Philip Cross: The sad story of Justin Trudeau’s ‘youthful idiots’

Young voters helped give Trudeau a majority in 2015. The policy decade that followed was not good for them, as many now realizeYou can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.All Canadians are feeling the stress of chronic slow economic growth, high prices, unaffordable housing and faltering collective confidence in our future, but young people are especially affected. We older folk are obviously sympathetic to their worsening plight over the past decade. Everyone is. But it’s also best not to forget young people’s support was key to propelling Justin Trudeau to an unexpected majority in 2015. Our generation’s job is to say, as our parents said to us: “We told you so!”Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Despite their elders’ advice, young people voted in droves for Trudeau. Abacus found youth preferred the Liberals to the Conservatives by more than two to one. And they were enthusiastic: according to Elections Canada, voter turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds jumped from 38.8 per cent in 2011 to 57.1 per cent in 2015.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againInterested in more newsletters? Browse here.Trudeau’s election raised hopes for generational change. Trudeau retained the job of minister of youth and created the Prime Minister’s Youth Council as an advisory board. His youthful appearance helped land a Vogue cover shoot with his wife. A cover story in Rolling Stone asking “Is he the free world’s best hope?” summarized how Trudeau briefly became a beacon for the worldwide woke movement.There were signs early on, however, that Trudeau was more interested in massaging his own ego than actually solving problems. Basking in the glow of his surprising election victory, the new PM bragged about leaving doubters “in the dust.” This was a precursor to what in his recent book, The Prime Ministers, J.D.M. Stewart characterizes as the “hubris, smugness, (and) seemingly endless belief in his own indispensability” that eventually turned Canadians off.Trudeau did little in office to reward the naïve faith young people placed in him. By almost any measure, they fared worse in the Trudeau years than before — which is not surprising given his complete absence of a managerial track record in delivering results. Job opportunities dried up in a sluggish economy while competition grew from a deliberately expanded immigrant labour force. Incomes were squeezed by rising prices. And housing costs soon rose far out of reach for most young people. The combination of soaring housing costs and stagnant incomes left many young people trapped in prolonged adolescence, with more than a third of 20- to 34-year-olds still living with their parents in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.By 2024, more than half of young people reported feeling pessimistic about their financial future, according to a survey by the Canadian Mental Health Association. Their pride in being Canadian has plunged, with an Ipsos poll finding four in 10 people under 35 would be willing to become U.S. citizens.

As Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson recently observed in Breaking Point, disillusioned “young people are not asking how to get ahead, but how to get out.”Not surprisingly, young voters quickly withdrew their electoral support for Trudeau. Initially, this was reflected in lower voter turnout among youth in 2019 and 2021, which played a major role in denying him another majority government. By 2025, however, disillusioned young people were switching their votes to the Conservative party, with Nanos showing 49.3 per cent voting Conservative versus just 30 per cent for the Liberals. The shift was most pronounced among young men, who increasingly resented the woke policies advocated by Trudeau’s unrelenting preachiness, which “cast them as privileged when in fact they are struggling and insecure,” according to Ibbitson and Bricker.In his book The Future of Capitalism, Paul Collier tells how the Marxist populist Jeremy Corbyn corralled support among “youthful idiots” to propel him to the leadership of the U.K. Labour Party — against the wishes of most of the party’s MPs, whose jobs were very much at stake in the leadership choice. Like Corbyn, Justin Trudeau harnessed the youth vote to help win a majority in 2015, but in his case it was MPs who benefited and young people who paid the price.Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.