SATURDAY,OCTOBER19,2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO OPINION | O9
“I was too angry to stay in city
council,” he says, and so he jump-
ed into federal politics with the
NDP, who are running 12 black
candidates. The Conservatives
have two black candidates: Ab-
dul Abdi in Ottawa-West Nepean
and Helen-Claire Tingling in Uni-
versity-Rosedale. The Liberals
have five black candidates, while
the Greens have another five.
One organization, Operation
Black Vote Canada, works to in-
crease the number of black peo-
ple in politics from the House of
Commons down through to the
staffers who work on the Hill.
Based largely out of Toronto, the
group has focused their efforts
this election on the social and in-
terpersonal through an event se-
ries called Dinner and Politics, in-
viting black people to engage in
explicitly political social events.
In late August, I attended one
of their events. In the backyard of
a low-slung white-gabled house
in Scarborough, members of the
Black Business Professionals As-
sociation (BBPA) were meeting
for a panel and lunch.
On the panel sat Denise Siele, a
strategist forthe government re-
lations firm Tactix, who noted
that political backrooms are tak-
en with the question of how to
address communities of colour –
but, she also noted, political par-
ties themselves are not sophisti-
cated enough to understand the
diversity of black communities.
That is, a Nigerian-Canadian who
arrived as a refugee and lives in
Edmonton may have a vastly dif-
ferent set of desires and needs
than a fifth-generation black
Canadian from London, Ont.
What they are likely to share,
however, is the cumulative effect
- if not similar experiences – of
anti-blackness on their lives.
Where notions of “the ethnic
vote” collapse fundamental dif-
ferences between immigrants,
the black experience in Canada is
shaped substantially by anti-
black racism. It doesn’t, however,
mean that every black person
thinks the same or wants the
same thing.
Speaking to black people at
the BBPA’s August event con-
firmed as much. One woman I
spoke to, an aspiring counsellor
and life coach working to get her
business off the ground, said she
wasn’t concerned about politics;
for her, it’s all about business.
Meanwhile, Lucy Nywarwai, a 27-
year-old public servant (whose
job requires her to be publicly
non-partisan) wanted to know
where the space was for black
youth at formal events such as
the kind run by the BBPA.
“I wonder what it would be
like if those spaces were open to
us. I feel like they see us as a nui-
sance,” she said. As for the com-
ing election, she wouldn’t say
who she was voting for but she
did say, “I was misled that one
party was going to to do things
differently, especially in the black
community.”
Where Ms. Nywarwai was ca-
gey, Adam Tomlinson, a 23-year-
old athlete from Oshawa, confi-
dently declared that Andrew
Scheer and the Conservatives
were going to win. “I don’t know
what that’s going to do culturally
or economically,” he added.
Mr. Tomlinson first voted in- “The last election, I was not
thinking about black issues, I was
thinking about jobs,” he said,
adding university prompted him
to think about the job market. As
a recent graduate, he added,
“This election, I’m going to be
thinking more about black is-
sues.”
As the panel wrapped, a wom-
an in a pink jumpsuit stepped up
to the mic. Reflecting on the pan-
els, which touched on everything
from black youth to procurement
to professional presentation to
labour organizing, Cora Reed
said, “I keep asking myself, ‘Equal
to what?’”
Operation Black Vote Canada’s
Velma Morgan says increased
black representation is essential
across all parties but, more than
that, the parties have to run black
candidates in winnable ridings.
It’s a responsibility that Ms. Mor-
gan puts on the political parties
themselves. Ms. Morgan likens it
to being invited to dance. “If I
can’t dance and if I don’t feel
comfortable enough to dance
then it’s not inclusion.”
Black people in Canada osten-
sibly have a lobby group, the Fed-
eration of Black Canadians (FBC),
which convenes the annual Na-
tional Black Canadians Summit.
At the organization’s inaugural
summit, in 2017, activists and
journalists Desmond Cole and El
Jones presented Ahmed Hussen,
the Minister of Citizenship, Im-
migration and Refugees, with a
letter about the case of Abdoul
Abdi, a black man facing deporta-
tion. Yet it would be months until
the FBC issued a public statement
on a case whose public life began
at its first major event.
