Asper Centre Clinic Reflection
Voting Age Challenge Update By Sarah Nematallah
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n November of 2019, the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights and Justice for Children and Youth, in partnership with other child rights organizations, initiated efforts to challenge the minimum voting age for federal elections set by the Canada Elections Act, SC 2000, c 9. This legislation, which allows only Canadian citizens over the age of 18 to vote, places a restriction on democratic participation that is discordant with the Supreme Court’s statement in Frank v Canada (AG), 2019 SCC 1 that “the Charter tethers voting rights to citizenship, and citizenship alone”. Since fall 2019, a significant amount of work on the voting age challenge has been done. With
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thoughtful and supportive oversight from Cheryl Milne, Asper Centre Clinic students completed applications for funding to support the challenge. Students also compiled research on topics such as voting and cognitive capacity, voting ages in other countries, and voting and political theory. Finally, students prepared a curriculum on voting in Canada that was implemented by partner organizations in consultations that invited youths to share their thoughts on whether the voting age should be lowered. When I joined the Asper Centre Clinic in the fall of 2020, I had the opportunity to collaborate with other Clinic students to build on this work from the previous year in two important ways – identifying non-legal experts who have written on ideas that support legal arguments for lowering the voting age; and preparing the initial drafts of pleadings.
First, my Clinic colleague and I took a closer look at experts who have conducted non-legal research on voting ages and youth decision making. We developed a short list of experts from around the
Asper Centre Outlook 2021
