In a TV commercial to encourage young people to vote, a young person is in front of a large crowd, everyone is cheering, yet the young person is frozen and unable to speak. Someone then asks, “Why remain silent when everyone is listening?”

The problem is that the government and the media are not listening to young voters. As a young adult, it has been very discouraging to see the government, as well as the media, turn its back on the young people of this country. What possible incentive do young people have to become involved in the electoral process?

When we do get involved in public policy issues, such as abortion, we find that we are ignored. For the past seven years, an annual pro-life march has taken place through downtown Ottawa in May. Last month 3,500 people took part, half of whom were teenagers and young adults.

We are trying desperately to make others aware that every Canadian deserves fundamental freedom and the right to life, yet in three of the past four years our voice has been silenced by media in not covering our event, and only a handful of politicians have made known their presence at the march.

Even more discouraging is the fact that a handful of protesters, organized by the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, was parading outside a Toronto hotel where Stephen Harper was speaking. Then, the media had no problem in shooting pictures for the newspapers or filming for the TV newscasts.

This might not seem significant to some people, but the perception among most young people I know is that issues of importance to the media and the government always make their way onto the evening newscasts and the morning newspaper. This reinforces the belief that our message does not matter. The government and the media have an agenda and if the rest of Canada doesn’t fit the mould then they don’t count.

So my question is, why should we vote? Every time we stand up and voice our concerns, we are rejected. Young people have not been silent: we have been silenced.

Karen Young is LifeCanada’s office manager.

This letter was printed in The Ottawa Citizen, June 26, 2004. Reprinted with permission of the author.