Lest we forget (our duty to cast a vote)
Canadians could wear a poppy to commemorate Remembrance Day. They could observe two minutes of silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Both of those gestures, small as they might be, are welcome enough. But Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew had a much better suggestion this week as to how to honour the memory and sacrifice of veterans: voting.
Mr. Kinew, speaking at the premiers’ conference in Halifax, said practising democracy is the best way to thank those who fought to defend it. “As someone who just went through an election recently, I’m very, very mindful of the sacrifices that the veterans of our great country have made so that each and every one of us can participate in this strong democracy.”
A lot of discourse focuses on the rights of Canadians: what the government owes us. Not enough space is given to the notion of duty: what we owe to each other, our communities and our country. Mr. Kinew’s excellent notion speaks to that sense of obligation, as opposed to a sense of entitlement.
If voting is a moral duty, just how are Canadians faring in discharging it? The short answer is: poorly. Voter turnout was a relatively health 79 per cent in the 1962 federal election, the first vote in which First Nations peoples were fully included.
As the accompanying chart shows, turnout softened somewhat over the subsequent two-and-a-half decades, but still hovered around the 75-per-cent mark, with the occasional dip. But voter participation started to decline with the election of 1993, and has trended downward ever since. In 2021, turnout was 62.6 per cent, down sharply from 67 per cent in 2019. The elections of 2006 and 2015, which saw incumbent governments turfed, were exceptions to the general downward drift.
Canada is not alone in this growing electoral apathy. Turnout in the United Kingdom followed a similar pattern of a decline starting in the early 1990s. France saw record abstention in its most recent presidential election in 2022. Even Australia, where failure to vote results in a fine, is not immune. In 2022, 90 per cent of Australians voted – much higher than in Canada, but still the lowest since compulsory voting began in 1925.
What’s driving the falling turnout? One answer could be Canada’s first-past-the-post system. Countries with some sort of proportional representation system tend to have higher turnouts. But that explanation seems insufficient for why turnout continues to fall, and is down markedly from the late 1980s. (In fact, there are more parties represented in the House of Commons today than in 1988, when voter participation was much higher.)
Negative campaigning is surely part of the reason. If parties aim to not just win support, but suppress that of their opponents, that will have an impact. But negative campaigns are no new innovation: Progressive Conservative leader Brian Mulroney was accused of being a traitor over his free-trade proposal in the 1988 election. Despite the fiery rhetoric, voter turnout stayed steady compared to the 1984 election.
Regional cleavages are another part of the puzzle. If you are a Liberal voter in rural Alberta, or a Conservative voter in downtown Toronto, there is scant reason to rush to the polls. There are far too many parts of the country that one of the major parties has effectively written off.
Ultimately, though, the choice – indeed, the duty – to vote rests with individual Canadians. The decision to cast a ballot is a choice to affirm the voter’s connection to a wider community, and to the nation. And it’s a choice, as Mr. Kinew has wisely pointed out, that honours those who fought, and too often died, to secure our democratic freedoms.
