Bill S-210 has an arresting title compared to the majority of those passing through the various levels of government in order to become law: “Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act.”

“The title of the legislation sends a fairly powerful message. There is absolutely no doubt about that,” said Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the leader of the government, in the House of Commons during a reading of the bill.

Bill S-210 is a federal, private member’s bill. As of June 2024, the bill has passed second reading and is in the report stage. It is meant to protect children and teenagers from exposure to age-inappropriate content. On paper, that seems like a good idea that most people would support. Protecting children is important, and much of the discussion during the House of Commons readings focused mainly on that—not the issues with privacy the bill poses. The details surrounding how age verification would work are nebulous, and the ones that are known raise privacy concerns.

During the readings, Liberal and NDP members of parliament mentioned some of those concerns alongside the ones about children. Conservative and Bloc Québécois representatives mainly focused on controlling who is able to watch pornography.

“Canadians want their children to be protected, but they are also wary about invasions of their privacy. Canadians have very little trust in the ability of the web giants to manage their information and private data,” said Anju Dhillon, a Liberal MP who represents Dorval-Lachine-LaSalle, in November 2023 when the bill was being discussed in its second reading, a rare stage to reach for a private member’s bill. People are also fearful, she said, of deliberate violations of privacy and data security breaches.

The Privacy & Access Council of Canada has pointed out that the sweeping provisions in the bill could endanger all Canadians’ privacy, not just underaged people. Currently, age verification could entail forcing people to upload pictures of their faces and government-issued IDs to watch porn online. Some of that data could be stored long term, creating easily found trails online. The bill does not set out clear terms to prevent this from happening.

Age verification technology has been criticized as immature and not adequately developed at a technological level. A recent report from France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties found that six of the leading age verification solutions did not respect users’ rights.

This is a particular stress on members of the 2SLBGTQIA+ community, who could face exposure and/or blackmail for their browsing history. Not everyone in the community is out, and the ability for others to access intimate data puts already marginalized people at further risk. For 2SLBGTQIA+ Canadians who live in rural areas, this can be especially scary as the online world is sometimes their only way to connect with queer culture.

There is not a lot of data specific to the porn-viewing habits of Canadian youth, with researchers denoting a need for more studies. A 2023 report from Common Sense Media found that around 73 percent of U.S. teens aged 13-17 had watched porn online. The same study found differences in the porn consumption of 2SLBGTQIA+ youth compared to their hetero peers—the former group was more likely to seek out porn intentionally, in an effort to explore and affirm their sexuality. Yet this bill and its sweeping provisions seems based on the idea that all youth engage in the same habits online (watching violent pornography where a woman is subjugated by a man; the concern being its influence) when that is simply not accurate.

Another critique of the bill has been that a VPN, which many youth know how to use, could be a way to get around age verification. The bill is meant to protect those under 18. They are arguably also the most internet and tech-savvy generation to exist and the bill is being created by people who have not grown up online in the same way, and may not be able to anticipate how young people will subvert provisions.

Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne is the chief architect and lead defender of the bill. A former Radio-Canada broadcaster who was appointed to the Senate in 2018, she was a guest on the “Law Bytes” podcast to debate it. In a January 2024 episode, she provided her rationale and defence against the criticism and concerns it has sparked. She explained to host Michael Geist that she has worked carefully on drafting the legislation and adding amendments for three years.

Miville-Dechêne responded to the issues Geist raised around privacy by saying that the bill had not specifically mandated exactly what age verification system would be used at this point, noting that technology evolves constantly. “No method is absolutely zero risk…we can erase the data. We can make sure that it is a mechanism that doesn’t go too far. But frankly, this is not in the bill. This is to be discussed afterwards. So how can you say the bill is dangerous?” Mivelle-Dechêne said.

“In some ways, it seems to me, that makes it even more dangerous,” Geist retorted.

A bill meant to protect vulnerable members of our society should not further marginalize others. If there are not sweeping reforms to this bill, particularly the technological aspects, it could easily become one of the biggest national threats to privacy in recent history.

Democracy in Canada is premised on the idea that we vote for candidates who are best suited to exercise their judgment, act on our preferences, or a combination of both. Often, it seems, members of Parliament opt for the third approach. But whose interests get represented? For one, the governing class and the capitalists who underwrite them. But, more particularly, it’s those who are likely to turn up at the ballot box.

Elections Canada estimates that in the 2019 election, roughly 54 percent of voters aged 18 to 24 cast a ballot. That’s low especially compared to a turnout of 65 percent in the 35-44 age bracket, 68 percent in the 45 to 54 group, 73 percent among 55- to 64-year-olds, and a remarkable 79 percent for the 65 to 74 cohort. That turnout distribution is common and reflects a typical gap—as seen in 2015 and 2011. This gap has largely remained even as overall voter turnout has been on the rise since 2011. For this year, Elections Canada has canceled its Vote on Campus program, citing the pandemic and minority Parliament, which left them with short notice of the election call. That won’t help things, as the absence of the program, piloted in 2015, will make it harder for some young people to vote.

The spread between younger and older voter turnout presents two issues: it produces electoral returns that are not representative of the preferences of the population and it underwrites an asymmetrical representation of issues that get addressed by politicians—or how they get addressed.

In January, pollster Philippe J. Fournier wrote in Maclean’s Magazine that young voters can play a central role in determining an election, as they did in 2015 when the Liberals formed a majority government. But, he cautioned, with an eye on the polls, “Leading among younger voters is…a double-edged sword for any political party: While this theoretical support does inflate a party’s national number in the polls, it also means it could very well underperform its polls on election night if young voters are not motivated enough to, well, bother voting.”

A Léger poll taken in late August has the NDP favoured by 18–34-year-olds at 37 percent compared to 27 percent for the Liberals and 23 percent for the Conservatives. For those aged 55 and older, the order changes: 37 percent Liberal, 34 percent Conservative, and 14 percent for the NDP. This is common. The data suggests if we were to see full turnout, we would have a different electoral outcome than with turnout that disproportionately favours the preferences of older voters.

