Major parties didn’t focus enough on issues facing young people during the election.
That’s according to Katherine Scott, senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Young people are dealing with higher unemployment as companies reduce new hires, on top of a housing crisis.
“Young people are on the ropes. These are really critical problems that need to be addressed by governments at all levels,” says Scott.
She says the Conservative party “very effectively” picked up on those tensions to attract young male voter,s especially, but she says the Conservative policies would not necessarily address those problems.
She says the Liberals wanted to focus on the U.S. trade war and 51st state threats from President Donald Trump.
The Liberals also shoved feminism in the closet, she says, by avoiding certain topics, like gender inequality, or equality in general, reproductive rights, or childcare, “because those issues had become so associated with the former very unpopular Trudeau government.”
Scott says the Conservatives targeted those progressive ideas when their campaign criticized Trudeau and so-called ‘woke’ ideas, but she says the Conservative policies would not necessarily improve things like gender inequality.
