Just two weeks after Ontario saw its lowest voter turnout since Confederation in 1867, Ottawa joined in on the Occupy Wall Street movement — a contrast, and a different kind of political involvement that represents a trend in young people, as some political scientists see it.
Robert Drummond, a political science professor from York University, said this attitude shows that young people in Canada are generally less interested and turned off from governmental politics. This is worrying, he said.
“If you don’t care who runs the government or aren’t interested to find out and make a choice, that means that democracy is not in great shape,” he said.
“Protesting is more important than voting,” said Christina Kovack, 33, an unemployed Ottawa resident. “I don’t care that it’s been raining for three days. I want to be here.”
Kovack has been participating in Occupy Ottawa since it started Oct. 15 and will stay in Confederation Park as long as it takes, she said.
She doesn’t vote because she said it’s not a useful way of making change happen.
A number of Canadian cities have picked up on the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Ottawa, about 100 people are sleeping overnight at Confederation Park, according to organizers.
Drummond suggested young people may see more capacity for political action outside of the ballot box.
“Lobbying or street protesting could be more effective. I think people are just giving up on parliamentary politics,” he said.
Most people involved in Occupy Ottawa are in their 20s, said 23-year-old participant Matt Penstone, putting them in the category of people who don’t have the best track record for voting.
But views on voting in this group differ greatly.
Penstone and his friend, Alex Guest, 18, are both taking online classes at Algonquin College. They’re spending all their free time at the Occupy Ottawa site, and they both voted in the Oct. 6 provincial election.
“Voting and protesting compliment each other,” Penstone said.
Guest said he agreed, adding it would be crazy for someone to come out and protest if they didn’t vote.
These two are examples of the trend that provincial politics professor and author Rand Dyck said he sees.
He said those who are taking the time to get out and protest in places such as Occupy Ottawa are most likely the people that exercise their democratic right to vote, too.
But political scientists are torn between which trend is representative of a larger group.
Drummond said it’s usually one form of participation or the other — protesters probably aren’t voting. And although 100 people sleeping over at Confederation Park is low compared to the over 12 million people living in Ontario, it’s representative of the trend that Drummond sees, which is young people exercising their rights through mediums other than casting a ballot.
Although Dyck said most people protesting are likely to vote, too, he agrees that some people who don’t vote are allured by the idea of protesting.
“Maybe they think [protesting] is more exciting because there’s some fun involved,” Dyck said.
Whether or not those participating in Occupy Ottawa see sleeping in a tent in the rain as “exciting,” for many people, it’s the only way to spark some change.