Mobilizing young voters requires parties that engage them and speak to the issues they care about. Just ahead of the election launch, Abacus Data found younger millennials and Gen Z voters—those 25 years old and younger—cited cost of living as a top issue ahead of climate change and poverty and inequality. Rounding out the top five issues of primary concern were access to healthcare and housing. Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples was a top issue for 32 percent of respondents.

Comparing top issues across age groups, Abacus consultant Oksana Kishchuk looks to millennial voters, the largest voting cohort, and finds “a 25-point gap between cost of living and the second most important issue,” which happens to be climate change and the environment. But breaking down the numbers, she notes “Cost of living is still a top issue for both older and younger millennials (and Gen Z), but younger millennials and Gen Z are in fact placing more importance on the social issues we might expect younger people to be passionate about.” Of further note, and perhaps surprise, is “Millennials as a whole are almost entirely aligned with boomers on social issues like climate change and the environment and Indigenous reconciliation, and even on housing…But with cost of living, there is a 19-point gap between the percentage of boomers that placed this as a top 5 issue, and the percentage of millennials.” The focus on cost of living aligns millennials with Gen X voters, 66 percent of whom cited it as a top concern but diverges among the younger millennial cohort, who cited Indigenous reconciliation more often than older millennials, Gen Xers, and boomers.

Whichever way you look at it, cost of living matters a lot to young voters. One way to address the issue is structural economic reform. In August, Innovative Research Group found in a survey of over 1200 Canadians, that 53 percent of Canadians believe “the economy needs to be radically transformed,” with men 18-34 outpacing the average with 57 percent support and women of the same age group at 58 percent. Just 34 percent of men over 55 years old (but 54 percent of women) agreed. But how? The top policy flagged by respondents was a universal basic income, with 51 percent of respondents selecting it as among the three most important transformations – and 26 percent citing it as the most important – just ahead of an increase in social services.

What about ditching the current economic system all together? Innovative found that 35 percent of respondents support “moving away from capitalism.” Here, the generational divide is stark: while 43 percent of men and 49 percent of women aged 18-34 support the shift towards a new economic order, just 32 percent of men and 39 percent of women aged 35-54 feel the same way. Among those 55 and older, support drops to 24 percent among men and 30 percent among women.

This data suggests that young voters want aggressive policy to meet the rising and intersecting crises we face, chief among them climate change and economic insecurity. But Samantha Reusch, executive director of Apathy is Boring—a non-partisan, non-profit focused on youth citizenship—says getting young voters to turn out requires engagement. “Encouraging young people to vote and getting them out to the polls takes sustained investment. What that means is focusing on issues and priorities that young people care about.” Yet, parties fail to sustain youth outreach. “Because we turn out in fewer numbers, it’s not always the case that parties and leaders prioritize the issues young people care about or speak to them during an election campaign—and certainly between election campaigns we don’t see the same investment in engaging with young people.”

What can be done? Reusch says her organization’s approach is “to meet young people where they already are,” which means “connecting issues that young people already care so much about back to the federal election.” She thinks climate change will be one of those issues along with social movements including anti-Black racism, Indigenous reconciliation, and efforts to combat anti-Asian hate. Affordability and the economy rank high on the list, too. “These things impact young people and I think that…if leaders are focused on addressing these issues in the campaign, there’s a chance they could bolster turnout significantly.”

“I had a flavour that was Fruit Loops in a gold and matte black carbon vape, and I was in Grade 9,” says Zach Samson (who asked that we use a pseudonym), a 19-year-old student at the University of Guelph. By Grade 10, Samson was a part of a group chat called “e-cigarettes” with over 100 other students in his high school in Oakville, Ontario. “We’d text: Hey, anybody going to the washroom now? And we’d all be linking up, vaping,” he says.

In 2003, pharmacist—and smoker—Hon Lik created the first commercially successful vape. Popular vape brand JUUL traces its origins back to two smokers who were seeking an alternative to cigarettes in 2005. Vape products have been in Canada since at least 2004, but e-cigarettes containing nicotine were only legalized and regulated at the federal level in May 2018.

Roughly 4.9 million Canadians are smokers and vape companies position themselves as a safer alternative to cigarettes. “JUUL is for adult smokers only who are looking to switch off combustible cigarettes,” says Lisa Hutniak, director of communications, JUUL Labs Canada. “Vaping products, including JUUL, are not intended for youth or non-smokers.” While the World Health Organization stated in 2008 that it does not consider e-cigarettes a legitimate smoking cessation aid, the federal government is considering letting e-cigarette companies promote the health benefits of their products.

Dr. David Hammond at the University of Waterloo led a study of vaping habits amongst Canadians 16 to 19 years old. Alarmingly, from 2017 to 2018, the rate of teen vaping shot up by 74 percent. If vape products are designed to help smokers quit cigarettes, how is it that the rates of vaping among youth are increasing? Let’s start with a little history.

When asked just how young a customer the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds was prepared to target, an executive is known to have said, “They got lips? We want them.”

Big tobacco companies are the old guard in the nicotine market. Joe Camel, Popeye’s pipe, even candy cigarettes. It’s easy to argue the tobacco industry was blatant in making their products appeal to children. In one study from 1991, six-year-olds were as familiar with Joe Camel as they were Mickey Mouse. The tobacco industry aided in the design of cigarette candy products.

Tobacco companies marketed smoking to teenagers as an illicit pleasure, a rite of passage. “A cigarette for the beginner is a symbolic act. I am no longer my mother’s child, I’m tough, I am an adventurer, I’m not square…” a 1969 draft report to the board of directors of Philip Morris stated.

For decades, the industry understood “if our company is to survive and prosper, over the long term we must get our share of the youth market…” And tobacco companies, like R. J. Reynolds, profiled their young adult franchise as being as young as 14 years old. Tobacco companies knew that “today’s teenager is tomorrow’s potential regular customer.”

“These guys have been in the drug business for a couple of hundred years now and they’re pretty good at it,” says Damian O’Hara, a smoking cessation specialist from Ontario.

