The Liberals aren’t in power?
Apathetic 20- and 30- something should prepare for a new era in Canadian politics
Marlo Campbell

Throughout this election campaign I talked to a lot of people my age about politics, and I heard a lot of the same complaints.

‘Politicians are all the same.’

‘Our votes don’t make a difference.’

‘Nothing will ever change.’

They may all have a point but maybe the reason things haven’t changed in a while could be because the same political party has been in power for over a decade. Things haven’t changed because we, the Canadian electorate, haven’t changed them.

Political disengagement among my peers should come as no surprise. We’re a TV generation weaned on the teat of mass media and shaped by everything that is good, bad and ugly about that phenomenon.

We developed in a culture of electronic music and celebrity-sex-tape scandals and Internet porn. We remember when Big Macs came packaged in styrofoam, and we can recite all the words to McDonald’s old-school Big Mac jingle.

We’re also immune to graphic violence because it’s marketed to us as entertainment — packaged up in video games that encourage us to rape prostitutes and then shoot them in the heads. For points.

We think we’re tough and hard and cynical, but the mass media have made us their bitches, and we’re too passive, socially isolated and doped up on antidepressants and trans-fat-laden junk food to do anything about it.

Iraqi citizens dodge bullets on their way to the polls, and here in Canada we’re so apathetic that we would rather watch hot chicks eat bugs for money than go out and vote.
There is another reason politics might feel irrelevant to us. We have lived most, if not all, of our adult lives under the same government. Liberal ideology has become the political status quo. We think that the way things are is the way things will always be.

Think again.

Canada has now elected the Conservative Party, the closest thing we have to George W. Bush’s Republicans. Those who wanted change got their wish. Now, we get to watch as our government shifts to the right — a rich, pro-military, anti-same-sex-marriage, Christian-values kind of right that calls Alberta home.

Politics, like gun crimes, never seems to matter to us or register in our collective consciousness until it hits us where we live. Brace yourselves, kids — we’re about to find out the effect politics can have on our day-to-day lives when a new PM is calling the shots.

Granted, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives won’t be able to do much. Once again, Canadians have elected a minority government but, unlike last election, the distribution of seats this time around implies a coalition-style government in which MPs belonging to more than just two parties will have to vote together to pass legislation. The lifespan of Harper’s government could be short, because it seems unlikely that three fundamentally different political parties will be able to play nicely in the sandbox for any length of time.

Still, change is in the air — I know this because my TV tells me so.

What remains to be seen is if the change Canadians are feeling in the air is a refreshing spring breeze — or an icy-cold breath on the backs of our necks.