CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Lowering the Provincial Voting Age to 16

When Nova Scotia’s legislature reconvenes, members will deliberate over whether 16- and 17-year-olds should vote in provincial elections. The question arrives through a private member’s bill from Hannah Okafor, a Halifax-area MLA who would lower the voting age from 18. Scotland, Wales and Austria have already done so, though a comparable bill in Canada’s Parliament was defeated some time back.

Okafor contends that sixteen-year-olds who drive, work and pay taxes have earned the franchise, and that many follow current affairs more attentively than their parents. Before drafting the legislation she toured fourteen high schools, and “their questions about housing and climate,” she remarks, “were sharper than anything I hear in the legislature.”

Dr. Graham Thibault, a political scientist at Chebucto University, arrives at the same position by a different route. His research indicates that citizens who vote in their first eligible election are far likelier to keep voting for life. Eighteen, unfortunately, is when many young people have just relocated for school or work and are not registered at their new address; sixteen-year-olds are still at home and in a classroom, and considerably more accessible.

Ray Desrosiers, the Opposition critic for democratic institutions, observes that the law otherwise treats sixteen-year-olds as minors: they cannot sign a lease, buy a lottery ticket or serve on a jury. “Why should voting be the exception?” he asks. He would prefer the province to prioritize civic education and revisit the idea in a decade.

Colin Mercer, who teaches social studies in Truro, has repeatedly observed that most teenagers uncritically reproduce their parents’ opinions. “And the moment my students can vote,” he anticipates, “every lesson on current events will be scrutinized by someone searching for partisanship.”

Maya Lindqvist, sixteen, works twenty hours a week at a Bridgewater grocery store. Income tax is deducted from every paycheque, and the provincial government sets the minimum wage. “I’m not asking for special treatment,” she insists. “I just want a say in the rules I already live by.”

The governing party remains noncommittal, and members will vote according to conscience.

Before reading this, I would have sided with Mr. Desrosiers; Dr. Thibault’s research has 6. Choose…confirmed my misgivingsleft me tornwon me overdeepened my doubts. Mr. Desrosiers stresses that sixteen-year-olds remain minors in law, yet we already let them 7. Choose…sign a leaseserve on a jurybuy lottery ticketsget behind the wheel, which is surely riskier than marking a ballot. Mr. Mercer’s fear that teenagers parrot their parents hardly persuades me: countless adults vote as their spouses do, and nobody proposes 8. Choose…sending them back to civics classdisenfranchising themscrutinizing their opinionsregistering them by address. The clincher is timing, since a first ballot cast while 9. Choose…newly independentanchored to home and schoolearning a first wagesettling in at an unfamiliar new address tends to become a lifelong habit. And Ms. Lindqvist’s paycheque is her best argument: she deserves a voice in 10. Choose…the policies setting her paywho may sign a leasewhat the civics classes ought to coverwhere young voters register. Stronger civics classes, certainly, but starting now, not in a decade.