Samson says, “You could be the biggest loser, but if you had a really nice vape, filled with good juice, and one of the popular kids was out of vape, they’d be hanging out with you.” Samson was just 12 when he tried vaping for the first time and says by the age of 14, he was addicted. “Vaping came out of nowhere,” says Samson. “Your parents didn’t know any better because it’s not like you’re smoking a cigarette in bed.” Eliza Balkwill, an occasional vape user, echoes this. “It was huge when I was in high school,” says the 19-year-old student at Mount Royal University in Calgary. “[People vaped] in class, the parking lot, bathroom, parties—pretty much everywhere.” She says the teens were addicted to high-nicotine vapes (like JUUL), as they produced little smoke and were discrete. “Vaping is associated with the party lifestyle,” says Balkwill.

But according to O’Hara, who is a former heavy smoker, marketing addictive drugs to young people is a long-worn path for the tobacco industry. “To position vaping in any other way than a very deliberate ploy to get young people addicted to nicotine is incredibly naive,” he says. He adds the caveat that vape companies do promote vaping as a way for cigarette smokers to stop smoking tobacco.

It’s not a hard leap to make when you realize how much the tobacco industry has invested in vape companies. Altria Group, one of the world’s largest producers and marketers of tobacco and tobacco-related products acquired a 35 percent stake in JUUL. vuse is owned by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company. Another popular brand, Vype, is owned by British American Tobacco (bat). After all, this is an industry that has long understood what they’re really selling. In 1971, a scientist at Philip Morris stated, “The product is nicotine … think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day’s supply of nicotine.”

“The same [tobacco industry] who brought you doctors in the ‘50s telling you smoking was good for you, are now promoting e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking,” says Marvin Krank, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. In the early days of JUUL a lot of the marketing was nakedly targeted to young people in the U.S., O’Hara explains. “Not just with the flavours, but the specific imagery they were using in their Instagram posts.” JUUL’s early advertising featured bold colours and youthful models. A white paper by the Stanford University School of Medicine from January 2019 studied JUUL’s marketing campaign from 2015 to 2018. It concluded JUUL “has achieved a cult level of popularity among school-aged adolescents.”

In Canada, the federal government allows for the promotion of vaping products on TV, radio, billboards, in newspapers, on social media, and other mainstream media, according to Heart & Stroke Canada. Recently, however, the Ontario government proposed to ban the promotion of vaping products in gas stations and convenience stores. JUUL didn’t hit the Canadian market until September 2018 and Hutniak says their company has only run two marketing campaigns since then. But it was already a fait accompli. In a short time, according to the CBC, JUUL has captured a staggering 78 percent of the Canadian market.

“Despite the fact that smoking would be uncool, vaping can be Vype or Vuse,” says O’Hara. “It’s about the semiotics as well as the look and feel of the products.” The look includes huge, remote-controlled, hand-held vapes. “All this cool technology— they were clearly hitting our demographic,” says Samson.

“Vape stores aren’t full of old smokers looking to quit, they’re full of young kids looking for new flavours and new experiences,” says O’Hara. At 180 Smoke Vape Store on Queen Street West in Toronto, vape products are displayed like products would be in an Apple Store. The VOOPOO Drag is one product that looks more like a work of art than an e-cigarette— and with a price to match. Each vape product is uniquely decorated with a marbled effect reminiscent of a petrol slick. VOOPOO’s selling feature is no two are the same, and there’s even a side panel where you can program your vape with a ticker-tape message. “Vaping is a whole bougie thing,” says Samson. “It’s the new generation of wanting to flash money and that was part of it.”

But vape companies aren’t containing themselves to brick-and-mortar stores. Vype teamed up with British rapper Tinie Tempah for their pop-up in London in 2016 and the company attempted a pop-up operation in Toronto’s Dundas Square in April 2019 before it was shut down by Health Canada for contravening the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act. Vype also had a free-standing display on King Street West in Toronto. With its black frame filled in with large green plants and roped-off entrance, it looked more like the entry point to an art installation.

Vape companies have also been called out for creating e-juice flavours that blatantly appeal to teens. Vype’s display in the Queen Street West store (180 Smoke) could be mistaken for a Nespresso display and their flavours include dark cherry, ripe mango, classic peach, and fresh apple. Further in the vape store are a collection of flavours to sample—including Sparkling Blueberry Lemonade and Banana Oatmeal. Heart & Stroke Canada points the finger at federal law, which not only allows for the promotion of vaping products, but also allows the manufacturing of attractive flavours that entice youth. “We did some research with Grade 9 and 10 students,” explains Krank, “and when you asked what flavours they’re using, the vast majority are fruit or candy flavours.” Online, teenagers are being seduced with packaging. The branding on some e-juice containers, which contain nicotine and flavourings mixed with propylene glycol, resembles Sour Patch Kids or Warheads’ design. And some of the e-juice flavours will literally make you feel like a kid in a candy store: caramel apple, Sweet-ish Berries, cotton candy, blue freezie, glazed donuts.

Colorado-based Vaprwear markets its “gear—with a higher purpose” with young models who look more like they’re heading to their Grade 11 chemistry class than the office. “They’re selling a hoodie now,” says Krank. “The string is connected to an e-cigarette which can be sucked through what looks like a string—making it easily hidden.”

It’s self-evident that teenagers now live their lives online in a way previous generations didn’t. “The beauty of tobacco marketing or guerilla marketing to young people is once you have seeded the thought and encouraged others to share it, it can run out of control really fast,” O’Hara explains.

Look up #vapetricks and you’ll see more than five million posts on Instagram and a staggering 200 million views on TikTok, a social media app for creating short lip-sync or talent videos that is especially popular with teenagers. “Vape culture is undeniable,” says Samson. Instead of practising smoke rings in front of the bedroom mirror with a Benson & Hedges cigarette, on YouTube you’ll find tutorials on how to perfect the ghost, the dragon, and the vape bubble—where the vapour is literally trapped inside a soap bubble.

Online, vape culture is badass, rebellious, cool. It’s also virtually impossible to monitor. There isn’t much to stop a 12- or 13-year-old from following these influencers on social media. JUUL shut down their social media accounts at the end of 2018, following an fda announcement that it would investigate vape companies, and JUUL Labs Canada say they have no social media presence in Canada. But other vape companies do. Vype Canada has an Instagram account that largely markets their products. VOOPOO has over 420,000 followers on their Instagram account, and their most recent posts include a vaping elephant, guys flexing their guns (and their vapes), and a vape duel between two young men for the affections of a girl.

