Honourable senators, I rise to speak to Senator Wells’s amendment to Bill S-209, which is designed to kill this bill.

First and foremost and most sincerely, I wish to thank him for taking on the added responsibility of being the critic of this bill to lower the federal voting age to 16. I also want to express appreciation to Senator Wells and to all senators who have spoken thus far for making their views known on the record.

I disagree with his conclusions, but I thank Senator Wells nonetheless for bringing them forward. There is no need to hide from hard questions. No bill is perfect. Rigorous study will either improve it or prove it too flawed to proceed. That is exactly the type of scrutiny we, as senators, do well. This makes for a fuller, richer debate, which is a primary purpose of this chamber.

Colleagues, let’s remember why each house has three readings. We are at the point where second reading could be completed, keeping open speaking opportunities at third reading, and we could open up our process to hear from non-parliamentarians at committee. It is ironic and unfortunate, then, that this amendment would effectively silence further debate in this chamber and silence the growing list of potential witnesses, including young people who very much want to speak to senators in their own voices for a deeper examination of this pressing issue — and I do mean pressing.

We ask a tremendous amount of our youth, and, by and large, they responded incredibly well. This is a real issue. As every speaker on this bill has noted, including Senator Wells, young leaders are well educated, eager, involved and vocal. This is the chance to listen to the youth of Canada. It doesn’t happen very often at Senate committees.

I intend to respond to Senator Wells’s amendment with emphasis on two of his assertions that the voting age of 18 years is an immutable constant and that the Senate is not the forum for this bill at this time. Senator Wells referred to an article on a global consensus on voting age. That 2003 article does indeed indicate that a global consensus then existed of an average of 18 years voting age in a majority of liberal democratic countries. With all due respect, his allusion to North Korea, although perhaps an amusing digression, is a specious comparison.

However, in the very next paragraph after what Senator Wells quoted, the authors asked, “But is there really a consensus? If so, it is of a relatively recent date” and “ . . . is fragile.” The authors described the accepted threshold age of 18 years as a societal construct — just as Senator Dalphond so aptly identified in his response to this amendment — therefore, subject to change. Moreover, these authors explain that such a consensus of 18 years is only one step in an evolution that has been a century in the making, shifting over time from 25 years to 23 to 21 and now 18 years. But in Canada, that was in 1970, 50 years ago. They note the consensus age of 18:

. . . has been the subject of renewed debate in recent years in a variety of countries, and in some places the cracks are already visible . . . .

Remember, colleagues, that this article was published long before the research available to us now that refutes most of the stereotypes of youth as voters used to argue against lowering the age, again, this time to 16.

In the spirit of inquiry, Senator Wells and other senators may be interested to know that the same esteemed research he cited continued their study in this field and published a subsequent report only five years later entitled, very plainly, “Governments Should Lower the Voting Age to 16 to Expand Voting Rights.”

Senator Wells also referenced the Lortie Commission of 1991 and indicated he believes this analysis and the recommendation of the Lortie Commission is still valid today. It is helpful to consider the entire Lortie recommendation, not just the excerpt Senator Wells shared.

From page 57 of the report:

Since Confederation, the franchise has undergone regular change to include an ever-increasing number of Canadians. As our society continues to evolve, it is possible that a lower voting age will become the focus of stronger demands by those concerned and greater support on the part of Canadians, particularly if the law is changed to eliminate the need for parental consent on certain important decisions. The voting age is not specified in the constitution and is therefore relatively easy to change. We therefore conclude that the voting age should be set at 18 years of age but that Parliament should revisit the issue periodically.

Accepting the full recommendation of this royal commission includes the imperative to revisit the issue periodically. Sadly, the amendment to Bill S-209 before you now purposely seeks to extinguish this effort, in other words, to kill the bill. Why now? Why this particular bill focused on Canadian youth?

Senator Wells shared an example of the high level of youth engagement that he has maintained throughout his life. He is a fine example, and I sincerely commend him. But I am confused by his assertion that engaging youth and lowering the voting age needs to be mutually exclusive, because they are, in fact, mutually reinforcing.

In the past 20 years, significant studies attest to the corollary effect of education and formation on voting habits and electoral confidence. Lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 or 18 to 16 triggers a parallel increase in civic education and support for those new potential electors, something that Elections Canada has been doing for more than 100 years.

