YOUTH & FAMILY

@ a glance

- Consider the requirements for productive younger generations and use their feedback to construct long term social and economic strategies to help them support our industries.

- Recognize 'generation gaps' and their affect on municipal democracy.

- Support community-centric and low-cost child care through property tax allowance grants.

- Encourage or require implimentation of child-care strategies in new and revitalized community developments.

- Prioritize funds for non-profit employment of specialized and respite child care providers in community-centre settings.

- Redefine recreation and youth services to reflect the shifting realities of youth-culture and entertainment.

- Encourage the creation of alternative and all-ages, late-night venues and entertainment facilities.

- Update and implement abandoned youth strategy.

- Support the expansion of youth detox facilities and harm-reduction programs.

- Improve awareness of meaningful and flexible employment opportunities.

- Involve youth directly and consistently in planning and decision-making through the City of Victoria Youth Council and other outlets.

- Encourage feedback and build bridges to enable effective implementation of student suggestions in municipal matters relating to K-12 and post secondary institutions (transportation, zoning, etc.).

- Research alternative voting age-restrictions and encourage provincial initiatives and reviews into youth voting and youth-voting strategies.

- Build on Victoria's success as a Canadian post secondary-education capital

Youth Views

Youth are the future. They fuel our success, determine our shelf-life, see our tomorrows and live our todays, many without the physical abilities or legal rights to alter the simplest aspects of their pre-structured lives.

Many of our young people also have reduced responsibilities, but it's unfair and unproductive to use blanket assumptions and strategies developed by older generations to conduct the functions of our schools and societies. Even without the voting rights determined by the province of BC, we can strive to involve youth in our most important forums, invite them to tables stripped of beurocratic barriers and stop expecting them to contribute through the archaic and restricted mediums of our tradition. Because while our young people work, buy, sell, drive and fight, their rights should not stop at the petitions and polls restricted to those 18 and over.

Similarly, the basic human rights delineated by our culture must extend through all age demographics and in cases where other governments fail to provide adequate care to our youngest citizens, the city should consider no choice but to pick up the slack and prioritize CYC workers and services, while petitioning for better provincial and federal outcomes. There is no need for a shortage of affordable child care.

Last but not least, we must simultaneously support our current young residents while recognizing and publicizing the many educational and employment incentives for more young people to live, learn and work in the City of Victoria.

Other top priorities related to youth should be affordable housing, civic participation, transportation and sustainability.