Samson says Supreme Patty and the Nelk Boys from Canada are influential online channels. On the Nelk Boys’ Instagram account there are pranks where they aggressively vape in peoples’ faces or vape to impress a girl in front of her boyfriend. “Everybody my age follows them, and they’ll promote the vape culture in general.” But not all vape influencers are male. Zophie Vapes has 106,000 followers on Instagram, where she reviews products and hosts giveaways. O’Hara points out in the past tobacco companies like Philip Morris once had huge marketing budgets. “But now your customers advertise for you. It’s cheap as chips,” he says.

“It got so bad that I’d leave my vape charging overnight and turn my head over in the morning to take a hit, so my muscles would instantly feel better,” says Samson. “In the area of research, we talk about nicotine being as hard a drug to get off as heroin,” explains Krank. “It might have started as a trend, but now people are addicted.”

With professional help, Samson was able to break up with nicotine. “It was so crazy to think I was that addicted as a 40-a-day smoker at such a young age,” he says.

But there could be a whole generation of Canadian teens who won’t be so lucky. “There is a robust association between vaping and smoking,” says Hammond. “Kids who vape first are more likely to smoke.” However, Hammond explains the association isn’t causal: kids who engage in one form of risky behaviour are more likely to engage in another.

At the time of writing, four vaping-related illnesses have been reported in Canada, three in Quebec and another in Ontario, while according to Reuters, there have been more than 2,290 vaping-related illnesses and 47 related deaths in the U.S. “This is only the acute effects,” says Krank. “No one has studied the long-term effects.” “Kids were oblivious to the effects of vaping and used it because it was fun,” says Balkwill. However, the Calgary student has noticed friends cutting back or getting rid of their vapes following the reported health issues.

Make no mistake, vaping is big business. At the time of writing, according to the Financial Post sales from industry in Canada were projected to hit $895 million in 2019. “If you’re in a business where six million customers around the world are dying every year, you need fresh meat,” says O’Hara. “And that comes via vaping.” It would be highly beneficial for these companies if their customers started smoking, because smoking is staggeringly more profitable. Vaping has been referred to as “cigarettes on training wheels,” and it seems there could be some legitimacy to O’Hara’s prediction. Hammond says the prevalence of cigarette smoking has been declining among Canadian youth for several decades, but his study found that cigarette smoking among 16- to 19-year-olds has already increased by 45 percent from 2017 to 2018.

Which is ironic, given Lik, who has been called “the Godfather of Vape” created the first e-cigarette so he wouldn’t die from a smoking-related disease like his father and then sold his patent off to Imperial Tobacco.

Updates:

In December, Health Canada announced plans to ban all forms of e-cigarette advertising that could be seen by young people, including in public and on social media.

In January 2020, Juul Labs Canada announced it will temporarily stop producing some of their flavoured e-cigarette pods, including mango, vanilla, fruit, and cucumber flavoured e-cigarette pods. The company will continue to produce mint and tobacco flavoured pods, but could reintroduce the other flavoured pods under the guidance of Health Canada. On April 1, 2020, Nova Scotia will become the first province to ban the sale of all flavoured e-cigarette products.

The first vaping-associated lung illness was reported in Alberta in January 2020. As of February 11, 2020, 17 cases of vaping-associated lung illness have now been reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Toronto’s Sprott House. Photo by Amy van den Berg.

On any given night in Toronto, there are 1,000 to 2,000 homeless youth sleeping on streets or in shelters. Across Canada about 40,000 young people experience homelessness. Among them, approximately 25 to 40 percent self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer.

These are dangerously high numbers since it is estimated that only five to 10 percent of the population identify as LGBTQ. That’s why across Canada local and provincial governments are being pressured to step up and enact change. By the fall of 2015, the city of Toronto agreed to update its shelter standards, setting aside funds to open two transitional housing shelters specifically for LGBTQ youth. A few months prior, the province of Alberta drew up an official action plan to tackle the issue, outlining the current data (0.8 percent of the homeless population in Alberta identify as transgender) and offering up ways to support these youth, from gender-inclusive washroom signage to intervention methods. Around the same time the Boys and Girls Club of Calgary began the Aura Host Homes project—producing another first-of-its-kind moment—that pairs LGBTQ youth with local families in a safe and supported environment.

But a year and a half later, attention on the problem seems to have come to a halt. While research on the issue has improved, Alberta remains the only province to write up an official action plan. Meanwhile, LGBTQ youth are still overrepresented in shelters across the country. “We started doing the work which is really great, but we have to continue doing the work because obviously queer and trans youth homelessness is still a problem,” says the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health’s Alex Abramovich, who has played a main role in working to end LGBTQ youth homelessness.

Abramovich—particularly through his University of Toronto doctoral thesis “No Safe Place to Go,” which provided the first comprehensive overview of the unique needs of the population—added fuel to a fire that had been growing for years. Advocates on solving youth homelessness had been noticing the trend, but it wasn’t until Abramovich’s work was published in 2012 that the issue made its way into the public sphere. After years of campaigning with numerous community agencies, stakeholders, and political leaders, Abramovich’s comprehensive research and hunger for change began to make waves across the country. Shelters began prioritizing queer and trans youth while provincial and municipal governments felt the pressure to make policy changes. The Alberta government, in fact, personally requested that Abramovich help prepare the province’s focused response to end LGBTQ youth homelessness.

While many communities and municipal governments have made similar moves to address the problem in their districts, no other province has produced a specific action plan, despite the pressing need. In Ottawa alone, close to half of the city’s homeless youth identify as LGBTQ with little to no official supports available for them. “I think Ontario could really learn from the Alberta strategy,” says Abramovich, who hopes the trend will continue to spread across the country. “There needs to be more collaboration across sectors and looking at the different successful models.” Quebec and the Maritimes in particular, where there are no specific programs for LGBTQ homeless youth, could benefit from this. A 2016 plan to end youth homelessness in Saint John’s referenced Abramovich’s work and the Host Homes project as possible solutions, but provided nothing concrete.

