“Young people will change the world,” we often hear. And the implied change is always the same: a leftward shift. Youth are naturally rebellious, we’re told, and they’re bound to cast aside hidebound conservative ways. This has generally been true for Western and Central European youth, who have tended to lean left. The French coalition of far-left parties known as the New Popular Front got nearly half the 18- to 24-year-old vote and 38 percent of the 25- to 34-year-old vote in the last election, and the German Green Party would hold a majority today if only 18- to 34-year-olds voted. But now youth voting patterns seem to be changing. The surge of right-wing parties in recent European elections won significant support from people of all ages. And we can expect the proportion of right-wing youth to grow as liberal and left-wing parties get crazier. Indeed, this is what has happened in Canada.
If an election were held today, Canada’s Conservative Party would win in a landslide and bury the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau. This may not seem impressive after ten years of Liberal rule; most governments wear out their welcome long before then. What’s unusual here is that Conservative support is strong in all demographics—and is strongest among youth. An astonishing 47 percent of those aged 18 to 34 would vote Conservative, and only 24 percent and 17 percent would vote Liberal and socialist, respectively. This represents a complete reversal of the upwelling of youth support that brought the Liberals to power in 2015.
Why has the electorate soured on the Liberals? First, nothing has been a greater turn-off to voters than contemporary progressive activism. Think of the constant bloviating about structural racism and colonialism, the “crisis of whiteness,” and self-accusations of genocide. Twenty years ago, you might have heard such things in a sociology department or undergraduate student lounge; now it emanates from Canada’s top political leaders and cultural institutions. One of the Trudeau government’s first moves was to announce a plan to “decolonize” Canada. In their own telling, the Trudeau Liberals manage a civil service and a military riven by systemic racism and white supremacy, respectively. Everyone knows that such claims are ridiculous, but few have dared say so in public. The predictable result is that only about one-third of Canadians have confidence in the federal government, and 70 percent now agree with the statement “Canada is broken.”
At its heart, the Liberal Party also struggles with a serious moral confusion. In Trudeau’s opinion, those who wanted to see an end to Covid-19 restrictions and mandates belonged to “a fringe minority with unacceptable views.” Those who hesitated or refused to be vaccinated were “racists” and “misogynists” who were “taking up space,” and Trudeau publicly wondered “whether we can tolerate them.” Religious parents who object to gender ideology in schools are, in Trudeau’s words, “hateful” and manipulated by “the far Right.” And woe to whomever uses the “wrong” pronouns or denies that a man is really a woman. Yet, the Liberals have no qualms about their supporters standing shoulder to shoulder with those who call for the elimination of Israel, fly Hamas flags, and blockade predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.
Meantime, the lives of few Canadians have improved on Trudeau’s watch. The young have arguably been hardest hit, as housing prices, inflation, and crime have risen. People can endure only so much moral depravity, hectoring, and insults while society deteriorates around them and their government refuses to act.
Canadian left-liberal commentator and writer Stephen Marche has called this state of affairs “institutional suicide.” He predicts that the Liberals’ obsession with identity politics and woke activism must go the way of the dodo if they ever want to win an election again. Activists “are about to find themselves lonely jokes, like hippies in the 1980s,” Marche says, and “their ideas and their language will serve as straw men and punching bags.” Marche may be right, but the Liberals haven’t given up yet.
Canadians are flocking to the Conservatives not only because they are fed up with the Liberals but also for positive reasons. The Conservative parliamentary caucus is noticeably younger than its Liberal counterpart. If the Tories form the next government, the highest decision-making body in the land will be dominated by millennials for the first time. So it’s plausible to believe that the Tories have taken young people’s interests to heart and intend to address them in government.
Accordingly, Conservative messaging has focused squarely on the issues of greatest concern to millennials: the cost of living, wages, inflation, and housing affordability. Tory leader Pierre Poilievre speaks persistently about these concerns, blaming excessive regulation and bureaucratic “gatekeepers” in municipal governments for inflating housing prices, and even attacking the Bank of Canada for its mismanagement of the money supply. His rhetoric has a populist flavor, but it's always fortified by real-life experience and statistics.
You can see the Poilievre approach in action in his short video documentaries. These clearly explain a given problem, how it happened, what its effects are, and how to solve it. The most important of these was the 15-minute “Housing Hell,” covering the history of Canadian house prices from the nineteenth century to the present. It’s full of facts and figures but also tells a compelling story. Its greatest strength is that it frankly admits that millennials’ concerns are justified. The housing problem is “not normal” and is the result of bad policy. The video has drawn more than 5 million views.
There is a lesson here for all right-leaning parties in the West. The culture war should be fought and won, but their adversaries may do a better job of destroying themselves in that fight than the right can in destroying them. Like Justin Trudeau, progressives will dig their own political graves with each outburst about systemic racism and drag queens in elementary schools. The millennial vote will likely belong to those who promise to address their concerns instead of voicing the claptrap of identity politics. Nothing in Canadian politics feels as tired and stale as Trudeau’s Liberal Party, and it’s no wonder that young people want nothing to do with it. Give them time, and maybe young people really will change the world—or Canada, at least.
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