City AT ISSUE
But two years later, the crowds
have dispersed, Xia has retreated
from the spotlight and it’s unclear
whether the online outrage she
ignited will translate beyond Twitter
in the provincial election. Now a
constituency assistant for NDP MLA
and former party leader Adrian Dix,
Xia acknowledges past precedent
gives plenty of reason to be skeptical
that younger generations will turn up
to vote on May 9. “It was a huge impact
on the last election when they didn’t,”
she says.
Indeed. After predicting a decisive
NDP victory in 2013, pollsters
blamed low turnout among those
under 35 for the upset win by the BC
Liberals. Young people had expressed
overwhelming support for the
Opposition in pre-election surveys,
said the pollsters, but they epically
failed to show up on election day. Just
48 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and
40 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds voted,
compared to a total voter turnout of
57 percent, and nearly 67 percent
among those aged 55 to 64.
The dismal track record of
younger voters vexes those working
to conv ince politicians to appea l to
populations on the south side of 50.
Paul Kershaw, the Gen-X founder
of the group Generation Squeeze,
which advocates for the interests of
younger Canadians, says millennials
have plent y of reasons to demand the
attention. Aside from higher housing
costs, pay for full-time work in B.C.
is $8,500 lower today than in the late
1970s, adjusted for inflation, while
university tuition and child care costs
have increased significantly. Youngfolks today are balancing record
student debt, sputtering careers
and sma ll kids w ith higher costs
and fewer resources than the baby
boomers had at the same age and
life stage. “The data show that for
younger generations, B.C. is the
province where our hard work pays
off the least,” says Kershaw, 42. Yet
his calculations show the Liberals’
pre-election budget allocated just
$165 in new social spending for every
person under 45, compared with
$564 for those 65 and over. Even the
NDP, perhaps feeling scorned by the
2013 defeat, has failed to make bold
appeals to the young; the party’s chief
complaint about the budget was that it
didn’t do enough for seniors.
Despite these inequities, coaxing
young people to come together as a
voting bloc has proven an unwieldy
task. While apathy plays a role,
Kershaw says a bigger issue is that
his target market lacks the time
and money to volunteer or donate
to political organizations. Even
Generation Squeeze has had trouble
attracting sustained support. “We are
growing momentum over time,” he
says, “but we are starting from a
small place and our growth is just
not fast enough.”
Further complicating matters,
solutions to the problems young people
face are “politically radioactive,”
adds Stephen Price, a 36-year-old
teacher from West Vancouver whose
two-part treatise on the generational
divide was published earlier this year
by Maclean’s. “Ever y time we take
$1 million away from the value of a
house from a senior, because we wantto bring housing prices down, that’s
someone whose retirement plans just
got totally upended,” he says. Few
politicians are willing to wage that
war in order to become a champion for
the young, even though doing so may
mobilize a sizable base of suppor t.
There are now more than one million
British Columbians aged 18 to 34,
nearly equal the number of those aged
55 to 74.
But then there’s the issue of trust.
Justin Trudeau owes his solid majority
in part to the record numbers of
young people who voted in the last
federal election, but his flip-flop on
democratic reform and pipelines has
left many of them feeling betrayed.
“Every time a politician jades a young
person, that’s one more jaded voter,”
says Price, who sits on the executive
council for his Liberal MP.
Xia also worries Trudeau may have
poisoned the well, but she takes heart
from the response to the U.S. election.
Many people dismayed by Dona ld
Tr ump’s w in have awoken to the fact
that their vote, or the absence of it,
matters. “I think that’s shaken a whole
lot of people out of complacency,” she
says. Whether that’s enough to t urn
tweets into votes, however, remains
to be seen.Solutions to the
problems young
people face
are ‘politically
radioactive.’22 VANMAG.COM MAY 2017SURVEY SAYS
From top issues to the Trump
effect, we asked B .C. residents
what’s influencing their vote.
SURVEY COMMISSIONED BY VANMAG
FROM INSIGHTS WESTSay Donald Trump’s win has led to
a greater resolve to participate in
politics and that voting is important.
Say they have a more negative view of
politics now that Trump is in the White
House and voting seems pointless.27%
10%
39%
14%
of respondentsof respondentsof those 18 to 34of low-income householdsSouthern Discomfort: The U.S. election was a wake-up call