Despite his research, Abramovich says gathering data on the matter remains difficult. Actual numbers of LGBTQ youth who experience homelessness remain elusive because many young people slip under the radar. It is reasonable, Abramovich says, to believe the figures are much higher. Youth who identify as LGBTQ frequently experience discrimination in the home and shelter system, and many are forced to leave their homes after coming out to their families. Once on the street they may avoid shelters where they are forced to submit to gender norms and can experience transphobia and homophobia by staff and other youth. This not only puts them at a higher risk of being chronically homeless, but forces them to rely on couch-surfing or adapt to life on the streets, which can lead to drug abuse and survival sex.

Many small-scale programs and projects are making headway across Canada’s cities. In late 2015 Vancouver’s RainCity Housing emerged as one of the first LGBTQ youth-specific projects to tackle the problem of homelessness. It was followed closely by the opening of YMCA’s Sprott House in Toronto in February 2016, which is Canada’s first transitional housing program for LGBTQ youth.

The trick is finding the right programs that work for a variety of cases. RainCity Housing has taken a housing-first approach, prioritizing getting youth off the street and building a support network where they feel safe. The staff work with every young person to figure out what living situation will suit them best, giving them choice and offering supports and referrals to deal with any mental health or substance abuse problems at their own pace. “We develop a model around each youth instead of fitting each youth into a model,” says RainCity Housing associate director Aaron Munro. “What we’re offering is permanent housing.” This approach differs from Sprott House, which acts as a youth shelter, and much more from the Egale Centre, Toronto’s second LGBTQ youth-exclusive shelter that is due to open in fall 2017 and will prioritize counselling.

There is still much work to be done. Most of these projects and programs are still in their early stages, and agencies are only able to serve handfuls of youth, who must go through competitive application processes to be considered. Sprott House, for example, only accepts youth ages 16 to 24 and offers 25 beds for a stay of up to one year. Many services are only structured toward aiding a particular subgroup within LGBTQ youth, such as those who are chronically and episodically homeless. This often excludes the possibility of helping those who may be in need of emergency shelter or who find themselves in dangerous situations because of a lack of alternative housing options.

Which approaches are working best for specific cases will become clearer over time, laying the groundwork for more and better programs to emerge, funds willing. Abramovich, for his part, isn’t done. “I think as a next step we have to look at how we can prevent this problem from happening in the first place and find ways of working within the school system and working with families,” he says. “We can’t just end homelessness, we have to be strategic about it.”

Just last month Abramovic’s new book Where Am I Going to Go?—co-authored with Jama Shelton, a social work professor in New York—became the first published academic text on youth LGBTQ homelessness. He is currently in the process of evaluating the progress of Sprott House’s first couple of years in operation to find out what is working and how other provinces can replicate that model.

Meanwhile, Aura Host Homes and RainCity are also beginning to see some results. “We’ve got young people who’ve been in the program now for two-and-a-half years who are exiting and working and going to school,” Munro says. “What we’re seeing are outcomes.”

As Canada tiptoes its way through what can only be described as an experimentation phase of addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness, attention and concern remains essential to sustaining the country’s hard-fought progress. “What we need is actually a wide range of services,” says Munro. “They’re young people but they’re smart and they know what they need. I think for too long our services have been forcing people into a box.”

Nikki Cajucom can pinpoint the exact moment her trajectory in life ricocheted. It happened when she first set foot in a basement in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood, reluctantly beginning her first day as an intern at Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture, a community organization that acts as a safe space and creative hub for Filipino-Canadian youth.

“I had grown up with very little to no exposure to Filipino culture, and my parents never encouraged me to explore our cultural identity,” Cajucom says. “There was a lot of cultural shame that I carried, a lot of internalized racism, and so I entered Kapisanan with the sole intention of getting experience, completing my contract, and then moving on.”

Immediately, she was struck with the vibrancy of the creators around her, and the diversity of Filipinos she hadn’t seen before. Five years later, Cajucom is the centre’s first executive director to inherit the title from Kapisanan’s founder. In that time, the centre brought a generation of Filipino youth into its basement depths, who are now emerging artists of local and international acclaim.

As a small charity, Kapisanan reflects its youth’s diversity through extensive programming. Their workshops include learning folk dances, Tagalog, lanternmaking, mat-weaving, and martial arts. And while they work year-round organizing Kultura, an annual multiday arts festival across Toronto, they also teach in schools, run a recurring gender-segregated mentorship, and will soon be serving up culinary arts classes. Programming is deliberately missing one aspect: faith. Many Filipino-Canadian initiatives are Christian, and for youth like Cajucom, Kapisanan is a secular vehicle of engagement.

“Kapisanan provides them that stepping stone to the larger Filipino community,” she says. “You don’t necessarily have to pursue a career in arts to participate; we’re just using the arts as a way to participate.”

Kapisanan’s emphasis on a broad curriculum, informed by Indigenous and often utilitarian art practices, isn’t by mistake. With more than 100 ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines, whittling a unifying arts tradition from the country’s culture is impossible, and sometimes, downright colonial. According to the Philippines’ national arts council, fine arts were shaped by the nation’s conquerors. The centre’s arts also function as covert storytelling. Cajucom notes that working at the centre made her realize it made problems easier to share, such as cultural shame or yearning for identity.

To keep costs low, the centre has since traded one basement for another, moving into Artscape’s spacious west-end Toronto digs thanks to their Sketch Working Arts partnership. And with so much physical growth, Cajucom is looking forward to what stories the next generation of participants will unearth.

“Working with these young late teens, they make me so enthusiastic for the future of this community,” she says. “They’re excited to be Filipino, they want to hang out at Kapisanan, they want to meet other like-minded Filipino folks. It’s like, okay! That makes my job so much easier.”

When the job first came up online, Straker thought, “That sounds terrible, and I also am really under-qualified for that,” she says. She applied anyway, hoping to make a positive change. “Two weeks later I was starting the job.”

Straker began reading and learning about land-based education when she was 17. She completed an intensive immersion course at the Northwest Territory’s Dechinta Bush University, where she camped in a small isolated group, studying decolonization and experienced her first moose hunt. “Seeing the way that being on the land informs your decolonization process and your identity was what made me decide that that was what I wanted to do,” she says.

