Prime Minister Mark Carney talks with a child riding a toy tractor as he tours the Calgary Stampede in July.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
It might sound far-fetched, but let’s imagine for a moment that Canada granted voting rights to the roughly seven million children in this country. How would that change our politics, our household finances and our economy?
Imagine what Canada might look like if the federal government took the Charter right that “every citizen of Canada has the right to vote” literally, and extended voting rights to everyone under 18.
Of course, the concept of children voting cannot be taken too literally. A Canada that allowed three-year-olds to directly cast a ballot might have candidates promising to require Bluey on every television station and unlimited iPad time.
Instead, the primary caregiver of any child under the age of 18 would cast a ballot on their behalf. The intention would be for them to act upon the best interests of the child, as caregivers do when they register for the Canada Child Benefit or decide to open a registered education savings plan in the child’s name.
The idea of proxy voting on behalf of children extends back to at least the 1840s, and economists and political scientists have researched the potential implications of such a system.
If Canada were to extend the vote to children, the pool of potential voters would immediately increase by 20 per cent, diluting the power given to existing voters.
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Governments would need to figure out which parent gets to exercise the proxy on behalf of the child, but fortunately, governments have already solved this problem. For programs such as the Canada Child Benefit, there are rules in place that define a parent as the “primary caregiver,” covering scenarios from couples to shared custody arrangements.
Other than for same-sex couples, the government presumes that person is the mother, because of historical social norms where women disproportionately handled the rearing of children. These rules can be ported over to voting; however, as with the CCB, parents would also be allowed to switch who holds the primary caregiver designation.
While the primary caregiver of those children would therefore receive additional votes, it’s an oversimplification to suggest the voting power of caregivers would increase by a proportional amount.
Survey research from Japan’s Kochi University in 2015 found that many parents of underage children would cast ballots to advance their child’s interests, rather than their own, so children truly would receive representation.
Parties would immediately respond to the subsequent shift in political gravity. The number of new potential voters under the age of 18 would almost match the 7.7 million Canadians who collect Old Age Security.
Dollars for social programs are scarce, but under this kind of system, incentives to increase supports for children would be strengthened, while political support for OAS increases would weaken, since seniors would make up a smaller proportion of voters.
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Research from New Zealand and Japan finds that birth rates are likely to increase in response to proxy voting, not because families will have more children to get more votes, but instead because child benefit programs would be made more generous. A self-reinforcing circle is created where politicians would lower the cost of having children, causing more children to be born, and increasing their relative voting strength even further.
An increase in both the number of children and their voting power gives governments additional motivation to invest in education, from primary to postsecondary. Tuition was low and investments in higher education were high when baby boomers first entered their college years; 2023 research from Italy found that proxy voting would cause a return of such political pressures.
Unlike older voters, many of today’s children will live long enough to experience a 22nd-century Canada. Parents who vote in their child’s interests would consider slow-moving longer-term issues, from climate change to the size of government debts and deficits to government investments in science and technology. Their children will continue to feel the direct impacts of poor planning well after the rest of us are gone.
It is tempting to think that because almost all those children will one day reach voting age, their needs will eventually be addressed, so they can just wait for the vote. However, a young Canadian who receives a poor-quality education, endures a childhood of poverty without adequate social supports or is saddled with unsustainable levels of government debt is not just impacted during childhood, but rather throughout their whole life.
This country would become a very different place if every Canadian truly did have voting rights. It is, however, unlikely to happen any time soon. No country has ever adopted this kind of system, despite a century of governments, from France in the 1920s to present-day Germany, considering the idea.
Change is always difficult – doubly so when it diminishes the power of those capable of making the change, and increases the power of the powerless. But it is a Canada worth imagining.
Mike Moffatt is the founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative and co-host of the Missing Middle podcast.