Aaron Taylor, a first-year masters student in the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (EURUS), has been named as one of 15 youth selected to be a part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Council. The Council had its first meeting from Sept. 28 to 30 in Ottawa.
“I found out about it on [the prime minister’s] Snapchat, and I thought ‘I definitely want to be a part of this,’” he said. “When [Justin Trudeau] walked into the room and I heard his voice for the first time, I couldn’t believe it.”
The Youth Council is a new initiative by the Trudeau government. The council meets multiple times per year to advise the prime minister on national issues, such as employment and climate change, according to its website.
It’s open to youth between the ages of 16-24 years old, and up to 30 members can be selected in an up to two-year mandate. Taylor said organizers received over 13,000 applications.
“We’re the inaugural members so right now we’re helping to decide which direction the council is going in, shape how we will conduct business, and structure meetings,” he said. “Usually I’m a person who likes to chat, but while I was sitting around the table with 14 other [members] all I could do was sit back and just listen—I was so infatuated with what they had to say. It was amazing.”
Students were selected based on their leadership, their community involvement, and their ideas for Canadian youth. After the initial application process, 300 applicants were selected to complete a video interview, and the final 15 were selected from there. Second wave applications will close Oct. 7, making up the final 30.
Before attending Carleton, Taylor obtained a bachelor of arts in Russian studies from Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S.
While there, he was involved in eight different student initiatives, and was president of the Dalhousie Russian Undergraduate Society.
Taylor himself is fluent in seven languages, including Russian, Mandarin, and Icelandic.
“For me [languages] open doors to great conversations you could have with people . . . when you understand someone’s language you understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “It’s impossible to separate language and culture.”
Dalhousie awarded him the Governors’ Award, given annually to five students for outstanding contributions in the extracurricular realm.
Achim Hurrelmann, the director of EURUS, said it is Taylor’s understanding that made him an attractive candidate for the council.
“We tried very actively to recruit him to Carleton,” he said. “He’s very articulate and very engaged in a variety of causes, he’s also very internationally oriented.”
Taylor said so far people have been eager to hear the ideas of the Youth Council.
“Everyone has been so receptive to our ideas . . . people with distinguished careers are taking notes on what we’re saying,” he said. “It’s one thing to talk about youth voices being heard, it’s another to actually see them being heard.”
