Let’s get it straight right here: unless you vote Conservative, you are a member of the freak power demographic here in Alberta.
By this I mean that unless you subscribe to the Conservative dogma of environmental inaction and even closer ties with our best buddies to the south, your voice is largely unrepresented by our federal politicians. These are issues important to Canadians and especially Albertans: as American markets become increasingly unstable and as more and more of the Greenland ice-shelf slides closer towards the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, we are needing leadership in government that understands the crises of the modern era with open eyes and new thinking.
In his article “The Battle of Aspen,” Hunter S. Thompson talks about his efforts to mobilize the biker and slacker skier population of Aspen, Colorado. He and others were able to get enough people riled up about the increasingly-commercialized planning of that town that they came within six votes of winning the office of sheriff. This involved knocking on doors, driving people to polling stations, being very loud and making people aware of what was at stake. Relying on the most apathetic in a population to use their franchise in order to gain power may seem like a fool’s game, but the potential is huge because, goddamn, aren’t there a lot of them? And wasn’t it Willie Nelson who said that pot would be legal if only all the stoners would go out and vote?
In a sense, the student vote is quite similar. We have things to do that don’t involve the seemingly-meaningless bureaucracy of the nation state– whether that be studying for midterms, working a job to pay student loans or playing XBOX. The people who make the decisions about the country live in Ontario anyway, right? As somebody who has done most of his adult political participation in Alberta, I am quite familiar with the despair that accompanies having progressive views in this province. But dropping out from the political process means that our demographic isn’t valued by the people who drive decisions in the political process. Why do you think senior citizens get whatever the hell they want? Of course the Canadian Pension Plan is an issue during elections– largely because Baby Boomers, the largest and most active voting demographic, are moving progressively closer to retirement age. If our demographic was active enough in the voting process, like baby boomers, senior citizens and the religious right, don’t you think that we would have some power in the political bargaining process as well?
I’ve talked to a lot of students who are apathetic about voting and believe all the parties are the same. So they vote Green, perhaps because they identify with environmental values or perhaps in protest to the existing parties. Or they like that the Green Party has supported proportional representation from the beginning, which would only give our generation more franchise by allowing us to vote for parties that represent our beliefs and not those of our parents.
The Green Party is a viable choice this year. With Elizabeth May bringing one of the few intelligent viewpoints to the leader’s debate, it is likely that for the first time in Canadian history, Green MPs will displace ones from the status quo parties. I also think it might happen in Alberta. This province almost always has the highest Green Party-voting population in Canada and it makes sense, if only because that party embodies many of the concerns relevant to Albertans right now. For one, the Green Party has some of the most innovative environmental policy in the country, designed to be economically feasible. They don’t see the climate crisis as financial armageddon, they see it as an opportunity for Canada to become a world leader in producing and exporting green technology. As well, their fiscal policy is somewhat more conservative than that of the NDP, making them a viable option for those concerned about the environment but not willing to support the economic beliefs of the other two parties.
In the last provincial election, Alberta had a stunningly-low voter turnout, enabling the Progressive Conservatives to gain a massive majority in Edmonton. A full 59 per cent of the eligible voting population did not exercise their right to say, “Hey, I really don’t like the way this province is heading.” Nor did they say that they liked how the PCs are doing things.
What the silent, apathetic majority wants is anybody’s guess– and note that we students are often all lumped into that group despite the 39 per cent of us who actually do vote– but I have an inkling that if the disillusioned masses turned out in droves, if this election catches our interest enough and makes us mad enough about the way the country’s heading to get off our couches and onto the streets, if we do get out there and if we in the 18-25 voting demographic actually realize that there are more of us than them and that we have the ability to determine the direction our nation and planet is heading, we may just see a revival of freak power the likes of which have not been seen before in this province.