“I think individuals who pro-
test are as important to the strug-
gle of the black community as
those who approach this from
meeting in boardrooms,” Len
Carby, a spokesman for the FBC,
told me in April. (He is no longer
with the federation.) “Struggling
over difficult policy decisions are
just as important. I think that
those who get caught up in this
debate lose time.”
Where organizations such as
the FBC are struggling to find
their voice, many others have
long been shouting.
Discovering our Prime Minister
has worn blackface is not the mo-
ment to begin to act. It is the rac-
ism iceberg. To look at a black
Canadian, you may not see how
the history and the present move
around them. Like blackface,
though, what you see shows that
there are forces at play.
Black Canadians may be dis-
parate, at times at odds with one
another and loyal to no one par-
ty. But there are at least two good
reasons that politics and politic-
ians should pay attention. First,
because we are citizens. Second,even for those who are not, be-
cause it is the right thing to do.
Election after election, black
Canadians have voted, participa-
ting in this democracy while rare-
ly benefiting fully from it. Recall
that black people were men-
tioned for the first time in a fed-
eral budget last year.But citizen-
ship is a weak argument. It’s a
sentimental one, clinging to de-
mocracy at a time where even de-
mocracy seems to be tired of it-
self.
There have been black people
in Canada since before there was
Canada. We have long been entit-
led to be cared for and valued as
people. That that reality has
changed for black people is a test-
ament to the tenacity of black
people and communities. It is not
becausegovernments have treat-
ed citizenship with the protec-
tion and assurance it requires.
Citizenship is not the sole rea-
son to do what is just. Too many
black people in Canada exist as
migrants and still engage in the
act of democracy – from the Ca-
ribbean domestic workers of the
1950s to the farmworkers and
caregivers today who speak out
against the conditions of migrant
workers.
But the past is not the blue-
print for the future. It is the re-
cord of inaction and anti-black
racism that demands address.
This election falls right into the
middle of the International Dec-
ade for People of African Descent.
(The government of Nova Scotia
announced a plan to support the
decade.) Meanwhile, the next
decade promises to be a more
black decade for Canada.
So does the black vote matter?
It’s a question I struggle to an-
swer conclusively. That I want it
to matter may, I thought, have
been a question of my own wish-
es. That it hasn’t mattered re-
flects on a history spanning from
the sufferings of the Black Loyal-
ists to the destruction of Hogan’s
Alley in Vancouver to the razing
of Africville to the dismantling of
the Black Sleeping Car Porters
Union. That we bear our own re-
sponsibility for the black vote’s
absence – in organization, in rec-
onciling our many differences, in
articulation, perhaps – feels note-
worthy, although perhaps only as
an asterisk. For our vote to not
matter, however, seems more a
choice by those sent to represent
us. Black life does not begin and
end at the ballot box. Yet so
much of what happens to black
people in this country is decided
by – or ignored by, truthfully –
the people we select at each elec-
tion.
It’s a mistake, I think, to look
at the black experience in Canada
and not see a systemic failure.
And still, community organiza-
tions are speaking up, whether
successfully lobbying for money
in the federal budget or turning
activist action into policing re-
form. To varying degrees, they
are aided by our few black politic-
ians. But that just means black
people are left doing what we’ve
always done – looking out for
each other.CONTINUEDFROMO8Electionafterelection,
blackCanadianshave
voted,participatingin
thisdemocracywhile
rarelybenefitingfully
fromit.F
or years, political parties in Canada have failed to take
young voters seriously.
Instead of putting effort into engaging with voters
under 30, parties have focused on mobilizing the peo-
ple who most reliably show up to vote – that is, older Cana-
dians. During the 2011 federal election, Statistics Canada
found that only 39 per cent of youth aged 18 to 24 who were
eligible to vote actually made it to the polls, which has only
fuelled our notorious reputation – that we don’t vote. We’re
not alone: If all non-voters were a party unto themselves,
they would have won the popular vote every year since 1993.
But the image of young people as an apathetic bloc has hard-
ened.
In the 2015 federal election, however, things changed.
Young people showed up to voting booths in unprecedented
numbers. Youth-voter turnout jumped 18.3 percentage
points, to 57 per cent of registered electors – its highest point
in a generation. The Liberals – who effectively won a major-
ity, as Maclean’s reported, by turning a significant number of
non-voters red, even in ridings that weren’t typical Liberal
strongholds – were able to mobilize young people in a power-
ful way.
