Youth can have an impact on policy. However, despite the growing consensus around the need to include youth in policymaking, how effectively have these efforts been?

Primer: The lack of youth representation in policymaking

In recognizing the need for youth representation in political institutions and processes, the United Nation’s World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY), introduced in 1995 and complemented in 2007, urges national governments “to formulate and adopt an integrated national youth policy as a means of addressing youth-related concerns”.

In Canada,  Justin Trudeau has appointed himself Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Youth in 2015, created the Prime Minister’s Youth Council, and, for the first time in Canadian history, included youth as a part of a prime minister’s portfolio of work.

However, to what extent can youth have a voice and contribute meaningfully to these processes?

Youth Impact on Policy – A Canadian Case Study: Autumn Peltier

Autumn Peltier, 13, from Wikwemikong Unceded Reserve in Ontario, is a youth advocate for clean and sacred waters. She has advocated for clean drinking water – no only in First Nations Communities – but across the entire country since she was 8 years old. Autumn has represented Canadian Indigenous youth in creating a communique of children’s demands at the 2015 Children’s Climate Conference in Sweden and delivered the communique at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. She has been honored as a water protector by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) in Canada and created a fund to assist First Nations people across Canada dealing with water crises. And in November 2016, Autumn issued a national call to action to shut down all of the highways in Canada for one hour to bring awareness to water protection. She stood on the highway in Espanola, Ontario with her mother and community members in an act of solidarity to create awareness for Canadian waters, as well as in support of those protesting at Standing Rock.

And her advocacy work was noticed! During her protest, Autumn received a call from the Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day, who invited Autumn to Ottawa to deliver a traditional water bundle to Justin Trudeau as a gift. Although she had a speech prepared, she did not have the opportunity to deliver it. She did tell Trudeau, “I’m not happy with the decisions you’ve made for my people.”

Budget 2017 has included $5.0 billion over five years for investment in water under Canada’s New Infrastructure Plan and proposed to provide up to $70.5 million over five years, starting in 2017–18, to Environment and Climate Change Canada to protect Canada’s freshwater resources, including in the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg Basins.

Picture: CBC

Rhetoric versus Reality – The “need” for youth voice in Vancouver’s Chinatown

To date, City of Vancouver Chinatown planning processes have had limited youth input. While the Chinatown Vision Directions (2002) and the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan and Economic Revitalization Strategy (2012) do contain a handful of youth-oriented recommendations, little progress has been made on implementing them. Much of the efforts have focused around involving youth figures in volunteerism and little has been done to address the priorities of engaging youth in succession and community planning.

Although there seems to be an identified need to include youth voice in the Chinatown planning processes, the reality remains that youth were typically engaged as nominal figures than real stakeholders.

In response to this challenge, a small group of young individuals established the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown (YCC), a for youth, by youth grassroots efforts to formalize the loose network of youth who are engaged in Chinatown-related issues. Unlike previous attempts to include youth as stakeholders with no meaningful power, the bottom-up approach enabled youth to connect and collaborate more easily across silos. The use of digital media and having both an online and in-real-life presence gained the attention of local and national media outlets. Consequently, the YCC’s informal grassroots community presence

the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown (YCC) was established – by-youth, for-youth. By formalizing the loose network of engaged youth on Chinatown-related issues, this youth-led initiative has helped bring youth voices and visions to planning processes about Chinatown, and build political and social capacity for the young generations of Chinese Canadians to be involved in planning processes instead of just nominal figures. 

Synthesis: The Paradoxical nature of youth and policy

It seems that much of the impact youth have made on policy derives from extrinsic youth mobilization under a less hierarchal and institutional, and more horizontal and collaborative efforts initiated and led by youth themselves. While there is an ongoing conversation about the benefits of youth engagement and the lack of youth representation in planning and policy-making processes, ironically efforts that have integrated youth into the political structures have little effect.

In the case of Vancouver’s Chinatown, when youth were recruited to stakeholder meetings, they were often viewed as nominal figureheads who represent the younger generation, but whose voices were not taken seriously. Youth could not meaningfully contribute and share their opinions and visions until they’ve created a space for themselves – for example, the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown – and earned their place in high-stakes civic planning meetings. The YCC’s visibility on digital media platforms as well as on newspaper outlets also raised awareness and lend the youth-led organizations to hold themselves and key players accountable with regards to the planning and development of Chinatown.

In the case of Autumn Peltier, it was also her independent work outside the political structured that enabled her to find her voice and start a movement. She was not restricted by politics, the rigidity of institutional structures or bureaucracy in terms of leading her movement and carrying forth her plans and agenda.

More work and effort is needed to better integrate youth into political structures and processes in a way that goes beyond youth presence and participation. To only capitalize on youth representation would only yield attractive marketing content and fail to realize the potentials of youth voices as worthwhile resources and perspectives.

What can youth really do to make influence change with policymakers and government players? As the movement towards to include young people in policy-making processes gains momentum, it will be interesting to see to what extent can institutions effectively include youth in policymaking and enable youth to make a “real” impact in policy.