What Toronto would look like if youth voted

Rob Ford may have won the hearts of many Torontonians this election, but George Smitherman would have been the real winner if youth could vote.  According to data released by Student Vote, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that runs mock elections in schools, 40 per cent of young people mock-voted for George Smitherman, a slim plurality over the 37.4 per cent who voted for Ford, and the 22.6 per cent who voted for Joe Pantalone. Youth also supported 32 of the 44 newly-elected city councillors.

It is true that young people have a tendency to shy away from the right, but that fact did not seem to deter some students from supporting Ford, who lost by only 2.6 per cent in the mock election, but who won by a much larger 11.5 per cent of the vote in the actual election.

The response among young people remains varied: Some students, like Araf Khaled of Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute, feel that cutting back on spending at City Hall is “something Toronto desperately needs”.

Betty Lu of R.H. King Academy, on the other hand, finds that “Rob Ford doesn't represent anything that I believe in or stand for.”

There are also others who were skeptical about the race from the beginning – those who neither supported Smitherman nor Ford, but felt that they had to “settle” for one of the two candidates.

With the mayoral race officially over, one thing is clear: Toronto is coming out of this election perhaps even more divided than before. As Smitherman racked up on endorsements from everyone from media outlets to city councillors, it made losing that much less bearable. And, as the results from Student Vote have shown, many youth are clearly not happy.

Ford is taking office amidst strong “anyone but Ford” sentiment that has yet to die down in many communities (and indeed among many of his soon-to-be colleagues at City Hall). His first task will undoubtedly be to reach out to those who have tried so desperately to keep him from claiming the mayor’s seat. But, as the results from Student Vote have shown, he is going to have to do a lot more to win the support of Toronto’s youth. Coaching a football team is simply not enough. The young people of our city demand and deserve more.

About Gorick Ng

Vote or move to Hamilton?

Cheap real estate, the burgeoning of James Street North, the Art Crawl, a progressive labour movement, a strategy on poverty reduction, plans (already underway) to expand the transportation infrastructure, interesting leaders.

Forget Toronto for the next four years. I think I'm moving to Hamilton.

A smart way to get young people to vote

While walking around York University on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the City of Vaughan had set up an advanced polling station in the heart of York’s Keele Street campus.

I want to get on/off/on the bus

No, I’m not opposed to taking transit. I just want to be able to step off now and then to run some errands.  The TTC, on the other hand, wants to hold me hostage. 

While many other transit systems have payment systems that allow riders to hop on and off during a set travel period, the TTC carries on with an arcane transfer system that completely handcuffs its riders.

Want the youth vote? Find it online

Recently, I attended a mayoral debate in Ottawa that got me thinking about ways in which the city of Toronto could galvanize its young voters to hit the polls.

Called “Debate 2.0 – Envisioning Ottawa's Future,” it was a 90-minute, web-enabled event that allowed viewers – particularly youth – to interact with candidates either in-person at the National Arts Centre or through online platforms.

The human cost of contracting-out

Back in the spring when I was first asked to blog for My City, Your City, I wrote about what I love about Toronto: the incredible diversity, the parks and tree-lined streets, Kensington Market, the arts community, the squash and beans growing in our neighbours’ front garden, and the smell of grilled sardines wafting through Little Portugal on sunny afternoons. And so now, when I look at our options for mayor and hear the call to "vote with your head, not your heart” … well, I think a lot about the real basics.

Candidates, get hot under the collar about climate!

All politics is local, which may explain the curb-level view of issues being presented in the current municipal election campaign.  No reason to avoid discussing potholes, bike lanes, councillor budgets and garbage pick-up.  But it seems to have escaped the attention of our mayoralty candidates that we just steamed through the second warmest year on record, and a decade of record breaking temperatures are telling us that climate change is not a far off threat – it is happening here and now.

Add politicians' robocalls to my 'Do Not Call' list

We're entering the 400-metre sprint portion of the half-marathon that is this year’s municipal elections. I say half-marathon, because my feeling is that too many Torontonians across the political spectrum aren’t feeling full civically, and haven’t fully bought into what longtime incumbents and lifetime politicians (who are phoning it in for re-election, because they can) are peddling.

Moms can make a difference

What if we made anywhere poverty resides a priority neighbourhood, and as part of the prioritizing, worked to empower all the single moms resident there.  This would include all the women who currently struggle at two or three jobs a day, forced to leave their at-risk growing children for long hours at a time, fearing for them but needing to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. 

Two lessons on a bus

Last Friday afternoon, I boarded the 129A McCowan North bus near my house. Having just arrived in Toronto for the Thanksgiving long weekend (I study full-time in Ottawa), I was heading downtown via the RT's Scarborough Centre station to visit my friends who I hadn't seen since the summer holidays.

It started out as a typical ride. I took a seat near the front of the bus, and and stared aimlessly out the window, waiting for the 15 minute-or-so trip to end.

But a spirited conversation between two young people caught my attention, and I proceeded to (shamelessly) eavesdrop.

A woman in her mid- to late-twenties sat two seats to my left, with a large baby carriage in front of her. She was speaking to a man in his early twenties about the upcoming municipal election on October 25.

Sitting directly across the aisle, the man was clad in a white t-shirt emblazoned with bright red lettering. From my vantage point, I could see the words “VOTE” and “OCTOBER 25,” which appeared to prompt their exchange.

After introducing himself to the woman, the man said he was canvassing (hence, the t-shirt), adding that he hoped Torontonians would get out and vote.

“Are you planning to vote in the election?”

“I'm not sure; I don't think so,” the woman replied. “I don't vote if I don't feel it's legit, or if I feel that it's a hoax.”

As a resident of Markham (whose elections are also on October 25), she said she felt that the candidates in her ward were less than genuine.

In response, the man encouraged her to cast a ballot, saying, “It can make a difference.”

Heartened by their conversation, the woman said that she would tell her relatives in Malvern to vote, and began to list the ways in which the local community could be improved. She wanted more job postings in high-traffic areas where people could see them (“like the Eaton Centre”) and better housing for lower-income families (“not just slums”).

Referring specifically to the Malvern area, the woman emphasized the need for more after-school activities to “keep kids out of trouble,” citing basketball, soccer, reading clubs, study groups and access to computers and the Internet as examples.

She stressed the importance of keeping youth occupied in a lively environment: “If people are depressed, then they get into trouble. Kids do bad things when they're bored. That's why Malvern gets such a bad rep.”

This conversation between two young strangers may have hardly lasted 10 minutes, but it taught me two valuable lessons:

1) Youth want to be engaged, but are discouraged by the broken promises and empty rhetoric of dishonest politicians (as I mentioned in my very first post here).

2) But engaging youth isn't that difficult. As evident from this exchange, it's obvious that young people are receptive to other young people. Enthusiasm is contagious, and getting youth to vote may be as simple as getting one young person to talk to another.

About Anita Li