2. The 18-year-old is running for mayor alongside the likes of Rob Ford, Olivia Chow, and Karen Stintz. She has been
looked at with contempt and incredulity for her ambitious and lofty venture. People believe she’s running for mayor
as some sort of joke.
Rob Ford has put an unprecedented spotlight on municipal politics in Toronto, but he wasn’t central to Baskin’s
decision to join the mayoral race.
“I’d be lying if I said my decision to run was completely separate from that spotlight. But, at the same time, this is not
reactionary to Rob Ford,” Baskin said. “I’ve been thinking about this for two years. It wasn’t something I did on a
whim.”
City Hall has gone a bit stale, she says, and she wants to bring in some fresh blood.
“I think when you get the same group of people around the table over and over again, eventually you stop having
productive, useful, new ideas,” she says, as she sips her coffee at one of her regular Corktown haunts. The Beatles are
playing in the background, and Baskin is responding to campaign-related emails.
The most obvious difference between Baskin and the competition, though, is her age. She has a connection to a fairly
large number of potential voters who don’t vote because they already feel underrepresented and unheard: the 18- to
24-year-old demographic vote.
But while Baskin has the potential to harness the ‘youth vote,’ her campaign is also highlighting the vicious ageism
streaking through Canadian society. The lines between the adult world and the youth world are blurred for Baskin,
and a power struggle is emerging.
“That is something we need to tackle, just as a society. This problem where we praise the young and we, in some
ways, idolize the young — anti-aging creams, etc. — but when the young stick their hands up and say ‘I’m not actually
a leader of tomorrow, I’m a leader of right now, today,’ we say ‘no, no, no, tomorrow, next week, next year, go to
university first, get a job first,” she says with the passionate delivery of an engaged politician.
“I actually have these ideas right now and I’d like to not go $40,000 in debt so that [I can be taken seriously].”
Kids grow up hearing they can do anything and be anything, but the message changes rapidly when they start doing
things regulated to “adults only.” Suddenly, they are simply “too young,” she explains.
This issue of being “too young” has the potential of hurting Baskin’s campaign severely, with people writing her off
simply because of her age.
Baskin neglects her coffee as the topic shifts and every word is infused with fervor. She talks about the youth vote
and youth empowerment – young people’s disengagement stems from the feeling that their opinions don’t matter,
she says. It’s unfortunate that many university students don’t vote, but it does not need to be a recognised fact of life.
Most adults seem to have a mental block when it comes to seeing youth as equals. They feel as if their life experience
quantifies more wisdom, and in many cases it does, but to write off the young, simply because they’re young, is doing
a disservice to everyone.
3. Baskin’s maturity and credibility have been questioned not only by potential voters but also by reporters during
interviews.
One radio host asked her if she could spend the maximum amount of money a candidate can spend on a mayoral
campaign, $1.3 million, on clothing. His teenage daughter, he joked, probably could.
Many headlines call her a ‘girl’, a term that has very different connotations than young woman or student. Other
reporters she spoke with called her a “standout of her generation,” an “outlier,” as if an engaged teenager is some
kind of anomaly.
But if she’s looking for the youth vote, what may be most important is the way those in her own generation are
reacting to her.
Bruce Kecskes, 18, a York University political science student says, “On the one hand I applaud her dedication to
municipal politics, a rare thing at our age. However, I am wary of her ability to deal with the delicate situations
demanded of the mayor’s office.”
It’s obvious within minutes that Baskin truly loves her city and her neighbourhood, and that she genuinely believes
she can make it a better place to live.
The gist of Baskin’s platform involves reconciling the urban-suburban divide that plagues city politics, providing
more appropriate and accessible public transportation for citizens, maintaining the property tax, and listening to
experts that can better the city. More detailed and concrete plans are expected soon from Baskin and her team.
Along with the downtown relief line, Baskin emphasises the need for stronger and more concentrated bus and
streetcar services, “As more and more people move into the city we need services to provide for them,” she says.
Baskin’s ideal Toronto is, “a city without food deserts, a city with great public transit and with great mixed housing.”
