Canadian Youth Assembly

Canadian Youth Assembly
Motto	"Together We Can"
Formation	early 2008
Type	non-profit organization
Membership	Canadian youth (ages 14 to 25)
Official languages	English, French
Executive Director	Tyler Sommers
Key people	Allison Chen, Jason Gwartz, Steven Heidel, Kaitlynne-Rae Landry
Website	http://cya-ajc.ca

The Canadian Youth Assembly (CYA) is a non-profit organization formed in 2008 to serve as a unified voice for youth across the country and to be an environment in which Canadian youth can become interested and involved in democracy and politics.

The three primary focuses of the CYA are education, volunteerism, and creating dialogue with decision makers. The CYA administration makes a particular effort to ensure that the structure and practices of the CYA are greatly influenced by the input of its members.

Formation and activities

The Canadian Youth Assembly aims to engage uninvolved and apathetic youth in their communities. In order to do this, the CYA works to help them become better leaders through gaining exposure to different experiences, creating volunteer opportunities, and building bridges between youth and decision makers to provide young people with a voice.

The Canadian Youth Assembly was originally formed in early 2008, modelled on the defunct Youth Parliament of Canada. A previous attempt in 2007 at forming a model parliament for Canadian youth had, ultimately, met with failure. Learning from these experiences, the founding membership of the CYA committed to keeping the new organization self-governed, inclusive, democratic, and transparent. The CYA aims to cultivate interest and involvement in democracy by providing innovative training, leadership opportunities, and a means of discussing and debating the issues that affect youth across Canada. The CYA further seeks to publicly represent the collective opinions of the youth of Canada to the country as a whole.

General membership in the CYA is restricted to any youth between the ages of 10 and 25, while candidates for Youth Representative (YR) must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents (or must file a waiver and be approved) between the ages of 14 and 25. Anyone may become a supporting member, regardless of age. The CYA is working towards holding its first election in 2009, and has adopted a member-created riding structure which consists of 177 ridings (all of which are combinations of the actual ridings in the Canadian House of Commons). The CYA has also adopted, upon recommendations from its membership, the use of an instant runoff voting (IRV) electoral system.

The CYA was incorporated as a non-profit organization in November 2008.

In February 2009, with the CYA's support, an online model parliament was formed by many of the current members of the Assembly. The model parliament uses the reduced 177-riding plan adopted by the CYA administration and is meant to help develop the knowledge and skills of the youth who become involved. The CYA MP provides a learning experience for youth who want to learn how passing bills and being in the House of Commons is about. With participation on the decline, and with the Assembly itself taking shape, the CYA Model Parliament was discontinued in May 2010. The proceedings of the Model Parliament remain archived on the CYA's online forums.

The Canadian Youth Assembly has gained support from politicians across Canada, having already received several endorsements as its members seek to achieve broader recognition. The CYA has also received funding from a Rotary Club in Ontario and is looking to build up additional funds.

Several members of the CYA have gone on to run for elected office on the municipal, provincial, or federal level, in particular:

• Matt Schaubroeck, who was the New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate for Saint Boniface in the 2008 federal election, as well as the Manitoba NDP's candidate in Tuxedo in the 2007 Manitoba provincial election;
• Stephen Yardy, who was the NDP candidate for Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock in the 2008 federal election;
• Peter Browne, who was a candidate for Mississauga City Council in Ward 8 in the 2010 Ontario municipal elections, and who is active in the Green Party of Canada; and
• Robert Murray, who was the New Brunswick New Democratic Party candidate for Kings East in the 2010 New Brunswick provincial election.

Current activities

The Canadian Youth Assembly is currently working on launching several endeavours:

• CYA 2010 General Elections. In March 2010 the CYA will be hosting elections where 177 youth from across Canada will be elected by their peers to represent them. These youth will be trained on becoming effective citizens in their community and will serve the youth of their riding in launching programs and endeavours aimed at addressing the needs and concerns of the youth in their area. CYA 2010 Election Website</ref>

• The CYA Model Parliament, which is run within the CYA's online forums and serves to inform youth about parliamentary procedures, is run fully by the membership with some oversight by CYA volunteers.

• CYA! Volunteering is a program which is to consist of increased awareness of volunteer opportunities in high schools. Currently the CYA has received advanced approval to submit information to high schools in the York Region District School Board (YRDSB). A project which will be launched along with this is the CYA Logo Contest, in which youth may submit logos which may be adopted by the organization.

• The CYA had recently been planning an in-person conference to be held in Toronto, Ontario in May 2009, but this has now been delayed. The CYA administration are looking to reschedule this event due to a lack of human resources to cover both the conference planning and the work already ongoing within the CYA.

CYA youth parties

In addition to a number of independent candidates, several CYA parties have been formed by like-minded youth to contest future elections in the CYA. The following parties have all been officially recognized and remain nominally active within the CYA:

• the Assembly of New Democratic Youth (ANDY)
  • Leader: Adam Schneider (acting)
  • Policies: social democracy, democratic socialism, progressivism
• the Canadian Youth Assembly Progressive Conservatives (CYAPC)
  • Leader: (vacant, unknown if still active)
  • Policies: conservatism
• the Labour-Progressive Party (LPP)
  • Leader: Zach Morgenstern (uncertain)
  • Policies: libertarian socialism, Marxism
• the LAN Party (LAN)
  • Leader: (unknown)
  • Policies: joke party, Pastafarian fundamentalism
• the Liberal Youth Party of Canada (LYPC)
  • Leader: (vacant)
  • Policies: liberalism, social liberalism, centrism
• the Youth Green Party (YGP)
  • Leader: Peter Browne (interim)
  • Policies: Green politics

Despite their names, the parties in the CYA have no formal ties to the federal and provincial parties in Canadian politics, as a mandatory condition of recognition by the CYA administration. CYA members are free to affiliate themselves with any of the parties in the Assembly, regardless of their membership or participation in federal, provincial or municipal parties.

The CYA seeks to promote a collaborative environment between the parties that exist in the organization, with the staff taking an active role when needed in guiding members to work with, rather than against, one another. This attitude is meant to promote character-building, problem-solving and interpersonal skills and to reflect the possibility that youth do not enjoy highly partisan and aggressive politics.