Young activists mobilize to maintain their influence within Quebec Liberal Party

While the Liberals are expected to meet this weekend in Lévis, young activists, between 16-25, are mobilizing to maintain their influence in the choice over the next leader.

“We have already done some field work and mobilization in advance to get as many young people as possible to vote against the proposal,” said Youth commission President of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), Christian-Alex Deschênes, in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Currently, young members of the PLQ account for 33 per cent of the votes in the leadership. The Montarville Liberal Association proposes a system change so that each member gets one vote, citing “systematic discrimination based on age.”

Association President Michèle Bureau said she expected to see resistance within her political party.

“When we dig a little deeper, we see that there is a disproportion between the weighted vote of young people compared to regular members (…) A young vote could be worth up to 10 times the vote of a regular member,” explained Bureau.

The proposal will be debated on Friday evening.

The regional president of the youth commission for Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Maïa Gonthier, said that “it will be important to have a lot of young people to oppose the resolution.”

Currently, the rules state that in the leadership race, each of the 125 ridings is worth 2,000 points for a total of 250,000. These points are distributed to candidates as a percentage of the vote for members aged 26 and over, and then 125,000 points are added for members aged 25 and under.

The youth commission says they want to “compromise” and redistribute 125,000 youth member points to each constituency, so that a constituency would have 2,000 points for its members over 25 and 1,000 points for those 25 and under.

According to 35-year-old activist Alexandre Tremblay-Michaud, he says it’s too late to change the rules of the race.

“It is the responsibility of leadership candidates not to just contact people who are over 25. They must go and rally young people between 16 and 25. (…) Those who will vote for the next leader in the majority, I hope are not even members of the party yet,” he said.

The five candidates for the Liberal leadership – include Messrs. Beauchemin and Milliard, former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, former federal minister Pablo Rodriguez and tax lawyer Marc Bélanger. They have all positioned themselves against reducing the influence of young people in the race.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews