Meaza Damte knows the kids will be all right

Meaza Damte has seen the future first-hand — it is bright, eloquent, and under 18. She was part of a team of law students that interviewed young people and prepared affidavits for a court challenge to lower the federal voting age.

“People believe that children and youth don't have opinions or aren't knowledgeable, because they don't have the critical space to be able to speak their mind,” Damte said. “But giving them the space and time to talk, it's amazing to see the types of initiatives that they're starting, like grassroots level, talking about getting their friends involved with all types of volunteer work across the board.”

Damte, a second-year law student at the University of Toronto, joined the team assembled by Justice for Children and Youth (JFCY) and the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights at the University of Toronto to file the suit in Ontario Superior Court. The plaintiffs are 13 young people from across Canada, ranging in age from 12 to 18, who believe young people should have the right to vote.

Together, they are challenging the voting age on the basis that it contradicts Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the section that grants all Canadian citizens the right to vote. The lawsuit doesn’t propose a replacement for the current voting age of 18. However, if the suit succeeds, Canada could join Argentina, Austria, Brazil, and Ecuador in allowing voters as young as 16 to participate in federal elections.

As a child, Damte was given the space to think about her own views: rides to school were narrated by talk radio, where she would form her own views on politics and society that would later be debated with her father. Her parents, Ethiopian immigrants to Canada, encouraged her to engage with the news and politics. During her undergraduate degree at the University of Calgary, Damte started a non-profit, Uplyft Youth, to educate youth about domestic abuse and healthy relationships. Overall, Damte’s life has circled around the under-recognized intelligence and thoughtfulness of young people.

Damte said the young people she interviewed feel like they no longer have the luxury of being children. A childhood separated from everyday politics is impossible in the face of climate change and a lingering pandemic. Marginalized youth have known and lived this, their lives have been political and their existence the subject of constant debate. Although young people pay attention to politics and the effects political decisions have on their lives, their voices are constantly left out of the discussion, she said.

“[Young people] have been working since they were 14 or 15, taxes are getting deducted off their paycheque. They may be providers for their family, they may be experiencing the effects of climate change or worried about the climate crisis, worried about their futures. That in conjunction with the internet — they know, they're aware of it, they're immersed in it every day.”

All this is exactly why youth should have a say in their wages and futures, she added.

“After every single meeting or interview, we would literally sit there after the person left stunned because they were so articulate, had done and advocated for and formed views about such a variety of things.”

And while Damte sees the future being well fought for in the litigants and the lawyers at JFCY and the Asper Centre, she knows that the personhood of children is at the heart of this challenge: “Regardless of your age, you're still your own person.”

Andy Takagi / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer