Framed by orange balloons and applauded by more than 60 Carleton students, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles and Ottawa MPPs Chandra Pasma and Joel Harden promised to tackle issues like affordability and university tuition while working to engage students and youth in Ontario politics.
The Carleton University New Democrats organized a “Meet the Leader” event at Ollie’s Pub & Patio on March 12 to “bridge that gap between youth and politics,” according to the club’s co-chair, Gabriel Trozzi Stamou.
“It’s more than just getting people to want to join a party,” he said. “It’s to understand what politics can do for us.”
“There’s a lot of issues that young people experience the worst,” Trozzi Stamou added.“And we don’t vote. So, a lot of the time our voices aren’t heard.”
Ontario’s 2022 election recorded a 43 per cent voter turnout, a record low. While Elections Ontario does not track voter turnout by age demographic, Trozzi Stamou said the lack of young people going to the polls is “honestly tragic.”
Young voters, however, shouldn’t be dismissed, said Chandra Pasma, the provincial NDP representative for Ottawa West-Nepean. “Cynical” politicians, she said, often depend on the more reliable older vote, but young voters “have a long future ahead of them.”
“It’s incredibly important that we engage young people in the democratic process, that we make them feel like their vote can make a difference,” Pasma told the Charlatan. “We do that by listening to them.”
Joel Harden, MPP for Ottawa Centre, also emphasized on-the-ground engagement with youth. Harden recently filed papers to become a potential federal NDP candidate in the next election.
“There are very powerful forces in our country that want us to give up on politics, and we can’t,” Harden told the Charlatan. “Politics will raise your rent. Politics will raise your tuition. Politics will help us meet our climate obligations or reconciliation obligations.”
While delivering a speech to the cheering room, Marit Stiles reminisced on her engagement in party politics and the anti-apartheid fight before graduating from Carleton in 1992.
Stiles said it has been “super exciting” to see increasing engagement within NDP clubs on university campuses. She attributed this to the party’s push to tackle issues that matter to students, like the climate crisis, affordability, and university tuition costs.
Stiles promised rent control if a provincial NDP government is elected in 2026 and criticized past Ontario Liberal and Conservative governments that she said have “systematically underfunded” post-secondary institutions.
She also recognized the work done by student movements in support of the people in Gaza, calling it “extraordinary.”
“Your voice is important and you have a right to speak out and to organize,” Stiles told the attendees.
Stiles said she was first introduced to the NDP through university anti-apartheid organizing and said she hopes initiatives like the March 12 event show students that there are “lots of different ways” to get involved in politics and have their voices heard.
“What I am hearing from young people is that there aren’t a lot of political parties that are really addressing some of the struggles and issues that younger people are facing with the urgency that it requires,” Stiles told the Charlatan.
“Instead of blaming people for not voting, I prefer to look at it as that’s my responsibility, that’s our responsibility as elected people,” Stiles said. “Can we inspire you? Can we give you hope? Is anybody actually listening to you?”
Engaging youth in politics is more than just promoting civic duty, Trozzi Stamou said.
“It’s getting people to understand that they can have agency […] over what’s going on in our country and our province, and getting students and young people’s agenda on the table again.”
Featured image by Maia Tustonic.