That’s important to keep in mind heading into election
day on Oct. 21, when people born between 1980 and 2000 will
make up the majority of all eligible voters in Canada. Our
potential to significantly influence which party takes this
election is greater than everbefore. Anew government will
need our numbers and support to win and survive.
The last election’s voter turnout spike can certainly be
credited, in part, to get-out-the-vote initiatives that put in
considerable efforts to engage younger voters. According to
the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, more than
42,000 students across the country pledged to vote through
those campaigns in 2015.
But what I think brought youth out last election,more
than anything, was a desire for change after nearly a decade
of Conservative government under Stephen Harper – and the
belief that we had found that change-making vehicle in Jus-
tin Trudeau. In the last election, Mr. Trudeau sold himself as
an energizing leader who, among many promises, insisted
that hisgovernment would seriously combat climate change,
create more employment opportunities for youth, strength-
en relationships with Indigenous peoples and reform the
electoral system. According to a 2016 survey published by
Abacus Data, these were among the highest priority issues
for youth aged 18-25.
Four years later, however, we can see that the Trudeau gov-
ernment has clearly failed to live up to its word. Canada is not
on track to meet the emissions-reduction targets inherited
from the Harpergovernment. The purchase of the Trans-
Mountain Pipeline was proof to many – youth and Indige-
nous folks especially – that the Liberals’ commitments to the
environment and reconciliation are conditional on their dis-
cretion. We will all be voting with the first-past-the-post sys-
tem in this election, a system which were were assured we
would never see again.
On other major 2015 commitments, too, such as feminism
and addressing racial discrimination, the Liberal Leader has
lost considerable credibility after his removal of Jody Wilson-
Raybould and Jane Philpott from caucus, his alleged treat-
ment of former MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes and the sur-
faced images of blackface and brownface.
And even though Mr. Trudeau appointed himself the Min-
ister of Youth, promising to listen to voices of young people,
my demographic is perhaps the most disillusioned bloc of all.
I saw it firsthand as a former member of the Prime Minis-
ter’s Youth Council. Often, we would attend these meetings
full of expertise and advice to bring forward about what we
care about and what we feel needs to be done, only to receive
a party line to justify inaction or a disagreeable policy deci-
sion.
Still, credit where it’s due: No party before the Liberals has
even thought to create an initiative like the Youth Council.
But what good is a voice at the table when your words fall on
deaf ears?
It reflects the big question of this election: Youth may
have huge voting power, but will they want to return to the
voting booths when the leader who galvanized us has proven
to be so wanting, and made us question if he deserves our
vote?
If youth fail to uphold or grow the turnout from the previ-
ous election, the accusation of apathy will be levied against
us. But that charge will be unfair when you consider how
greatly young people have been failed by political parties,
even those who seemed to represent us better than any oth-
er.
If parties hope to win the youth vote this election, and re-
store the diminished faith of many young voters, they are
going to have to make concerted efforts to not only talk
about the issues we’re passionate about, but also commit to
actually getting the job done. Young people are tired of the
strategic vote and vague promises; we are here for something
that is meaningful.
Whether or not any party can accomplish this task, what is
certain about young people in 2019 is that our desire for
change hasn’t lessened over the four years. If anything, it’s
become fiercer.
Since 2015, we’ve been on the front lines of human rights
and environmental movements, leading climate strikes
across the country. Postsecondary students in every province
are addressing important issues such as affordable education
and sexual harassment and assault. Young people, who are
fluent in digital tools, now have significant power and pres-
ence in the political conversations taking place online. We
are some of the most politically engaged and active people in
this country, and a political force to be reckoned with – here
to be taken seriously.
I hope voter turnout rates will mirror this truth, and young
people will turn up to vote. But if they don’t, I hope it leads to
a debate about the deeper problem this signals. It’s not useful
to call young people apathetic; instead, we should ask why
our system doesn’t make young people feel like our democ-
racy – which has historically ignored them, and delivered
broken promises – is worth our participation.
Youth aren’t the ones who should be caring more about
politics. We do. Politicians should start caring more about
youth. Earn our vote.Willmillennialswanttoreturntothepolls
afterthedisappointmentsofTrudeau?RILEYYESNOOPINIONToronto-basedstudentfromEabametoongFirstNationand
aformermemberofthePrimeMinister’sYouthCouncilYoungpeople
aren’tpolitically
apathetic–we’re
disillusioned