When the new position required bringing absent students back to school, Straker decided instead to go about creating something new. But it wasn’t easy. In her first days on the job she inquired about her budget. The response: “You don’t have one.” As the only person in a job that no one had ever done, Straker turned her focus toward getting what she wanted: money to improve cultural education for youth. Though she had never filled out a funding application before, she raised enough to buy a snowmobile and other supplies, and gave birth to the Traditional Mentorships Program.

The program’s purpose was to connect youth more deeply with land-based ways of life, and nurture cultural resilience. Run by and for Indigenous people, Straker saw it as an opportunity to create something she didn’t have when she was young. At first, she wrestled with questions about the school system: “Is a conventional colonial space really a space for decolonization?” she asked. “But whether or not I think that it’s the appropriate place, it’s where the kids are.”

Most teachers and parents were supportive. The students in the program would leave class from half a day to overnight to take part. “The teachers were not worried about them missing their book work,” Straker says. “It didn’t mean they got extra homework. It was just part of their week, and it was valued just as much as their science class.”

Although most of her students had some traditional knowledge, Straker noticed it was patchy. She wanted the program to give youth tangible skills they could use into adulthood. “The whole point of our knowledge systems is to pass them on,” she says. From trapping and fishing to Inuit games, the students immersed themselves in opportunities, including a week-long moose-hide tanning camp. “We also wanted to give the students the opportunity to see that the land isn’t far off, it’s not way out there somewhere,” she adds. “We live in Yellowknife. You walk across the street and you’re on one of the biggest lakes in the world.”

Straker was able to grow the program and hire one of her own former instructors, Kyle Enzoe, to teach. “It was an opportunity for us to also create jobs within the community for people who have knowledge that you can’t put a number on,” says Straker. “It’s very hard to get paid to share your traditional knowledge.”

Enzoe’s involvement gave the kids in grades 6 to 8 an opportunity to connect with someone not much older— Enzoe was 33—who was both deeply traditional and modern at once. Enzoe holds the most knowledge of anyone she knows when it comes to the land and trapping. At the same time, “He has Facebook,” Straker says.

Since its inception, the Traditional Mentorships Program has had a far reach. Straker often presents about land-based education at conferences. After seeing the positive changes this type of education had in her own life, she wants to do the same for others. “I’ve seen my life completely transform and change the more that I’ve fostered my reciprocal relationship with the land,” she says.

Although land-based education can seem trivial to some, without it Straker says she wouldn’t have ever understood why land matters. “I didn’t see myself within the land, and I didn’t see the land within myself,” she says.

She has seen similar transformations in others. “All of our collective issues within the Indigenous community—none of them exist without the land, and without land disputes.” Any conversation meant to further reconcilitation or create spaces for Indigenous youth must involve a land base, she says. Still, there is a lack of funding for such education.

If the government wants to make more money, Straker says, educating people puts them in a higher tax bracket, and that’s what land-based education has the capacity to do. “It can change our economy and our knowledge economy in the North,” she says.“Funding is really, really necessary, and it’s hard to get our hands on.”

Aside from her work at the school board, Straker also spends time making jewelry from animals she and Enzoe have harvested using traditional protocol. She’s also part of a collective called ReMatriate that works to interrupt culturally appropriative fashion and take back control over Indigenous women’s visual identities. Straker’s work is a powerful reminder of the importance of the land and its place in people’s lives—another reason for greater education.

The multidisciplinary artist went on to become the city’s grand slam champion and competed at Canada’s national youth poetry festival. Now, as Edmonton’s second-ever Youth Poet Laureate, Adem is working to spread her love of poetry, literature, and the arts to other youth in the city.

Drawing from personal experiences growing up—from trying to fit in as the new kid in school to navigating her identities as a Black, queer, Muslim woman—Adem, now 22, is using her one-year term to speak to students and encourage them to tell their own stories. In classrooms across Edmonton, she conducts workshops and asks students about their lives—who they are and where they’ve come from, what they’re scared of and what they want to say. “I think the answers to those questions are poems,” she says. “When they’re true and honest, they’re always poems.”

Adem says it is important to empower students, reminding them that their voices are valuable and worth listening to. She recalls tuning out in high school because she couldn’t relate to the material being taught. Learning about poetry meant learning about concepts like metre and stress, not the emotional element of the form. “I felt very detached from human speech and its relationship to poetry,” she says. Instead, Adem took refuge in writing personal essays, working out her anxiety and depression by turning her frustrations into something tangible. Only later—outside of the classroom—did she turn to poetry. “I say that poetry saved my life and I don’t really take that lightly,” she says. “Using poetry as a way to heal and as a voice for trauma to make them real is another thing I strive to encourage and work through with students.”

Her more recent works have focused on redefining and reimagining identities surrounding race, sexuality, faith, and gender. Adem cites her mother, who raised her as a single mom, as a strong influence in her poetry. “Recognizing my mother’s humanity has been the key to me readily recognizing my humanity and everybody else’s,” she says. Adem always thought of her mother’s strength as indestructible; but as she got older, Adem began to recognize how the world affects her mother, and how that affects their relationship. Viewing her mother outside of her parental role taught Adem empathy and perspective. “It forces me to always think about my audience and to think about how my words are affecting other people,” she says.

For the past few years, Adem spent parts of her summers in New York, slamming and collaborating with other poets in the city. Taking cues from the vibrancy of the scene and inspired by the artists she met, Adem returned to Edmonton determined to bring some of those lessons back. “It’s helped me look at my community here and be able to see what’s missing and what’s not,” says Adem. During a trip last summer, Adem was inspired to write one of her favourite poems. She was walking home when she spotted a young Black girl practicing choreography on a street corner in Brooklyn. “This girl was [going] full-out, like not a care in the world,” Adem recalls. “She reminded me a lot of myself when I was around her age.” Adem later wrote Birthright, a poem discussing the experiences of Black women and children. The piece asks: “What do we owe our babies if not the same safety as the womb?” “It made me think critically about how much longer she will be afforded that carefree-ness,” she says.

