Today,Special Guest Jesse Donovan joins us for a discussion that asks the question :
Why do Young British Columbians Veer Left?
In 2010, after nearly a decade of BC Liberal rule, the youth unemployment rate in British Columbia had reached a staggering 13.8 percent. This was the highest it had been in the past seven years.
Under the BC Liberal Government, young British Columbians have faced many obstacles to their economic success. High unemployment, slow wage growth, and a disproportionate amount of part-time labour are some of the severe threats to the financial well-being of young British Columbians.
Under the BC Liberal government, young British Columbians have not only had to deal with high unemployment, but also incredibly slow wage growth. Between 2007 and 2010, the weekly wages of BC Youth have grown around 20 times slower than the weekly wages of British Columbians aged 25-54.
British Columbia is the anomaly among the successful Western Provinces. Young Canadians from Alberta and Saskatchewan have fared relatively well under their Conservative governments. While all Western Provinces experienced rising youth unemployment from 2008 to 2010, BC’s was by far the highest. Between 2008 and 2010, British Columbia’s youth unemployment rate increased by 5.8%. This is over twice as much as Manitoba’s increase and almost three times more than Saskatchewan in the same period.
Many young British Columbians are concerned and angry about their seemingly bleak economic future. They are right to be concerned and their anger is justified. There is, however, a worrying trend in how young people are directing these emotions.
Instead of demanding that governments remove impediments to success such as high taxes and cumbersome overregulation of business, young Canadians are responding to their economic insecurity by demanding extreme left-wing reforms to our economic system. Such reforms include levying enormous taxes on successful individuals and placing crippling regulatory measures on British Columbia’s businesses.
The misdirection of their anger was visible during the ‘Occupy Vancouver’ protests. These protests were led by youth who were concerned about their financial well-being and the future of their Nation. However, instead of putting the blame on the high taxes created by left-wing governments and regulatory red tape that impedes job creation, the protesters blamed successful Canadians and corporations.
The latest Provincial polling provides another example of a significant portion of young British Columbians favouring risky, left-wing economics. The most recent Angus Reid poll shows that the BC New Democratic Party will capture one out of every two voters between the ages of 18-34.
The future of our Province lies in the hands of BC’s youth. Will young British Columbians realize that a combination of low taxes and small government is the only path to economic freedom and success or will BC continue its path to becoming a left-wing economic basket-case like Spain or even Greece?
Hope is not lost for the future of conservatism in British Columbia. Fostering youth involvement in conservative politics will energize the current conservative movement as well as prepare the future conservative leaders of our Province and our Nation. The BC Conservative Youth Association has been created to accomplish these two goals. The movement is gaining in strength and support and will seek to counter the influence of the political left in British Columbia in the long-term future.
What do you think?
Bio
Jesse Donovan is a Political Science student at the University of Toronto. He was born and raised in North and West Vancouver. Jesse has served in the Canadian Armed Forces since 2010. Currently, he works as a Summer Intern for the BC Conservative Party. Jesse is also the President and Founder of the BC Conservative Youth Association, a grassroots organization for young conservatives in BC.
If you believed in free speech, you wouldn’t be censoring (you call it moderating!) comments. I thought the BC Conservatives stood for self reliance and personal responsibility. Even offensive speech needs protection from censors otherwise no-one truly has free speech at all.
I publish all comments even the ones that takes shots at me.
Of course the BC Conservatives stand for self reliance and personal responsibility.
As far as I know I don’t have a choice on the moderation part. I get a couple hundred spam comments per day a lot of which somehow get through the spam filter. I have to edit those out . They are not censored they are comments that don’t pertain to the blog. I publish all comments like I said even the ones that take shoots at me.
Thank you for reading today and for your thoughts.
It was seeing the way the NDP were doing all this evil onto society and finding it hard to get a job that made me look long and hard at how left wing politicians operate, how they abuse and mistreat a select few to embolden the hate of others for their own purposes and make others feel helpless until they give into the power of the left wing in hopes of joining their cause. The left has to destroy everything it can so that people are scared enough to OBEY their every suggestion, order and belief. The left may be able to offer that quiet voice of questioning but cannot be trusted with ideologically blinded power. They are more easily corrupted by power than responsible, mature conservative types.
I remember finishing h/school in 1992, just as the BC NDP under Harcourt were starting their long destructive march across the province. It was seeing this abuse of the public purse, abuse of the taxpayer by pouring non stop money, gifts and totally unfair favoratism such as government installed power, forced unionization, special laws to punish private companies and even more regulations crafted to give the left wing and unions special treatment and power at the expense of private, responsible, decent and honourable hard working people and the small to medium size businesses they operated. The NDP ran companies like Nalley’s potato chips right out of the province – just to name ONE example. We need to show youth that the NDP (the entire left wing for that matter) will make everyone else suffer at the expense of handing a few jobs to their friends they want to use as examples of how wonderful being a left wing stooge is. Youth: you will be made to suffer under the NDP so they can manipulate your anger to their seizing of power from you, your parents, family and friends. Don’t let them get away with this sick agenda of massive suffering.
I am a Vancouver youth, who graduated from high school just a few years ago and am now at a university.
The last paragraph of Frances touched upon some truths. First of all, the vocal teachers tend to be left-wing, which means they pass their ideas along. In grade 5, I was a Green Party supporter because my student teacher told us she supported them. Later on, I had several teachers express their leftist views and/or bash a centre-right figure. Some of the books we read were also by Margaret Atwood… enough said.
