Canadian Youth Assembly

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 practises of the CYA are greatly influenced by the input of its members.

Formation and Activities

The Canadian Youth Assembly was originally formed in early 2008 as a successor to the defunct Youth Parliament of Canada of the 1980s. A previous attempt, in 2007, at forming a model parliament for youth had met with eventual 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 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 a Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) electoral system.

The CYA was officially incorporated as a non-profit organization in late December 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 procedures and practices to be followed once the Assembly is prepared to hold formal elections across Canada.

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.

Current Activities

The Canadian Youth Assembly is currently working on launching officially three primary endeavours:

  • 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 of 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.

Youth Parties within the CYA

In addition to a number of independent candidates, several 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 ACTIVE within the CYA:

  • the Assembly of New Democratic Youth (ANDY)
    • Leader: Stephen Yardy
    • Policies: social democracy, democratic socialism, progressivism
  • the Conservative Youth Party of Canada (CYPC)
    • Leader: Nathaniel Lewis
    • Policies: conservatism
  • the LAN Party (LAN)
    • Leader: Jeremy Zhao
    • Policies: joke political party, Pastafarian fundamentalism
  • the Liberal Youth Party of Canada (LYPC)
    • Leader: Max Naylor
    • Policies: liberalism, social liberalism, centrism
  • the Pro Populus Party (PPP)
    • Leader: Arya Sajedi
    • Policies: classical liberalism, libertarian conservatism, populism
  • the Youth Green Party (YGP)
    • Leader: Peter Browne (interim)
    • Policies: Green Politics

The parties in the CYA are not meant to reflect the federal and provincial parties in Canadian politics, but are meant to group like-minded individuals together. CYA parties differ fundamentally from other parties due to the requirement which has been set that individuals of and parties themselves must work together, rather than against one another. This collaborative establishment is meant to ensure character building, problem solving, interpersonal skills and to reflect the possibility that youth do not enjoy highly partisan and aggressive politics.