A few hundred students gathered in Montreal and Quebec City under the slogan “Elections: A Trap for Fools” ( Élections, piège à cons in French) to protest, among other things, the lack of parties that truly represent them, two days before general elections in which their age group has the lowest voter turnout rates.
In addition to demanding political representation of their interests in the National Assembly, the Coalition de résistance pour l’unité étudiante (CRUES)—which brings together student associations across the province and represents 30,000 members—spoke out against future cuts to education, lamented the state of its institutions, and denounced the cost of living, which is too high for many students.
“The political class doesn’t give a damn about us,” a CRUES spokesperson told the crowd before him. “Elections are a trap for fools—not because we’re fools, but because we need to break free from a system where our only political leverage is a vote every four years,” he said.
CRUES’s head of internal affairs, Sophie Bouchard, echoed this sentiment in an interview with The Canadian Press. “If people don’t believe in the democratic process, it’s perhaps because the government is preventing us from believing in it,” she argued, adding that civic actions, such as strikes and protests, are more effective in getting elected officials to listen.
“At some point, they’ll have no choice but to listen to us because, in the end, it’s not just a little piece of paper that’s going to make much of a difference,” said Bouchard.
Isabelle Lacroix, a professor of applied politics at the Université de Sherbrooke, said that this was precisely the justification most often cited to explain voter absenteeism—a growing phenomenon across all age groups during elections, but particularly prevalent among young people.
She defines it as a withdrawal on the part of citizens who have the right to vote and are eligible to do so, but who voluntarily refuse to do so because the process or the issues do not resonate with them.
A vicious cycle
According to the Statistical Snapshot on Youth Aged 15 to 29, people aged 18 to 34 have the lowest voter turnout rate, with just over 54 per cent of this demographic not having voted in the 2022 provincial elections.
Élections Québec reports that 66.15 per cent of those registered on the voter rolls, across all age groups, voted in 2022, meaning that just over 2.1 million Quebecers—about one-third of the electorate—did not go to the polls.
She emphasized that abstention does not necessarily mean political disengagement. “Young people—and this is a well-documented trend—will continue to be significantly involved in socially and politically relevant issues,” she stated. She added that the impact of actions such as protests or volunteer work provides concrete evidence of political demands, whereas marking an “X” in a voting booth might seem like a minor gesture.
“We cannot assume that everyone who does not vote does so out of a lack of interest,” Bouchard argued. “Political life goes beyond putting a little X in a circle once every four years.”
She emphasized that the 125 elected members of the National Assembly were not representative of the full range of realities in Quebec, noting that their profiles—as “the wealthy and friends of the wealthy”—overlapped, forming a “democratic system that doesn’t look much like a democracy” .
“This is the problem with a system that has failed to adapt to the different demands young people have regarding how politics works,” said Prof. Lacroix, referring to a participatory democracy with which citizens no longer identify.
She explained that the process of participatory democracy requires citizens to use their votes to make their demands heard by the person they have chosen to elect. But when citizens become discouraged from using their vote to advocate for their needs, a vicious cycle sets in, giving ever more power to those who choose to exercise their right to vote—whether or not their views represent the majority.
For the political scientist, one possible solution would be to counter democratic disillusionment by emphasizing what works within the democratic process and the results it produces.
For other cynics, the Parti NUL could be a viable option.
It offers the opportunity to express this very dissatisfaction by voting for their party, whose mission is to provide an accurate indication of the number of voters who felt that none of the options available to them were worth choosing.
Bouchard declined to say whether she would vote.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
Add CityNews Montreal as a trusted source on Google to see more local stories from us.
