Youth Senate to Guard and Protect Political Narrative

Youth Senate to Review Policy Proposals

I propose a Youth Senate as the body providing sober second thought for each party participating in liberal democratic parliamentary democracy.

Participation has an age limit of 25 years. On the Youth Senator's 26th birthday, that Senator is no longer eligible to be a Youth Senator and must retire.

The Youth Senate is not to be a policy gatekeeper. It cannot veto or directly amend any policy proposal. It can only advise, persuade and influence. Party policies must continue to be passed by party membership as is the duty and responsibility of the membership.

The Senate will likely be at least as broad as the jurisdiction of the party it is part of, provincial or federal. ( I suggest it could be equally relevant in municipal government.) I suggest it should be organized constituency by constituency to ensure maximum equity of access to the role at the grassroots level, surely the minimum requirement for liberal democracies. This will be the obvious choice for independent candidates. Thus each constituency and municipal government could have its own Youth Senate.

The Narrative
The party's (or municipality's - used interchangeably as suits the situation) Narrative must be the starting point. That means work must be done to prepare and present that Narrative. The Narrative will probably contain the philosophy the party is premised upon - its reason to be. It will include a vision of what it means to live in that liberal democratic society as envisioned by the party's philosophy to be realized in policies and programs.

Guardian and Protector
The Youth Senate will review every policy put forward to challenge that policy's adherence to and compliance with the Narrative. Does this policy support and enhance the Narrative? Will daily living with this policy fit with the vision of living with the Narrative as the Narrative describes it? Does the Narrative, a living document subject to change to accommodate new knowledge and insight, need to be amended to maintain relevance to the current and foreseeable state of society?

Advantage of Having Youth Senate
Youth will be directly engaged and empowered to make a difference in their world today.

Youth will become educated to the needs and aspirations of other people and demographic groups in society and learn how to include them in society's governance as their vision is broadened and understanding is deepened.

Youth will develop leadership capacity with communications skills and empathy.

Youth will be empowered to take ownership of the society of which they are a part.

As a permanent infrastructural body supporting society's development, policy development will be encouraged on an on-going basis, rather than the stop-and-go action characteristic of party policy conventions which may or may not be held once every two years, but every two years at best.

All society can become engaged in participatory democracy, either through independents or parties, as participants choose. Each member of society can make an informed choice as to which channel to use to turn that policy into action.

Already Existing
We already have the Canadian Youth Assembly that reviews and argues policy changes at the federal level, even with local impact. It serves a similar (or perhaps the exact same) purpose as the proposed Youth Senate, but I don't think it has been formally incorporated into policy development infrastructure.

Each party has a Youth wing. Often that means a ready, willing, eager and capable source of volunteers for activities, a human resource for political grunt work. The Youth Senate helps to move beyond what is most often simply physical activity.

Policy Development
Policies will continue to be developed as people see fit and as is already done within party structures. Any member of society has the ability to develop policy and defend it to other members of society. Parties have specific governance for this function. I'm recommending parties include their own Youth Senate as part of the development process.

Adoption of this proposal may mean eventual change in the way policies are presented to party membership and formally adopted. The Youth Senate helps to make that development process much more transparent and accountable.

The transparency afforded by the Youth Senate may bring non-aligned citizens to choose the channel through which they will participate in society's development, perhaps even dyed-in-the-wool non-voters!

Conclusion
I believe the adoption of Youth Senates by parties across Canada will help develop political engagement among youth and across all demographic groups. I believe it can be a powerful catalyst to truly participatory democracy wherein citizens can experience what it means to live every day as a democratic citizen.

Mike

Error Alert on Government -in-Waiting - Transparent Governance

I believe I misunderstood and therefore misrepresented the ERCB regulatory process as related to gas leases.
I now understand that all gas leases, in fact all gas and oil leases, are executed with the provision that the ERCB may make a ruling at some date in the future that could negatively affect the value of the lease.

I'm sure that isn't the wording, but you get the idea.

That means even the ERCB can't know for certain what situations may arise that will affect any given lease and the ERCB can act on the side of safety by shutting in the reserve before any or any more negative consequences of operating that lease can occur.

It's then in the best interests of the prospective lessee to examine the situation as carefully as possible to attempt to foresee any such negative situation arising.

I suspect the gas leases in question were let after the bitumen leases and then it would be reasonable to react to the bitumen lessees' concerns in precedence over the later gas lessees' concern.

Too bad my argument still makes assumptions, but they seem like reasonable assumptions.

I don't think my error about the regulatory process undoes my argument for transparency in accountability to Albertans, even though it distracts from the point of the argument.

Mike