The voting age is just fine where it is

The UK is moving to allow 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote - is it now only a matter of time before Canada follows suit?

While most Canadians are no doubt aware that the legal voting age in this country is 18, fewer are perhaps aware of the fact that we once lowered the voting age.

Prior to 1970, the legal voting age in Canada was 21, an age that had been the standard going all the way back to 1867 when voting was originally limited to men 21 and older who also happened to own property.

So there is precedent for lowering the voting age. Even though at the national level it took until 1970 to lower the voting age to 18, Alberta and Saskatchewan lowered it from 21 to 19 in the mid-1940s. Interestingly enough, from 1970 until the 1990s, 17-year-olds in the Canadian Forces were also allowed to vote.

There is some arbitrariness to all of this- and that extends beyond voting. Generally we accept that 18 is the age of adulthood, although the legal drinking age remains 19 in much of Canada (and 21 in the United States). It’s also somewhat arbitrary when it comes to what we have determined to be an adult activity - 16-year-olds can legally drive, for example, and 16 is the age of legal sexual consent in Canada (with some exceptions).

Even within our democratic system, those under 18 are nor totally excluded. Minors can hold memberships in a political party and participate in that party’s own democratic process, such as leadership elections.

It’s therefore not completely unreasonable to wonder whether the legal voting age could be lowered once again. And with the UK now officially making such a change, the debate will surely be re-opened once again:

This issue has come up numerous times in Canada over the last few decades. It was one of the issues studied by the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing in their 1991 report, in which they concluded that the status quo was adequate:

More recently, there have been attempts in Parliament to pass a law lowering the voting age to 16. Senator Marilou McPhedran has made multiple attempts. In 2022, the House of Commons voted down a private members bill from then-NDP MP Taylor Bachrach. Just this week, in fact, a petition was tabled in the House of Commons calling on the voting age to be lowered. The petition’s sponsor - Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith - also happens to be someone who voted in favour of Bachrach’s private members bill.

There tends to be an ideological divide in this debate, with liberals/progressives typically the advocates of such a change and conservatives most likely to be opposed. That’s due in large part, I suspect, to the perception that younger people would tend to skew more to the left, thus benefitting progressive parties and causes. But that shouldn’t be what decides this debate - the arguments for or against would be the same even if high school students skewed more to the right.

Proponents argue that this will increase participation in the democratic process. We’ll see if that holds true now in the UK, but it’s not clear how compelling an argument this is in the first place. Voter turnout in the recent federal election, for example, was 68.7 per cent. Maybe that would have been a few points higher if the voting age was lower, but so what? A slightly higher voter turnout doesn’t mean better government.

Critics of such a change argue that young people aren’t well enough informed to be given the right to vote. I don’t find this to be a compelling argument; there are many adults who don’t care or know very little about politics or government just as there are undoubtedly many teenagers who follow all of this very closely.

There are also the arguments made about the need to experience the real world - jobs, taxes, etc… - before participating in the democratic process. This, too, is a weak argument. Those aged 16 and 17 can hold jobs - in fact, can legally drop out of school and work full-time - and pay taxes and, for that matter, anyone of any age making a purchase in Canada pays some form of tax. Not all adults work, either.

But we have to draw a line somewhere. The case for allowing a 16-year-old to vote would logically extend to a 15-year-old. That line is arbitrary, as well. To me, it’s about what our elections produce: elected officials.

To sit as a Member of Parliament, a Member of the Legislative Assembly, or as a city councillor, one must be an adult, i.e., 18 years of age. That’s as it should be. No one arguing for changing the voting age seems to be making the case that minors should hold elected office.

But the two are connected, in my opinion. It should therefore be the same threshold for voting in an election (the same arguments holds true for whether non-citizens should be allowed to vote). Elected officials are meant to represent a cross-section of society - we can’t all go to Edmonton or Ottawa and vote on matters, so that person is there to vote on our behalf. If you can run, you can vote - and vice versa. That is a logical place to draw the line - or, at least as logical as we’re going to find in this muddy debate.

(Yes, I realize that in some cases - like the U.S. Senate - there is a minimum age that is higher than the age of adulthood. I’m arguing in a Canadian context, so that’s not a problem for me to navigate)