Time allows for just one recent example illustrating this point. In 2014, Scotland lowered the voting age to 16 for the Scottish independence referendum. Based on the positives of such enhanced voter engagement, resistant parliamentarians shifted, and 16 and 17-year-olds can now vote in all Scottish elections. A study of 2015 voting patterns demonstrated that Scottish youth were more engaged in politics and showed greater confidence in their ability to understand politics and make political decisions than their peers in the rest of the U.K., which at the time had a voting age of 18.

Never before have we had such high-quality research on countries like Austria, Scotland and Wales, which have lowered their voting age to 16 within the last 15 years. With this recent evidence, we can map out the services and supports necessary to ensure success, should Canada adopt this move.

By blocking Bill S-209 from going to committee, we lose the valuable opportunity to hear from a wide range of experts, including young people themselves.

At the core of his amendment, Senator Wells told us, “Bills that significantly impact the working of one chamber should be introduced and first debated in that chamber.” To do otherwise would be both an anomaly and a rupture of precedent.

Colleagues, after hearing me, I hope you will not accept his premise for a number of reasons. First, and to be absolutely clear, the Senate has every right to introduce, debate, advance and study any type of legislation. Indeed, the Constitution Act, 1982, grants as much legislative power to the Senate as to the House of Commons, with the exceptions that the House of Commons has the exclusive power to originate appropriation and tax bills.

Furthermore, this so-called precedent has been so inconsistently applied as to lose status as a precedent. How do we account for Bill S-239, Senator Frum’s proposed legislation that also sought to open up the Elections Act? That bill went to committee. Or there was Bill S-215, a bill to amend the Elections Act, introduced by Senator Dawson in the Forty-first Parliament. Senator Gerstein, as Conservative critic, argued ferociously against it but did not block it from going to committee.

Similarly, Senator Lowell Murray in the Fortieth Parliament introduced Bill S-202, a bill to repeal fixed elections. Senator Moore in the Thirty-ninth Parliament introduced Senate Bill S-224, which sought to amend the Canada Elections Act by setting time limits for federal by-elections. That passed the Senate and made it to the House of Commons.

Any of these bills would surely, as Senator Wells states in his amendment, impact the conduct of elections in this country, but none of them were subjected to a reasoned amendment. None of them were obstructed in this manner, as the application of this precedent is so inconsistent as not to be a precedent.

Why there is a particular objection to this bill at this time is a puzzle. Why the effort to deny Bill S-209 the same legislated process that was afforded all those other Elections Act-related bills that started in the Senate, just as highly engaged young people and international experts are eager to speak to senators in committee on Bill S-209? The answer to me — and I hope to you, colleagues — is that this argument put forward by Senator Wells is, in fact, unreasoned and should not be allowed to block debate and public participation on this bill.

Second, I would posit that the Senate is an ideal place to consider the federal voting age in Canada. By its very design, the Senate is meant to engage in the legislative process in a fashion that is removed from the pressures of the electoral cycle and the partisan politics of the day.

As Senator Harder argued in an article published in the National Journal of Constitutional Law:

Because senators are appointed for a long tenure, it is expected that they would not place the interests and fate of political parties at the heart of deliberations; rather, senators would take an independent and dispassionate approach to the task of legislative scrutiny and debate.

Freed as we are from pressures, constraints and imperatives of the election cycle, senators may be able to apply a level of nuance and dispassionate distance to voting age reform.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Senate serves an invaluable purpose as a body that can lead substantive, in-depth study and move forward debates and policy considerations that might inform future government legislation and public policy. One of the unique and phenomenal strengths of the Senate is its ability to leverage its soft power and influence the furtherance of giving voice to the marginalized, the small and the minorities.

I believe Senator Wells is painting a false dichotomy. The Senate is a complementing, not a competing, actor in the legislative process — with value to Canadians. Senate public bills can significantly influence public policy by simply being proposed and debated.

There are presently two bills on lowering the voting age before the House of Commons. In fact, over most of the past 20 years, there has been such a bill in play, but none reached the committee stage. The members in the other place will eventually have the opportunity to weigh the merits of this bill, as they see fit, should it reach them. But to kill it preemptively via this recent amendment serves no purpose and serves no one.

Therefore, I urge the Senate to reject this amendment, and I move that the question be called immediately. Thank you. Meegwetch.