A few weeks ago, I caught the mayoral debate on television and funnily enough, Just For Laughs happened to be on at the same time. As a student of politics, I forced myself to watch the debate, but the thought that kept coming up in my mind was: What is the difference anyway? Just like comedians, politicians make unrealistic claims about the world we live in, and their statements seem to become jokes to laugh at. Watching the debate also provoked a question that I have debated for years on end: How can we take politics seriously when politicians cannot be?
These politicians seem always to forget one very crucial element of politics, which is voter turnout. In Ontario, voter turnout has been dropping steadily since the 1990 provincial election. In 1990, turnout was 63.3 per cent, in 1999 it was 58.3 per cent and in this election, turnout hovered in the mid 50s. As voter turnout drops, voter apathy increases, which is a poison between elections. Politics turns into a distant monster that we love to hate, which means none of the issues that we hold dearly such as post-secondary education, health care, and the environment, are addressed-because none of us are paying attention.
This can be especially dangerous among the most lucrative voters of today: us, university students. In the U of T elections last spring, voter turnout was 13 percent. If trends like this continue, a major crisis in Canadian politics will be the result. The question that should be on our minds is how do we stop this? Or more importantly, how do we connect with politics when it seems so distant?
Firstly, politics has to be made a priority. At the present time, there are many things that happen that most of us don’t know about. For example, under Mike Harris, the Oak Ridges moraine was supposed to be protected from development, but many backroom dealings occurred between the government and private corporations. It’s only now that we realize what happened and it is too late to reverse it. Development of the moraine could threaten Toronto’s water supply. If politics were a priority, we might have been able to prevent this.
Secondly, politicians have to know we exist. Many politicians do care about post-secondary education and McGuinty has promised to freeze tuition. Look up your MPP in the blue pages and let them know you care about the money that comes out of your pocket. If they don’t hear from you, they can claim not to know anything, or even worse, vote to increase fees.
It may be true that we live in fast times where deadlines and assignments are a reality, but politics permeates every aspect of our lives and if we don’t attempt to control the beast, the beast will control us.
