The generational fault line that could shake up the federal election

Pollsters and political campaigners don’t deny it; there’s a generational fault line in the federal election. Boomers are leaning toward the Liberals, since Mark Carney won the LPC leadership. And younger generations (Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z), angry about the cost of living, endorse the platform of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. Admittedly, it’s an odd dynamic. Younger people preferring a conservative government and seniors wanting to retain a progressive status quo. I’m a boomer with Millennial kids, so this is personal. And it’s real. Some of my contemporaries seem stuck in a time warp, wishing the world wouldn’t change. I also hear the well-placed frustration, even rage, in the voices of younger generations who tell me, “Don’t complain when your kids and grandkids leave for Texas.” Claire Rattée, the youngest MLA in B.C.’s provincial Conservative caucus, is game to talk about generational divides. This 32-year-old Millennial was elected to represent the northwestern B.C. constituency of Skeena in 2024. After moving to Kitimat from the lower mainland in 2011, she’s owned and operated a tattoo parlour, served four years on Kitimat city council, and ran (unsuccessfully) for the CPC in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. We meet virtually; Claire’s in Victoria at the B.C. Legislature and squeezes our conversation into a tight window between a finance committee meeting and question period. This young woman stands out in a crowd — something she’s quite proud of — with her youthful vigour and all those tattoos. She points out a death’s-head hawkmoth tattooed across her chest; turns her neck to the left, to show me a large magpie, and then to the right, to point out a little fruit bat inked on her neck. Unlike most of the friends her age in B.C., who are defectors from the traditional NDP, Claire assures me she’s not hopping on a new bandwagon; she’s always voted conservative. But she understands why her peers are switching their allegiances: “I think they have lost touch with their roots … Jagmeet Singh is not Jack Layton … David Eby doesn’t even hold a candle flame, in my opinion, to the late John Horgan. It’s becoming about elitism. “The reason that the Conservative party is seeing this huge resurgence among my generation,” Claire asserts, “is that we see real substantive policies that I think are being explained better.” The public knows what Poilievre would do as prime minister, she says; “the party’s standing up for working-class people, blue-collar people, middle-income people, and it’s giving people hope. “I’m very fortunate,” she adds. “I can afford a home, I can afford to run my business, I can afford to buy a nice vehicle, I can live fairly comfortably but that’s simply because of where I’ve chosen to live. Most people probably wouldn’t choose to live where I live (in Kitimat)…If I stayed in Vancouver I was never going to afford a home. My siblings will never afford a home because they don’t leave.” And, she continues, “theatre is a part of politics”; leaders like Poilievre have figured out how to get younger peoples’ attention. Her generation is frustrated, she reports: “We can’t afford the things our parents or grandparents could afford, and so we want to see people that are passionate, that are speaking up.” That means political leaders “have to be a little over the top, a little more bubbly, a little bit louder and more passionate and theatrical,” she suggests. Staid and serious won’t turn younger heads. Pushing back, I remind Claire that it was younger people who elected Justin Trudeau — the former drama teacher — as prime minister. She laughs; Trudeau was theatrical and charismatic and some would say attractive, she admits. But it was the marijuana legislation that captured the vote. “Plain and simple,” she states, “I can’t tell you how many people I know in my generation who told me the only reason they voted for him, and for many of them, it was the first time they ever voted, was because they wanted marijuana to be legalized.” Talk of Trudeau raises another point Claire wants to make: “Conservatives, and I don’t mean the Conservative party, I mean conservatives in general, made a little bit of an error … by trying to put everything at the feet of Justin Trudeau.” She’s absolutely correct in her reasoning; Liberal policies are the same, the people are the same, but people now think “Trudeau’s gone, so things are going to get better.” Over-simplification, I suggest, has also led to the mistaken idea in this election that a vote for Carney is a vote against U.S. President Donald Trump. The Canadian economy has been in decline for years and Trump’s become the scapegoat. “The same thing is happening here in B.C.,” Claire nods. “It’s absolutely painful. We can’t get through a question period without the NDP saying, ‘Well, you guys must be Trump lovers and this is all Trump’s fault.’ And we’re going, ‘the softwood lumber agreement, this was an issue long before Trump.’” Over the course of our conversation, I realize Claire is far more forgiving of the boomers — or more optimistic — than I am. Perhaps, she suggests, after years of provincial NDP and federal Liberal governments in B.C., people of all generations “are just generally fed up with socialism; they’re just over it. They put two and two together and they can come to the conclusion that this is just not working.” She’s also been door-knocking with Ellis Ross — her predecessor as MLA for Skeena, now the federal Conservative candidate for the Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding — and knows how voters are thinking. Bottomline: What Claire prioritizes in a leader is authenticity. For her, Poilievre is genuine, he’s the real deal; though she does admit it may be easier to recognize this trait in someone closer to your own age (Poilievre is 45; Carney is 60). Trudeau and Singh lack this quality and it’s “definitely missing in Mark Carney,” is her assessment. Claire is Opposition critic for mental health and addictions in B.C.; I can’t resist asking for her take on Poilievre’s promise to fund 50,000 addictions recovery spaces across the country. “In my riding, the entire northern (B.C.) health region,” she grimaces, “we have seven treatment beds.” The NDP has no problem opening up a safe injection site, she groans, “but God forbid we get a treatment centre.” Claire doesn’t hide the fact she was once a drug addict, living on the streets of Vancouver. “I grew up in the Lower Mainland, so I was fortunate” to have access to a treatment bed, she says, sharing her story of recovery. “I probably wouldn’t be here today if I’d grown up in Kitimat.” We’re generations apart, but I recognize her authenticity. It’s as obvious as the art on her body.

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