Identities and ideas: participation of young legislators in the Canadian House of Commons.

• Author: Lewis, J.P.

On June 16, 2005, Stephen Harper, then leader of the Official Opposition announced creation of the Youth Conservative caucus composed of members age forty and under. The group's mission was to develop policy that speaks to youth. The creation of this group highlighted a noticeable statistical advantage the Conservative Party held over the Liberal Party in the last Parliament. Almost twenty percent of the federal Conservative Party caucus was under the age of forty while less than ten percent of the Liberal Party caucus fell in the same age bracket. This situation provoked a number of interesting questions. How many young parliamentarians have been elected to federal Parliament since Confederation? Once in Parliament do young parliamentarians make a significant contribution to the legislature. This article begins with an overview of the theories of representation in parliament in relation to youth membership. It then looks at young member representation and participation. It argues that young federal parliamentarians tend to fulfill the role of "standing for" rather than "acting for" their constituents.

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The notion of representation in liberal democracies has seen an evolution over the years since Edmund Burke's 1774 "Speech to the Electors of Bristol . At the time, Burke presented the idea of representation by "trustee" or "delegate". A trustee "makes decisions on basis of conscience, own judgement and understanding" while a delegate "makes decisions on basis of instructions or orders". Burke favoured the former. In Canada, there is a gap between the representative role performed by Members of Parliament and the expectations of the voter. While many believe Canadian members uphold the "trustee" tradition, many Canadians wish their representatives in Ottawa would follow the "delegate" model.

In the 1967 classic text, The Concept of Representation, Hanna Pitkin presented a number of formalistic views of representation including descriptive representation and symbolic representation. Pitkin describes descriptive representation in the following manner: "the representative does not act for others; he 'stands for' them, by virtue of a correspondence or connection between them, a resemblance or reflection." (1) Others describe the descriptive approach to representation as "assuming that a government is representative of the social characteristics of its members and reflect the distribution of politically important social characteristics in the general public." (2) This view of representation has influenced many scholars, including Manon Tremblay's work on Canadian Parliament, and demonstrates the importance of considering youth simply as a factor of membership. Pitkin also introduces the concept of 'acting for' and defines this action as referring to "one who acts not merely autonomously but for, instead of, on behalf of, someone else; hence representing." (3) Pitkin's theories were also adapted by Terence Ball during the 1980s. (4) Ball manipulated Pitkin's theory to arrive at the "mandate theory" which posits that the task of representative is "to mirror the views of those whom he represents". (5) This concept of representation is empirically tested in the latter part of the paper focusing on parliamentary participation by members under forty.

Representation in Canadian politics has been a long debated and contested ideal. Canada has three established representative groups: language, religion and region. Traditionally in Canada, race has meant French and English, religion has referred to Protestant and Catholic while region has been defined by the four geographic regions; the Maritimes, the West, Ontario and Quebec. In the more recent progressive and post-materialistic era of Canadian politics, women, visible minorities and a number of different religions and cultural backgrounds have been considered important groups for representation.

The difficulty in studying youth is in defining youth as a group. It is quite apparent who belongs to certain groups such as gender or region because the traits are commonly accepted, but youth is much different. Youth related to politics has been defined in various ways. The Young Liberals of Canada define youth as twenty-five and under. Others define younger voters as thirty and under to describe an age gap in voter turnout. (6) The Conservative's definition of "youth" for their Youth Conservative Caucus has been partially adopted for this study. The Youth Conservative Caucus is limited to member aged forty and under. To make a more clear date of change from a "young" Member of Parliament to an "older" Member of Parliament, this study considers under forty to be "young". This appears to be more clear and concise than including those that have already turned forty and creates a stricter guideline to a definition that many would probably argue is already too expansive.

As mentioned earlier, age has been consistently ignored when studying the membership of legislatures and the profiles of legislators. Studlar et al. contend that "occupation, region, party affiliation and previous offices ... gender and ethnicity" have all been studied in face of "Canada's growing demographic diversity and self-image of inclusiveness". (7) Even with the extent of this list, the age of the legislator and the role his or her age may influence decision making has not been adequately addressed. Age was considered by Trimble and Tremblay in 2003, but this is in the context of comparing age of election between men and women. The authors state that "Canadian women politicians tend to be older than their male counterparts, perhaps in part because women often delay candidacy until their children are grown." (8) For Trimble and Tremblay age is a variable, but not one isolated on its own.

Some may question the utility of studying youth membership in parliament at all. Maybe legislatures are just a part of the political system where youth are not an important factor. Possibly it takes years of life experience and time in the work force or raising a family to help a Member of Parliament develop a well-rounded understanding of society and sympathy for the average Canadian voter. It is conceivable that youth in parliament is a subject irrelevant and not in need of study. There are a number of reasons to reject these claims. First of all, with the recent decline in youth participation in politics, any work considering the problem of youth's disengagement from politics should be welcome. It is unclear whether or not enhancement of younger member representation and participation would change the direction of youth political engagement, but it can be argued that political representation can have a notable impact. Writing on African-Americans in United States Congress, Katherine Tate argues that representation can be powerfully symbolic and be composed of much more than "policy representation or service". (9) Some aspects of political learning and political socialization may be enlightened for youth in Canadian by having those closer to their generation fulfill meaningful roles in the political system. Secondly the numbers on youth in parliament simply do not exist anywhere else in such a comprehensive manner. This study produces figures for members under forty which have not appeared in other academic works. The empirical data provides evidential information for discussion and debate.

The empirical element of this work is divided up into two parts following...