Approximately 300 students and Ottawa residents crammed into Fenn Lounge at Carleton Feb. 16 to hear Liberal MP Justin Trudeau speak and field questions on Canada’s role as a world leader, the status of our First Nations reserves and the economy.
Nearly half an hour late, Trudeau, the official Liberal critic on youth, citizenship and immigration, spent most of the evening speaking of the power of youthful idealism. While talking about issues such as Canadian accountability abroad, the MP for Papineau, Que., kept hitting on the importance of staying engaged.
“Your capacity to shape the world around you will by extension be the only thing to change the world in its entirety,” he said. “As soon as each and every one of us realizes our capacity for shaping the world around us, changing this world for the better goes from being a nice idea to being flat-out inevitable.”
Trudeau acknowledged that while the Conservatives have been better organized in the past, it was crucial that youth gathered behind the Liberal Party to vote for change.
Reminiscent of Obama’s 2008 campaign for hope and progress, Trudeau pointed out that while youth voters tended to support the NDP and the Green party, those votes wouldn’t translate into a change in government.
“If we were to count only the votes of 18 to 25-year-olds, in the last election we would have 43 Green members of parliament,” said Trudeau. “We’d have more Liberals, more NDP, less Conservatives . . . which is one of the reasons I’m so enthused about getting young people to vote.”
With the official opposition gearing up for a spring election, federal Liberal candidates from three of Ottawa’s ridings were there, encouraging students to get involved by voting and volunteering.
Members of the Carleton University Young Liberals handing out eco-friendly pens and retro-inspired pins of Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
The younger Trudeau decried attack ads as “designed to drive down voter turnout,” and spoke of the Canadian values of compassion and respect.
However, hanging among posters of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s smiling face, the occasional “Smash Harper” poster could be seen in Fenn Lounge.
“The Canadian brand is strongest as being that of the good guys,” Trudeau said.