The Member for M. Mustafa Hirji posits that it is for three major reasons:
1. Young People prefer the world of moral absolutes to the shades of fuzzy gray on which electoral politics are founded.
2. Idealistic Young People are put off by the obvious cynicism of electoral politics.
3. Young People do not use many government services, nor do we pay for them.

To these postulations, Mr. Speaker, I offer the following refutations:
1. Election campaigns represent the only time in which the issues about which we care - poverty and gay marriage, to repeat the examples used by the Honourable Member - addressed. Election campaigns are a time of moral absolutes. Moreover, today's Young People are, if anything, *better* equipped to deal with the realities of politics, having been raised in a very cynical age.
2. There is undoubtedly something to this, and it's fair to say that many of the most idealistic people I know don't vote. However, this generation is hardly the most idealistic one to come along - why was voter turnout higher among Young People in the sixties? Politicians were no less corrupt, and Young People were certainly no more cynical.
3. This is true, and may be relevant. However, it's an argument that can be used to explain why Young People don't vote. It's not an argument that can be used to explain why children of the late seventies and early eighties don't vote, and that seems to be what's really up for debate - why *today's* Young People don't vote, while Young People of all previous generations have voted at much higher rates.

The arguments I made on my own blog (I offer my apologies to this House, Mr. Speaker, as I am unable to make links to individual entries work) are geared towards answering this question. In brief, the four explanations I offered were
1. Many Young People have never seen a change in government.
2. Polling makes voting seem redundant.
3. Young People lack the sense of duty that our elders had.
4. Contact with young politicians turns Young People off of politics.

The Honourable Member asks why polling would affect Young People disproportionately, to which I answer that voters who came of political age in earlier generations had already gotten in the habit of voting before polling came along and removed so much of the perceived purpose. Young People, by contrast, have never seen an election in which the results were in doubt, and see no reason to even acquire the democratic habit in the first place.

Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member further questions why, if our parents' generation rebelled against the argument of voting as a duty, why they are now voting more than us. The answer is that many of them never did - our parents' generation votes less than their parents' did. And, since our generation is getting mixed messages from our parents' generation, with some members of it urging us to vote and others showing little interest, it is predictable that members of our generation will take the path of least resistance and not vote, leading to even lower voter turnouts with each succeeding generation.

To close, Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct the House's attention towards the figurative pudding, wherein the proof may be found. If the explanations put forward by the Honourable Member for M. Mustafa Hirji are the correct ones, we should see a pattern in which, in every election, Young People don't vote but in which as they age they take up voting. If his explanations are correct, Mr. Speaker, an individual's likelihood of voting in a given election is linked to that individual's age at the time of that election. This is not the pattern we see - eighteen to twenty-five year olds voted much more in the eighties than they do now, and more still in the sixties. My own explanations, Mr. Speaker, explain this, tying an individual's likelihood of voting in a given election not to that individual's age at that time, but to that individual's date of birth.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Honourable Member: if his explanations are the correct ones, why has voter turnout been steadily declining among eighteen to twenty-five year olds? I urge him to consider the trend, and not merely the snapshot.