Tyler Sommers' Blog

I’m going to begin a series entitled “What I’ve learned from the CYA” and in order for things to make sense to all you readers, I’m going to have to outline some of the history of the CYA. This is going to be fairly brief (relative to how much depth and length I am able to provide) and will at very least ensure you understand what I’m talking about in future entries in this series. Here goes!

The Canadian Youth Assembly has had a very unique history, one that is experimental and has been an amazing learning experience for so many young Canadians. I have been honoured to be a part of it and look forward to making more history with my peers in the years to come!

Pre-dating the CYA was an attempt to establish a new Canadian model parliament. This venture attracted hundreds of youth throughout Canada and began with much interest and enthusiasm. I signed up as a volunteer, knowing that many organizations of this nature experience a shortage of volunteers and I wanted to be where I could best serve Canadian youth; eventually I became the Elections Coordinator and was heading up the process for national elections.

Unfortunately this venture met its end at the hands of a problem that plagues youth involvement the world over: the taste of and need for power. The de facto head of the organization simply didn’t operate in the fashion that the membership wanted (this being a model parliament there was a heightened expectation of democratic organizational building). The unilateral decision making of the de facto head and the passion for democracy among the members led to a power struggle that ended with virtually all members leaving the organization and those who remained being locked out of the public forum (which served as the main communicative method for the membership and volunteers). The model parliament never recovered from this and continued to face the same power struggle with each renewed attempt.

At this point many of the former participants resolved never to become involved in a venture of this type for fear of having their time and work amount to nothing more than a ridiculous power struggle. As I was in the middle of the entire problem I had made such a conclusion, but was soon moved by the passion and commitment the former members held for developing something they could influence, build, and that could bring young people into community involvement.

The CYA was born out of a devotion to represent youth, to ensure that the membership made decisions and with the promise that the power struggles which tore apart the model parliament would no longer be an issue (to this day we have maintained these promises without fail!). The first step in creating the CYA was for approximately 30 youth to come together to write the bylaws and governing documents for the organization. While this took much longer than other methods, we felt that it was absolutely necessary for our membership to know that they created the basic foundation upon which the entire CYA would operate and that this would ensure that they maintained a piece of the CYA for as long as it exists. These youth were from various walks of life, lived across Canada, were of various religious beliefs, ethnicities, and political tilts, but learned to put aside all of these differences in order to work toward a common goal.

Drafting the bylaws was no small feat and while there was plenty of debate, there was also a great deal of understanding and compromise. The bylaws section of our forum has been archived so that everyone is able to view and understand the process. Drafting these bylaws has been and will remain a high point for the organization and a tangible proof of what youth are capable of accomplishing!

From there the CYA become a place of debate and discussion while the volunteers worked diligently to incorporate the organization as a national non-profit. This process (from the initial bylaw discussion to incorporation) took approximately a year and in that time the interest of many members faded. Waiting for a year to incorporate seemed to be a little long for many members, especially those with high hopes and aspirations for their role in the CYA and the CYA itself.

The CYA spent a considerable amount of time building relationships with youth, politicians and other leaders, and other youth organizations. Many members were unaware of the complexity involved in building and maintaining relationships and our membership itself. This led to some inquiries and criticism regarding the length of time we had to wait before the first official elections would take place. Needless to say, we built the organization slowly and on the advice of the membership, which meant a great deal of discussion (and time) before many decisions were made.

It soon became apparent that the amount of time we were taking to prepare for the election was costing us a great deal of activity and members and so we set a date for the first election (one week at the end of February 2010). Setting this date got the various CYA parties more involved than they had previously been and it soon became apparent that the Liberal Youth Party (LYPC) was the clear frontrunner. The main competition (in regard to activity) was the Assembly of New Democratic Youth (ANDY), which maintained activity among several members. The Conservative Youth Party (CYPC) had faced a plethora of leadership issues (similar to those that broke down the model parliament) which led to many young conservatives leaving the organization.

As the election neared many members began to question why there wasn’t more media coverage (there was some) and why thousands of youth hadn’t signed up to participate in the election as voters. There are a couple of answers here: There was little media attention because any media that had learned about the CYA had done so through their own research and investigation, or had been contacted by one of our members, rather than a volunteer. Why, you ask? Well this was the first election the CYA had ever held or been a part of (the model parliament never made it close to having a real election) and with an electoral system being developed in house (a special thanks to Steven Heidel for that) there was no knowing what would happen and having an epic failure as our first image with many people would obviously be detrimental.

Tangent: youth-run organizations face an incredible amount of hurdles in that people assume that they are run by immature and unprofessional individuals and therefore cannot stand against youth-serving organizations run by experience veterans. This image has been one the CYA has worked to shake off with every public appearance we make: I strongly suggest that youth attending public events and meetings who represent any organization should dress as professional as they can muster and behave as professional as they can as well (being far too professional and serious is much better than being even slightly unprofessional).

Now the reason we didn’t have thousands of voters registered ties into the lack of media attention. We relied heavily on the candidates to spread the word and gather votes for themselves and only a handful seemed to make any real effort to accomplish this task (it’s not easy to convince people to register, so I’m not faulting everyone). Also, the CYA wasn’t a well-established and highly recognized organization; getting people to register for things is difficult enough when they know of the organization, but convincing them to become involved in an organization they’d never heard of before? Well that’s a whole other level of difficulty.

The election period came (it was a week) and votes began to be casted, so many at various points our server couldn’t handle the traffic (which was unfortunate but outside of our control). There was only one major hiccup when the registration information stopped being sent to voters as there was a limit on the amount of emails our server would send (anti-spam measures), luckily Steven fixed this rather promptly and things continued rolling.

We ended up registering 466 people, with 224 turning out to vote (some candidates didn’t even vote for themselves, unfortunately) and while some had expected much more than this (in turnout and media) and therefore deemed it a miserable failure, for the CYA it was a phenomenal success. Not many organizations can state that they’ve held public elections that went off without any major issues on their first attempt and we learned a great deal about registration, voting, candidates, and elections themselves (you’ll read about that in future submissions to this series). We elected 46 Youth Representatives (YRs) and from there we hoped they would take the helm and begin to shape the CYA as they felt would best represent their peers.

Unfortunately this would not be the reality, as only a small handful of YRs got involved after the election period and we were required to refocus. This was a very shocking and abrupt reality check for me and I’ll talk about it in my next entry.