But I think a lot also has to do with realism vs. idealism. Many youth value the idealistic “social justice” (helping the poor, leveling the playing field) and especially environmentalism. It’s become a trend … a movement that the overachieving “cool kids” champion. Consider Enbridge: I suspect many youth oppose it partly because they feel it’s an underdog battle that’s trendy right now (defenders of nature and spirit bears vs. big oil and corporations).
Many also don’t consider that money doesn’t grow on trees and fail to look at the bigger picture and context. Sorry, but “balanced budgets” and “lower taxes” just don’t sound that sexy to most young people.
It’s not until later, when they start paying taxes and having to deal with their own finances that they take a second look at their political beliefs. Only later do they realize that throwing money at the disadvantaged may not help, but other responsible and fair policies might. Or that strong environmental standards and development can go hand in hand.
I don’t want to generalize about all young people. Some of them do think for themselves 😉 But I hope the future won’t be lost.
Right on!
I shall try to make this as calm as possible, although the above comment stated it very well.
The main problem is most young people come with an attitude that everything should be given to them. Here is a job, solve the problem. They cannot.
Here is a job, you might get dirty. Can’t have that.
I will train you, nope do not want to.
I pay 15 dollars an hour to start, nope I want 30 with no skills.
You begin to see a pattern?
And if they go to college and not drop out, they like to study things like Ancient Babylonion Astronomy, want the working people to pay for it, then when they graduate wonder why they cannot find a job.
Wow, boggles the mind.
My thoughts..
Your thoughts for the are right on. I have interviewed people like you describe and have in fact left the interview because we ask too many questions for a $12-15 per hour job.
Thank you for your comment.
I agree with what Frances has written and have some comments to add:
1. Young people have been taught that government is the solution to every problem. Got a problem? Get a program. All mainstream political parties offer this solution, and the left argues for more comprehensive solutions and thus is more attractive. That the solutions don’t work is not obvious until later. The theory, that government wizards and master minds can go into a room and solve any problem is very attractive-it is just a theory with no record of success.
2. What do we hear about the private sector and corporations? Greedy! Polluters!, etc. These are for the most part untrue, but a lie gets half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
3. The financial melt down in 2008 is ALWAYS blamed on the private sector, greed, Wall St, etc. This is nonsense, but this is the default media and education paradigm.
4. Young people have been taught that we are doomed, the world is going to end, we need to save the planet, and this is all due to “corporate greed”, “overconsumption”, etc. Who is going to save us? Government of course. That the glo warmer hysteria is unscientific nonsense is ignored. Again, even non socialist parties have consumed this kool aid, so once again the truth is buried beneath a huge pile of nonsense. So we have idiotic carbon taxes aimed at cutting CO2 emissions, when the latter have almost nothing to do with changes in the climate.
5. People are being taught that to be personally ambitious (in the financial sense) is greedy and not cool. Much better to “give back” and “make a difference”, which almost inevitably means some kind of government intervention (which of course always fails). Going out there and making a good living is giving back and making a difference, but young people are not taught this.
As for unemployment-there is no evidence, none at all, that shows that increasing the minimum wage helps those it was intended to help. It impairs access to the job market for young people, and anyone trying to live on a minimum wage isn’t going to make it, even if the minimum wage was to be increased substantially.
Somehow we conservatives have to find ways to get the truth out there.
We have to get the truth out there before the world falls apart in the fall.
Thank you for reading and commenting!
There are two British Columbias: the lower mainland/Vancouver Island and the rest. Or to put it another way: the resource-based communities and the service communities.
Vancouver and environs has – though it would never admit it – done very well because of the economic benefits it received from the mining and logging (and, to a lesser extent, farming) communities east and north. When I was growing up, in the B C interior many years ago, this was openly recognized in our community, with the comment “Canada stops at the Rockies, and B C stops at Hope” common among my elders when economics was discussed. From what I’ve heard and seen, things have not changed much.
So here you are with a large group of youth – and this is the Vancouver and area croud – already feeling entitled anyway because of the pernicious ‘self-esteem’ movement so prevalent in the schools and indoctrinated in mushy lefty sentiments, who further feel entitled because that is how it’s always been down there: the peons work up-country so the civilized folk can have their lattes, Robsonstrasse, etc.
Thanks for this Frances. it is a well thought out comment!
Have you seen the curriculum? I mean I went to high school in the 1990s and it was hard, hard left. I fondly remember having to read Marx and make a glowing essay about his works. Not kidding.
Groucho,Harpo,Chico or Karl?
Did you have to salute a Lenin statue when you handed the project in?
Did you use a pen or did they provide you with a hammer and a sickle ans a concrete slab?
Oh please. Have you read the curriculum today? In Socials 11, the primary place students will learn about government, there is only one mention of political ideology and it focuses on both socialism and conservatism. Besides that point introducing students to Marx, one of the most influential figures of Western political thought in the past 200 years, is not something we should shy away from. Students should be exposed to the range of political thoughts and the reasons behind their propagation.
And for Jesse’s comment below, you show what is wrong with conservatism in this continent. Because someone sees some virtue is socialist thought they are condemned to being Soviet communists? Please. We can learn from ideology both left and right. Should one reading this blog immediate equate the word “conservatism” with suppressing the rights of minorities, exploiting the poor or big business as people so often do?