If it had been up to local students, Burnaby would have been all orange after Monday’s federal election.
More than 14,000 students in Burnaby’s three ridings cast ballots in Student Vote Canada 2019, a parallel federal election put on by Civix, a national registered charity that encourages young Canadians to get involved in the electoral process.
The local student vote mirrored the grownup results in Burnaby South, where youngsters cast 2,454 ballots for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, compared to 857 votes for Conservative Jay Shin and 788 for Liberal Neelam Brar.
In New Westminster-Burnaby, students voted like their parents and other old folks, re-electing NDP incumbent Peter Julian by a hefty margin, with 2,023 votes.
Unlike their grown-up counterparts, though, more kids voted for Green Party candidate Suzanne de Montigny (674) than for Liberal Will Davis (666).
One place where students didn’t follow the adults’ lead, though, was in Burnaby-North Seymour.
Kids who voted in that riding supported New Democrat Svend Robinson’s comeback bid, electing him with 1,474 votes. Green candidate Amita Kuttner garnered the second-most votes at 1,091, while Liberal incumbent Terry Beech (who was re-elected by the grown-ups Monday) came a close third with 1,027 votes.
Heather Leung, the candidate fired by the Conservative Party during the election campaign for homophobic remarks she had made in the past, got nearly 10,000 adult votes Monday and came in third.
The kids relegated her to fifth place behind People’s Party candidate Rocky Dong.
Students at 74 public and independent schools in Burnaby, North Vancouver and New Westminster participated in the vote.
Canada-wide, more than 1.18 million elementary and secondary school students cast ballots at 7,855 schools, voting in a Liberal minority government with 110 seats.
The NDP won 99 seats, followed by the Conservatives with 94 seats, the Greens with 28 seats and the Bloc Québecois with 9 seats.
As in the adult election, however, the Conservative Party won the popular vote with 25.1 per cent, compared to the NDP’s 24.8, the Liberals’ 22.3 and the Green’s 18.2.