Baskin did a placement at City Hall through her school that gave her some insight into how the system works. It also
highlighted some of the problems in the system. Working together constructively, she says, is lacking greatly in City
Hall at the moment, and she’d like to change that.
Baskin also sees her lack of experience in city politics as an advantage.
“I come in without political baggage,” she said. “I’m not a career politician, and career politicians are great at
winning elections, but are they really great at doing their jobs?”
However, Baskin is no stranger to leadership positions. She has been involved with the Scouts movement on a
grassroots and bureaucratic level for several years and as a camp counsellor over the summers. Camp structure, she
says, is not entirely unlike municipal government.
Baskin looks to Tavi Gevinson of Rookie Magazine, Malala Yousafzai, and Hannah Godefa, a United Nations youth
advisor, as role models. All these young women worked to change their realities, refusing to wait until they were the
elusive “appropriate age,” she explains.
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“The road map I was given for success doesn’t really work anymore,” Baskin says. “A lot of those landmarks are gone
or unachievable. They’ve been blocked off. I’m really interested in redefining success for our generation.”
She calls herself a juggler, always having to balance multiple things her entire life. Her mayoral campaign is another
such thing that she believes she is fully capable of handling.
“When you Google ‘engaged teenagers’ you don’t get a whole bunch pictures of teenagers sitting in their bed
watching Netflix,” she chuckles. “There are people doing awesome work and they don’t get their credit because
they’re young.”
Baskin has sought out her own success, off the map and a little more risky than a family home in a nice
neighbourhood, a steady job, and a good pension. Instead, she’s chasing dreams.
![The 18-year-old is running for mayor alongside the likes of Rob Ford, Olivia Chow, and Karen Stintz. She has been
looked at with contempt and incredulity for her ambitious and lofty venture. People believe she’s running for mayor
as some sort of joke.
Rob Ford has put an unprecedented spotlight on municipal politics in Toronto, but he wasn’t central to Baskin’s
decision to join the mayoral race.
“I’d be lying if I said my decision to run was completely separate from that spotlight. But, at the same time, this is not
reactionary to Rob Ford,” Baskin said. “I’ve been thinking about this for two years. It wasn’t something I did on a
whim.”
City Hall has gone a bit stale, she says, and she wants to bring in some fresh blood.
“I think when you get the same group of people around the table over and over again, eventually you stop having
productive, useful, new ideas,” she says, as she sips her coffee at one of her regular Corktown haunts. The Beatles are
playing in the background, and Baskin is responding to campaign-related emails.
The most obvious difference between Baskin and the competition, though, is her age. She has a connection to a fairly
large number of potential voters who don’t vote because they already feel underrepresented and unheard: the 18- to
24-year-old demographic vote.
But while Baskin has the potential to harness the ‘youth vote,’ her campaign is also highlighting the vicious ageism
streaking through Canadian society. The lines between the adult world and the youth world are blurred for Baskin,
and a power struggle is emerging.
“That is something we need to tackle, just as a society. This problem where we praise the young and we, in some
ways, idolize the young — anti-aging creams, etc. — but when the young stick their hands up and say ‘I’m not actually
a leader of tomorrow, I’m a leader of right now, today,’ we say ‘no, no, no, tomorrow, next week, next year, go to
university first, get a job first,” she says with the passionate delivery of an engaged politician.
“I actually have these ideas right now and I’d like to not go $40,000 in debt so that [I can be taken seriously].”
Kids grow up hearing they can do anything and be anything, but the message changes rapidly when they start doing
things regulated to “adults only.” Suddenly, they are simply “too young,” she explains.
This issue of being “too young” has the potential of hurting Baskin’s campaign severely, with people writing her off
simply because of her age.
Baskin neglects her coffee as the topic shifts and every word is infused with fervor. She talks about the youth vote
and youth empowerment – young people’s disengagement stems from the feeling that their opinions don’t matter,
she says. It’s unfortunate that many university students don’t vote, but it does not need to be a recognised fact of life.
Most adults seem to have a mental block when it comes to seeing youth as equals. They feel as if their life experience
quantifies more wisdom, and in many cases it does, but to write off the young, simply because they’re young, is doing
a disservice to everyone.](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)