In 2015, Adem founded Sister 2 Sister, a bimonthly artistic showcase for and by women of colour. Tired of participating in shows that lacked diversity both in performers and audience, she longed to create a safe space for other marginalized artists like her in the community. Next year, Adem hopes to expand the showcase to offer services and workshops for artists looking to learn how to make a sustainable living. She is also an artistic associate at the Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre, where she is curating Edmonton’s first-ever Black Arts Matters festival. The new three-day arts festival will bring together Black artists from across disciplines in an event that will include performances, workshops, and panels.

In the future, Adem sees herself moving to New York, a dream she’s had since she was a child. A true artist, she still wants to act, write plays, and record an album. But for now, she is determined to finish what she has started in Edmonton. “I want to make sure that when I leave, I’m not leaving other people like me with nothing,” she says. “I want to make sure there’s a safe space here for the artists of colour—they’re my priority.”

Thinking back to her high-school self—that young woman who took the stage some three years ago—Adem wishes she had opened herself up to the world of arts sooner: “If I had stopped apologizing for who I am, what I wore, the way I spoke, what I ate, and how loud I was, I would have been a lot freer a lot earlier.”

Illustration by Miki Sato

The months leading up to my graduation this spring were a mix of excitement and desperation. Excitement, because after four years of journalism school at Ryerson University my love for academia had turned sour—I was aching to be done. Desperation, because I knew once I was done, my unemployment would be more apparent and stark than ever. I pored through job listings for hours on end, constantly tweaking my resumé, hitting the “apply” button so many times I started to forget which jobs I had actually applied for.

No emails back. No phone calls. Not a single interview. And all of this was made worse by headlines reminding me just how completely screwed I was. “Indisputable Evidence That Millennials Have It Worse Than Any
Generation in 50 Years,” read the Atlantic in February 2014. “Ontario youth unemployment among the worst in Canada,” from CTV in September 2013. “Why are so many of Canada’s young people out of work?” CBC in June 2013. “Recent university grads increasingly jobless, study shows,” Globe and Mail, September 2014.

The statistics were muddled. While one mid-2013 article on the CBC claimed that youth unemployment was at 14.5 percent, another, in Maclean’s, asserted serious youth unemployment was simply a myth, citing a Statistics Canada study that put unemployment in Canada for 25-29-year-olds at 7.4 percent in 2012. “[The] stagnation in the quality of jobs may explain some of the frustration,” the Maclean’s article allows. “Some university graduates are likely settling for lower-rung jobs that they would have avoided in the past.” (Perhaps true—but perhaps also this means that we’re so desperate to avoid unemployment, we’ll take anything.)

But beyond the headlines, there are the actual people of this highly discussed and debated generation—and, speaking as one of them, the employment drought sure feels real. Every time I read one of these articles, mostly written by someone who isn’t a part of my generation, it’s like we’re mice in a lab. We are the Boomers’ and Generation X’s greatest sociological experiment: scurrying through preset conditions, our achievements and pitfalls analyzed by people who are utterly detached.

“I think a lot of older generations are out of touch with the way that education and professional fields have changed,” says 23-year-old Kelsey Leung, “especially those who are comfortably collecting paycheques for jobs that they have had for quite some time.” Leung has a bachelor of arts with honours in history from Queen’s University, and a bachelor of education from University of Toronto. Currently, she’s a barista—a job that doesn’t require two expensive degrees.

Like myself, Leung has been told millennials are simply entitled and lazy. Apparently, our desire for meaningful work after grueling, expensive, and mental-illness inducing degrees means that we are spoiled, ungrateful children. These criticisms, more often than not, come from middle-aged suburbanites who seem to have scored jobs straight out of school in the 1980s and never had to contemplate the possibility of being in their 30s and making minimum wage.

“I think that if being entitled means that I feel upset that I put in thousands of dollars of my own money and in scholarships towards my education,” says Leung, “and have been told that it will be at least four to six years before I get a full-time contract position—minimum—then I am absolutely entitled.” If anything, my generation is not entitled enough: We willingly scrape through terrible jobs, and work for free after years of education. Most of us feel like we can’t afford a sense of entitlement. Pride is expensive. And though we deserve to have some, we know that pride means no exposure, no paycheque, no chance.

I certainly didn’t feel entitled when, after graduation, I was eager to take on a part-time babysitting gig. I never even asked how much it paid. All I saw was a job. Despite receiving my pricey degree, I was in the exact position as I was before I earned it. I was still writing for free, and, eventually, months after graduation, only making a little money for articles. And I was still spending way too much time on job search websites like Indeed and Monster, cursing at the computer screen every time I came across the dreaded “five years experience necessary.” Amidst pages of job postings that, according to the requirements, I was not qualified for, I felt like Major Tom lost in space.

I started to think the only people landing decent jobs were people who were privileged enough to have the right connections. Some of my fellow graduates had connections within their family, others came from wealthy enough backgrounds to not have to worry about unpaid work. My parents immigrated here with my sister and me in 1996 and, because of that, despite their successes, they haven’t been established here long enough to be able to provide those connections for me.

In the end, my babysitting job fell through. Without full access to a car, it was another job that couldn’t work out. And so by July, I fantasized about just packing up and leaving. There had to be a job for me somewhere in this world; and not just any job, one that would actually make me happy.

That’s exactly what 29-year-oldDavid Matijasevich was thinking in June 2013 while he was working on his Ph.D. in political science at Carleton University. In his fourth year, Matijasevich was, financially, on his own. Not wanting to take on more debt, and knowing that the teaching assistant position provided by the school wouldn’t be sufficient enough to pay rent, he made the move to Singapore. He worked on his Ph.D. from there, where he was able to find work as an associate lecturer in social sciences, and an instructor and academic manager at an adult education centre. Matijasevich just finished his Ph.D. in September.

Matijasevich says that it disappoints him to hear Generation Y labeled as entitled. “Entitlement means expecting something without working for it,” says Matijasevich. “Yet young people, particularly during their school days, seem to be working harder than ever.” Matijasevich recalls his days as a teaching assistant at Carleton University, in which all 15 of the students in his class were working part-time jobs during their studies. Some of them were working more than 20 hours a week, on top of schoolwork.

