Situated in the heart of Toronto, with the University of Toronto and Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) in its midst, Trinity-Spadina has a significant student population. 53.1 per cent of its population is between 20 to 39 years of age. 

Twenty-year-old U of T student Levi Cassidy, who is taking a year off from a double major in political science and ethics, society, and law, aims to represent Trinity-Spadina’s youth voice. Cassidy faces stiff competition in Ward 20, including New Democratic Party (NDP) stalwart Joe Cressy, but contends that he is in it to win. 

The Varsity sat down with Cassidy to discuss the student vote, transit, and the route to political involvement.

The Varsity: What about U of T prepared you for this kind of process?

Levi Cassidy: Well, the huge range and diversity of U of T ­— even having lived in Toronto before — was a totally eye-opening experience. Not only is it a place where everyone has all these different experiences and opinions, but it’s also a place where they can be discussed constructively. I really took to that…But you can, to an extent, get lost in an academic bubble, in a fairly writing-intensive program especially. While you do really go hard in terms of analysis and constructive discussion and debate… you lose out on the “real world” sort of connection, the individual to community connection. And I’m looking to break out of that a bit, to take that into the community and run with it. I’m taking the first two months, September and October, to campaign 100 per cent of the time, and then taking the rest of the year to just consider opportunities… [E]ven if I don’t get elected, there are a lot of community groups and ways of being involved that I’d really like to follow up.

TV: You positioned that almost in a way that sounds like you’re not really betting on a win.

LC: I think it’s just considering every possibility. In the race, there are 26 candidates, and although there are some with more machinery than I have, higher profiles, name recognition, this and that, the sheer amount of candidates and the political culture of the ward — everyone’s fairly involved and in tuned when it comes to politics — there are a lot of different directions things can go.

TV: Are there other younger candidates running in this ward? What differentiates you?

LC: For some people, it really is more of a profile-building exercise. As to what differentiates me, I think as a young person who is interested in politics and is really taking this as an opportunity to engage, I’m not really held down by any “group” in particular; I’m very much a nonpartisan individual, and I think, as a young person I also represent the actual demographics of the ward pretty well. 

I mean, Joe Cressy is in his ’30s, I’m sure there are a lot of people living in condos and doing this and that “get him” from a purely age-based perspective. But there are a ton of students in Ward 20; there are a ton of young people who are in that place where they don’t pay constant attention to politics but they’d be interested to see someone come along who is — I don’t want to say “with it” — but someone who gets where they are coming from — someone who has had a real job, worked minimum wage, paid rent, struggled with employment at times.

TV: Are you finding you’re appealing to students, specifically?

LC: I think the idea of being young, right off the bat, makes people assume that you’re going for the student vote. It’s a demographic who I immediately identify with and who identify with me. But I have older voters who ask me, essentially, “what’s in it for me,” and I have two responses. One is that there is no necessary age when it comes to politics; there are a lot of older politicians who are totally out of it, who have had terrible initiatives, and younger politicians who have been able to succeed despite the age gap between them and their counterparts. The second is that for an older person, I am their son; I am the younger person in their life who is dealing with those struggles. And I think it’s important to give voice to that part of their lives, even if it doesn’t represent them perfectly.

TV: What do you consider a barrier to youth participation in politics?

LC: I guess one major barrier is something like the idea that politics is something that takes special effort to participate in. Everybody has their own life to live; everybody goes about their day-to-day, whether it’s a 9-to-5, or a sport that they’re really into or a hobby that they have, and they try to keep a work-life balance. And politics is sort of seen as something off to the side. 

TV: You don’t have to necessarily have an opinion on everything or know everyone’s names.

LC: Right, you don’t. To be politically involved, you just have to care about something. And that’s what I find myself asking a lot of people. After this current city council, after these four years, a lot of people are willing to disengage, but I have to ask them: “What do you care about?” 

TV: What have some of them been?

LC: Well obviously the biggest issue in the city is transit, whether it comes from cyclists who are fed up about the lack of infrastructure, people who take the train or streetcar, also fed up with the backlog and congestion.

Housing is similarly a huge issue, especially in Ward 20 where there are so many stories of development going up but so many of them are not very affordable for so many Torontonians. Ward 20 just represents such a diverse cross-section of the city of Toronto that there is just no shortage of top priorities, especially regional ones… I think that this role sort of requires a broader approach. I don’t think that taking one cause and running with it is really suited for a city councillor. You have to be more of a generalist.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.