Vancouver’s new City Council, l-r: Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Colleen Hardwick, Pete Fry, Adriane Carr and Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and Councillors Melissa De Genova, Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe, Lisa Dominato, and Sarah Kirby-Yung
In 2015, when Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau was sworn into office as Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister, as he and his family alighted from the bus that brought he and his family, and his new cabinet for the Swearing-In Ceremony at Rideau Hall on that sunny, chill November 4th 2015 afternoon, the first thing you noticed was not just the gender balance, but the relative youth of the cabinet he had selected to make decisions on behalf of Canadians. The average age of age of his cabinet is 50.7 years, the youngest cabinet in Canadian history, signaling generational change.
From 29-year-old Burlington MP Karina Gould, the youngest elected person ever to sit in cabinet, who was given responsibility for Electoral Reform after 31-year-old Peterborough — Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef, an Afghan refugee, was made Minister of the Status of Women, to 45-year-old François-Philippe Champagne, who represents the riding of Saint-Maurice — Champlain in the House of Commons of Canada, who was made Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and 39-year-old Ahmed Hussen, a former National President of the Canadian Somali Congress, who was made Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship for the Government of Canada, generational change was brought to the Cabinet decision-making.
Note. 35-year-old Bardish Chagger, MP for Waterloo, Ontario, assumed the responsibilities of Leader of the Government in the House of Commons on August 19, 2016, in addition to the responsibilities she already held as Minister of Small Business, while 36-year-old Canadian MP for Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Mélanie Joly became Minister of Canadian Heritage, and now the Minister of Tourism, Official Languages & La Francophonie.
A young cabinet lead by a 43-year-old Prime Minister with a young family represented what VanRamblings had written about during the six-month lead-up to the 2015 Canadian general election: generational change.
With the midterm election in the United States just complete, not only have we witnessed more women elected to government in the United States than ever before (110 women in Congress, double the number of only two years ago), what we also witnessed was (you guessed it): generational change, the average age of Congress almost a decade younger than the last Congress, from 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (the youngest member ever elected to Congress) to Abby Finkenhauer — who is just a few months older — who flipped an Iowa seat from red to blue, and who ran on a platform of worker and reproductive justice; Max Rose, a Purple Heart veteran, registered nurse Lauren Underwood, water rights attorney Xochitl Torres Small, openly bisexual newcomer Katie Hill, and Colorado’s first black Congressman Joe Neguse — all of whom are under 35 — lowering the average age of a Congressperson from 58 years to 49 years.
Vancouver’s new City Council, l-r: Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Colleen Hardwick, Pete Fry, Adriane Carr and Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and Councillors Melissa De Genova, Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe, Lisa Dominato, and Sarah Kirby-Yung
Look at the photo directly above & what do you see? Generational change.
Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Pete Fry, Melissa De Genova, Michael Wiebe, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung — seventeen to thirty-nine years younger than outgoing City Councillors Raymond Louie, George Affleck, Elizabeth Ball, Tim Stevenson, Kerry Jang (and Geoff Meggs & Tony Tang, before them): all, together, representing generational change.
No more will Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillor Melissa De Genova, and City Council’s new Budget & Finance Director, be made to feel that, as she expounded on the campaign trail, and as she has written many, many times that, in the last term on Council, she was designated to the role of “a child sitting at the kid’s table”, her intelligence and her passion for social justice ignored by her “older” Council colleagues.
VanRamblings continues to be heartened at the election of persons of conscience to Vancouver City Hall, and the wisdom of voters in selecting what we continue to believe will emerge as the most progressive Vancouver City Council in more than 46 years. Whether by dint of youthful vigour and the ideals and passion of a millennial generation of decision-makers at Council, or the youthful and progressive ideas of Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and Councillors Colleen Hardwick, Adriane Carr, and Jean Swanson, hope lies on the near horizon toward realizing a fairer and more just city for all, and very much the city we need, representing every citizen of Vancouver.
