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By HENRY A. GIROUX
With the upcoming elections taking place in Canada, there are a number of questions that need to be raised about the role of young people in politics. Such questions might focus on the role young people might play in imagining a social order in which the ultimate measure of a society is to be found in the embrace of democratic institutions, values, and social relations rather than in the dynamics of a market-driven society that spends millions on useless wars, generates massive inequalities in wealth and income, and wages what amounts to a war on nature. While Canadian politicians exchange clichés and lite barbs with each other, little is said about the state of young people or what it might mean to furnish the economic and educational conditions necessary for future generations to have decent health care, affordable and quality education, and a vision of the common good, one that imagines an enlarged and deepened democracy. The upcoming Canadian election should make clear as French cultural critic Theirry Pech points out that a democracy that “lives and breathes in the intervals between votes,” represents a society in the making, one that should be guided by a quest for equality, justice, and freedom not just for some but for everyone, especially disadvantaged youth. The importance of such issues becomes clearer in looking at the state of politics and young people in both Canada and the United States.
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