There are more young people pursuing higher education than ever before. In 1980, there were 550,000 fulltime university students and 218,000 part-time university students. Now, there are 979,000 full-time university students, and 312,000 part time students. This is a huge feat, considering tuition fees have tripled over the last 20 years, and are expected to continue rising, especially in Ontario. In 1975, the average tuition in Canada was $551. In 2013 it was $5,772. In 2017, it is expected to be, on average, around $9,483 in Ontario.

Matijasevich’s solution, however, is not for everyone. Despite my fantasizing, I know I’m not ready for a move like that. Going to an entirely different country, let alone a different continent, is an extreme solution to paying the bills. It means leaving behind the comfort of home, loved ones, and security—just to not become trapped in the exploitative monotony of minimum wage service industry jobs. Getting a job isn’t necessarily the tricky part, it’s getting a job that doesn’t make you hate yourself for ending up in the place that you swore you wouldn’t. The hard part is getting a job that makes you feel proud, that allows you to comfortably move out of your parents’ house, that makes it possible to pay off your Visa bill without your chequing account looking like a wasteland.

I’ve been told I ought to go back to my old jobs—I worked as a cashier at Indigo for two years, and then worked four semesters and one summer as a part-time shelver at the Ryerson University library. (My last job ended when the library no longer had enough work for part-timers.) I wonder if I should. After all, is working for free any better than my days of asking people whether they wanted their receipt in the bag? Yet, it pains me to think I might have to stand behind the same cash register I stood behind when I was 17. “But I have a degree now!” I think to myself.

I sometimes feel like my resumé is one giant “but I have a degree now!”

At family functions, I seek out any distraction and avoid all relatives so I won’t be asked that dreaded question, “What are your plans now?” If caught, I mumble the usual “Looking for better work; freelancing; doing my best.” This answer has never impressed any of my relatives.

But is it even polite to ask that question anymore? It’s hard to chew my food when I’m thinking about how much money is in my bank account, and whether there was a typo in the last resumé I sent out. There should be a new rule that you should never ask a young adult in a terrible economy what their plans are. It’s just bad etiquette. I see the generation gap present in the apathetic nods of my relatives when I explain my mish-mash of ways to make some money, practically pocket change compared to their salaries. They seem painfully out of touch when they declare I ought to go to New York; I’ll get a job right away. If only it were that easy.

I don’t regret going to university. And I don’t feel like it’s useless. Education is important and it does make a difference—my career in journalism would not be even close to where it is now without my degree—but it would be disingenuous to say the strenuous journey to find good work hasn’t made me question whether it was all worth it. I can’t be the only one. Now that university degrees are the norm, I bet many have trouble seeing the value in a bachelor’s degree. There are so many of us with degrees, after all—currently, 1.7 million students are enrolled in degree programs across Canada. Degrees are something you have to acquire to get ahead, yet getting one doesn’t guarantee that you will.

For now, Matijasevich, Leung, and I are all doing the same thing. There’s one common thread between going to Singapore, working as a barista, and picking up odd freelancing jobs: we’re all doing what we feel we have to do to make it to the place where we are financially stable and happy. Say what you will about the flaws of my generation, but there is no doubting that we are a perseverant one. Maybe I’m entitled, stubborn, or just another foolish kid part of an underemployment statistic. Maybe I am the quintessential millennial being analyzed in some think piece written by a Generation Xer with a good salary. Maybe. But mostly I like to think of myself as just another person who works hard and wants the best for themselves. I’m one of the mice in the social experiment that older generations have subjected me too, hoping to escape the maze.

Photo by Benoit Rochon

Do you know an all-star Canadian working for social justice action? Our upcoming issue will feature Canadians from across the country who are working to make Canada a better, more progressive place. We’re focusing on issues of: diversity and multiculturalism, disability and LGBTQ rights, mental health, women’s rights, youth, poverty and income disparities, housing—and so much more. If you know anyone doing amazing stuff, email Lauren McKeon at editor@thismagazine.ca, or send us a tweet!

“The various activities and initiatives undertaken by MCFD during the past decade have created only an illusion of action and progress,” Turpel-Lafond wrote. “There has been no concrete resulting change in the aboriginal child welfare service-delivery system or demonstrable improvements in outcomes for aboriginal children, youth and their families.” She says she understands the money was given to the agencies with sound intent, but adds that many of the child and family reps have no clear spending strategy and no understanding of their roles in the community.

The report concluded with recommendations for the government: develop a comprehensive plan to transfer control of child and welfare services to aboriginal organizations; suspend “open-ended initiatives” that don’t benefit aboriginal self-governance; and create ways to close the gap of education and health between aboriginal and non aboriginal youth—on or off reserve

The deadline for these government drafts were February, March, and April. As of today, nothing has been submitted.

The only change came in January—when the provincial government “cut funding to 18 indigenous-run projects” two months after Turpel-Lafond’s report. It has not yet addressed what may be the next steps (or any steps) to help aboriginal kids in foster care, who made up more than half —almost 4,500 of 8,106 —of B.C.’s kids in the system.

“The ministry has been overly focused on transferring the responsibility to provide services instead of ensuring aboriginal children and youth are getting the help they desperately need,” Turpel-Lafond told CBC. Which sums up her opinion of throwing money around without knowledge of the outcome.

Ministry officials have said they generally appreciated the report, but also criticized it for being one-sided. Much of the $66 million, says the government, helped give aboriginal peoples a public voice.

“I don’t want it to be misinterpreted that government spent $66 million to have these discussions around governance and jurisdictional issues without receiving some benefit,” Minister Stephanie Cadieux told the Tyee. “There are better working relationships with indigenous communities. First Nations, in many cases, have increased capacity to provide culturally relevant care for their own children, including child protection mediation.”

The child and youth watch dog is aware that her report’s guidelines are complex. Since November, Turpel-Lafond has seen more money donated to indigenous agencies that were “crippled by underfunding”. Yet, these organizations need government coordination along with the money allotted them.  As the report states, “the ministry needs to re-focus, and dedicate the time and effort required.”

The lesson here is to start fresh, start planning, but start.