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Generation Y's Legislative Agenda: What Millennials Will Do When They Get Power

The Laws Gen Y Will Change When It Gets Power
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Members of Generation Y may not be particularly interested in conventional politics, but sooner or later they're going to end up in power anyway.

When they do, millennials, loosely defined as adults born after 1980, will put their own stamp on Canada. When they're done, the country may look very different than it does today under Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

Check out the slideshow below for a hypothetical look at Gen Y's legislative agenda and vote for your top issues.

Marijuana Legalization

Gen Y's Legislative Agenda

Marijuana Legalization

Canadians already want it, and all signs point to Generation Y being the cohort to make legal pot happen.

The Liberals are already (tentatively) backing such a plan, after the youth wing of the party brought the matter to a vote last year.

And now that several U.S. states have either decriminalized or legalized possession, the spectre of U.S. retaliation over legalization is growing less daunting by the day.

Young people have long been vocal about ending pot prohibition, but millennials may be the first generation in 100 years to face conditions favourable to ending it once and for all.

Climate Change And The Environment

Past generations have faced environmental challenges of their own (anyone remember acid rain?), but the problems facing Generation Y are greater in scale.

First among them is climate change. As long as oil, natural gas and coal remain the least expensive energy options, Canada and the world will continue to dig them up and burn them. While the Conservative government has relentlessly hammered the NDP for its alleged plan to institute "a job-killing carbon tax," a cap-and-trade scheme was actually part of the Tory platform in 2008.

Creating a price disincentive to burn carbon is probably the only way we're going to start down the road to finding affordable replacements for fossil fuels. It seems that even the Tories knew that once upon a time.

As Generation Y begins to have children and extreme weather events increase, the sense of urgency about climate change will only grow. Look for millennials to make something happen on the climate front at last.

Electoral Reform

From the Prime Minister's Office’s iron grip on government MPs to the questionably democratic results of first-past-the-post elections, the rules of Canada's political system are ripe for change.

Justin Trudeau, who has been aggressively courting the vote of millennials during his campaign for the Liberal leadership, proposed changes on both fronts just last week.

Angry as some young people may be about perceived abuses of power by recent prime ministers (prorogations and squelching backbench dissent come to mind), once Gen Y takes the reins of power, they too may find it difficult to let the horses run free. Power, as the saying goes, has a tendency to corrupt.

But on the question of first-past-the-post, there is growing consensus among young people that something has to give.

Take the results of the 2008 federal election, in which the Green party won nearly 7 per cent of the vote and no seats. The Bloc Québécois won roughly 10 per cent of the vote and ended up with 47 seats.

Canadian elections are rife with such examples. Stephen Harper and the Tories have now won three consecutive elections without cracking 40 per cent in the popular vote.

Proportional representation would seem like a logical alternative, but given Canada's many diverse regions, it might lead to resentment in smaller provinces (not to mention constitutional impediments).

A ranked voting system, similar to the one proposed by Trudeau and others, presents a happy medium that would result in a Parliament that more accurately represents the will of all Canadians while still respecting the choices of the country's many regions.

Industrial Food

When millennials were young, their parents often entertained them with horror stories about the processed foods they were fed as children. Cans of soup often figured prominently.

Today, Gen Y tells their children similar horror stories. Only the spectrum has shifted.

Brought up in a fast-food culture, millennials have witnessed the obesity epidemic first hand and have grown suspicious about where our calories really come from.

From the horrific conditions in which our meat is raised, to the stunning content of sugar in our foods, to the prospect of a world where food is designed at the genetic level, Gen Y wants change.

But that doesn't mean young people today don't understand the challenge of feeding a growing world.

Genetically modified foods may very well be a silver-bullet for ending the world's hunger problems, but strict regulation and inspection must be enacted to keep our food system from spiralling into a nightmarish future.

Gen Y, like their parents before them, is up to the task.

Digital Freedom

While millennials did not create the Internet, they have revolutionized it.

And Gen Y isn't interested in the counter-revolution. Just ask Vic Toews.

When the Conservative government tried to pass online surveillance legislation, Canada's young people were among the loudest voices to speak up in opposition. That battle was won.

But Gen Y isn't about to let the state kill the web.

Look for millennials to put digital freedom on the same pedestal as freedom of speech, assembly and religion.

Health Care And Pension Reform

As the massive Baby Boom generation retires, it will be left to their children (and let's not forget Gen X) to pay for their latter years.

Health care, the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security are all expected to come under strain.

While Gen Y will need to tweak these systems to ensure the Boomers don't leave them bankrupt, they will also need to look to the future.

Canadian couples are having fewer children than in the past, on average 1.7 kids per family, and that number seems unlikely to head in the other direction any time soon.

In other words, we’re not replacing our dead fast enough to sustain population growth. Immigration must make up the difference, but reforming the health care system will also need to be on the table for the sake of the nation’s finances.

Canadians are rightfully proud of our universal health care, but that fierce pride has often led to an unwillingness to adapt to changing times.

Gen Y, tested by the experience of paying for their parents' latter years, will hopefully be up to the challenge of adapting our system. We must find a way to pay for services and safeguards we have come to take for granted, but which are becoming less affordable in a negative birth rate world.

While the universal spirit of the system should remain untouched, all options should be on the table for lowering costs and improving care.

Tuition

Post-secondary tuition was pushed to the forefront of the public consciousness in 2012 as Quebec students took to the streets en masse to protest a proposed tuition hike.

Those students won their battle, but the reality is that young people in the rest of Canada already face much higher fees for post-secondary education. Meanwhile, the cost of tuition is rising faster than incomes and inflation, according to a recent report from the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Education is the great equalizer in a democratic society, allowing those who were born further down the ladder to climb a few rungs. As tuition fees rise, social mobility can fall.

Just look at the United States, where sky-high college costs are saddling a generation with decades of debt and contributing to income inequality.

Gen Y, educated by their own experiences with student loans, may expand such a program.

But when millennials obtain power, they must also be cognizant of costs and quality. Freezing tuition can lead to two unfavourable outcomes: 1. A decrease in the quality of education and 2. Government debt. We're looking at you, Quebec.

Gen Y will need to get creative, which, luckily, they're pretty good at.

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