular armed forces units and go through basic training in the army, navy or air force.
The age for alcohol consumption and purchase in Canada is 19 in most provinces, 18 in Quebec, 18 in Manitoba and 18 in Alberta. The age for cannabis consumption and purchase is 19 in all provinces except Alberta, where it is 18, and Quebec, where it is 21. The age to obtain a driver's licence is 16, but we get full driving rights at 19 in about half the provinces. Four provinces use 18 and two provinces use a graduated system.
We place limits on young citizens and those who are 16 and 17 in what I would call the basics of becoming a full citizen. They get all rights and benefits as they come of age and are able to take on all these extra responsibilities.
The issue is not maturity. I have met incredibly mature young people who are 16 or who are 12. In fact, I trust my 11-year-old daughter much more with my car keys to grab something out of my car and pick something up than my 13-year-old son. My 11-year-old daughter is far more mature and ready to take on way more responsibilities than my 13-year-old, who still loves to play video games, especially Minecraft, which is still a big one in the household.
Age is not a good indicator of maturity. I have met 40-year-olds and 30-year-olds who are so deeply immature that I question their ability to give a rational vote at the ballot box. However, they are allowed to; they can vote. That is the great thing about Canada. People can cast a vote for any reason once they reach that age, whether it is for a political party, for the leadership or for a single issue they care about. If it is something that strikes them as a good idea, they can do that.
I talked about some of my deep concerns with the voter rolls. Let us say the voter rolls were reduced to allow 16- and 17-year-olds. Once they make it onto the voter rolls, their contact information would be shared with political parties by Elections Canada. It would thereafter be shared with MP offices, which would then directly communicate with these new voters. We should be able to communicate with voters.
Then I wonder about a basic question on access to high schools. Should members of Parliament and candidates choosing to run for public office ensure that we have equal access to high schools to campaign there? Is that something we want? Is that a place where we want to be able to campaign? How would that work? It is the interaction between federal government legislation and practice and local rules at the high school and school district levels. That is a concern I have. It is not clear to me how this would work.
There are municipalities and cities that have considered allowing voting as early as the age of 16. I do not think that is a terribly bad idea, and it is interesting. Voting at a younger age gives an opportunity for people to practise a habit. I have heard this said, and it has been mentioned in this debate as well.
I have saved my Yiddish proverb for last. I know many members await it. “A quiet fool is half a sage.” Hopefully by rising to speak on this, I have not made a fool out of myself. I propose some caution, perhaps, as we proceed through debate and to a vote on this piece of legislation and the idea behind it. I do not believe this is something we should rush into. There are very good areas that we could debate, but things need to be more finely considered here.
Again, I hope the sage matters that I have brought to the House, including the consideration from Prince Edward Island's legislature, which voted this down in 2021, the full responsibilities of citizenship and the limits we place currently, are considered as we decide whether to lower the voting age from 18 to 16.
Liberal government’s Motion 11 passes and imposes restrictions on MPs
Parliament is a place of debate. Debate leads to better legislation as MPs go back and forth, sometimes disagreeing hotly over the wording of legislation. This leads to better end results. The federal government possesses the powers necessary to structure the debate, choosing either to limit or extend as they see fit. This past week, Liberal and NDP MPs voted to pass Motion 11, a motion that grant the federal extraordinary powers until end of June to shutdown debate, force evening extended hours with only two parties agreement and most worryingly a prorogation on demand clause. While couched in soft language that the plan is to increase evening sittings to handle debate on bills of importance, the problem is with the extras added to their suite of powers. Section (c)(iv) states, “a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, September 19, 2022, provided that the House shall be adjourned pursuant to Standing Order 28 and that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment”. When the federal Liberals campaigned in 2015, they had promised to curb the use of prorogation on Parliament to prevent its shutdown for partisan reasons. Fair enough. Leaving aside they have already done so once during the coronavirus pandemic, this new motion allows for prorogation to occur at the whims of any Minister of the Cabinet, shutting down Parliament until mid-September. There is no requirement to provide notice or for a debate on it, an immediate vote would occur. The Liberal MPs have also added a measure removing the requirement for quorum in the evenings meaning none of them will have to be present to continue debate on government legislation. That's right, the effect is during evening sittings it may just be conservative MPs reading emails from constituents and relating phone calls of concerns.
With Motion 11 passed, we should admit to ourselves that we have a democratic deficit accruing. In my first Parliament between 2015-2019, the Liberal majority government tried to pass Motion 6 which was a bigger grasp for parliamentary power and thankfully it failed with a strong pushback from opposition parties. Motion 11 was passed with the help of the NDP as part of the coalition agreement they signed with the Liberal minority government. This has reduced accountability towards citizens and diminished our democracy. Working evenings to review legislation is a reasonable ask of the federal government but giving themselves a pass on participating in those same debates and giving themselves a tool to hoist Parliament without debate is wrong. As a conservative MP, I am going to continue to faithfully uphold my responsibilities to the Constitution and to my role as an MP in the Official and Loyal Opposition.
CMHC staff admit program expansion led to no significant improvements
I have long been a fierce critic of the First Time Home Buyer’s Incentive, a $1.25 billion program introduced in 2019 and managed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation with the intention of helping 100,000 Canadians afford a home by 2022. I have filed many access to information requests (ATIPs) and government questions to extract as much information and data from the program as can be provided, allowing for a transparent analysis. In a recent ATIP, CMHC staff admitted that the Liberal government’s expansion of the program in Budget 2021 did not have a “material impact on the program take up”. In Canada’s most dire housing markets of Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria, there were only 36 applications approved by the program since the expansion was launched. This is on top of recent figures published in January 2022 in Parliament show there have been less than 14,000 successful applications in its final year, a far cry from even the CMHC’s own internal projections and demonstrating how it has consistently failed to meet the outcomes promised by the Liberal government. Yet, in Budget 2022, an extension was granted for the FTHBI until 2025, further extending a wasteful program that will never reach the targets promised. I previously introduced a motion to abolish the FTHBI once and for all. I will continue pushing for it to be ended and to have the federal government refocus its efforts elsewhere.
Coffee Meetup at Good Earth Coffeehouse
Recently, I met with many constituents at Good Earth Coffeehouse in Seton. It was great speaking with each of you and I appreciated hearing your concerns about the rising cost of living, concerns about the war in Ukraine, various private member's bills, and many other issues affecting our communities. Your concerns and feedback are always on my mind, and I will continue to represent you and raise your concerns in Parliament.
If we are to allow these children "young offenders" to vote then they are responsible adults and the law should be changed accordingly when they commit a crime. You will be tried as an adult. Would that go over well? Of course not.
Re: Voting Age
You make some excellent points in your speech....while I agree with many of them, I am not sure that I support your conclusion.
I believe that it is important that young women and men are engaged with the political world and it seems likely to me that the best way to make that happen is through the schools. It would need to be part of the high school curriculum and to be effective I feel that the students would need to be able to vote. You are correct that quite a few of the young voters would be immature and make decisions for reasons that may well be silly, but as there are no shortage of adults that do the same, I think it likely that the good would outweigh the harm.
It would need to be done carefully and to address the many excellent questions that you have raised.
Catherine Brown