Panorama

Mayor Sam Sullivan gave his inaugural address on December 5th and after reading through it I must say its pretty good. Mind you I don’t think I have heard an inaugural speech by any new leader that I didn’t much care for.

One thing that caught my eye was an item towards the end of Mr. Sullivan’s speech:

“The Mayor’s office will seek out every opportunity to engage our youth in order that they better understand the importance of civic governance in their lives. I will work with our School Board to introduce a new Civic Youth Council that will take place at City Hall next year.”

While I think this is a nice experiment, frankly I compare it to playing Jr. Scrabble; it may be all the fun but it isn’t where all the action’s at.

During the election campaign Mr. Sullivan made a good point when he talked about the funding that is provided through city hall to all the various social agencies that deal with youth. He said the one thing the city could do before they handed over the money was to look at how the social agency was governed. Did the social agency have younger people on its board and in positions of influence within the organization? That idea I really liked. It is not mentioned in the mayor’s speech though.

During a debate hosted by the social justice committee of the Unitarian Church of Vancouver I asked Sam what he thought about reducing the municipal voting age to 16 and his comments were that getting younger people involved in the civic election process while they were learning about it in school seemed like a good thing and might encourage people to get in the habit of voting because that is what they learned to do.

This junior council idea seems like a big money waster to me that won’t contribute much to the lives of the people that it is supposed to affect. Only once people have control and responsibility of their lives and the issues that affect them will real change start to occur. At 16 years old I believe a person is more than ready to take on the responsibility of voting.

Any change that occurs after that is up to them.