Freedom of speech has given us the legal right to complain about everything, including the government. And, complain we do, constantly. The only time that we have a chance to really make our opinions count is in an election, not around the water cooler or in coffee shops where as a matter of course we solve the world’s problems. We just had a federal election and instead of making our voices heard and be counted, we stayed home in record numbers. In fact this general election has the dubious honour of having the lowest voter turnout on record.

Only 59.1% of eligible Canadians voted in this election, in sharp contrast to the 1958 election when over 79% voted and elected Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker by a landslide. The pundits have been mulling over the problem of voter apathy and have come up with all sorts of reasons from no one really liked the party leaders to Canadians are more caught up in the American election than our own.

We now take voting for granted. Clearly we’ve forgotten how voting went from being a privilege to being a right. In pre-Confederation times, the right to vote was reserved mainly for affluent men who were property owners, had other assets of a specified value, or paid a specific amount in annual taxes or rent that qualified them. Of course women and members of certain religious and ethnic groups were not permitted to vote. The adoption of the Dominion Elections Act in 1920 signaled the change. Change was a long time coming and it was not until 1982 when the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into being that every Canadian citizen had the right to vote.

What can we do to shake Canadians out of their apathy? I think that if we don’t vote we should lose our right to complain.

Image courtesy Flickr