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Give youth a dance
When Jacob Mantle ran for Township Council this past October, much was made of his age, just 21 years. He was featured in many of the Toronto media as the youngest municipal candidate in the GTA, and was treated by most of them as a novelty candidate for that reason. Locally, he was looked at as a long shot, especially against such high-profile folks as Chris Smith and Roger Varley.
Well, imagine everybody’s surprise when Mr. Mantle actually won, and not narrowly either, by more than 200 votes and nine percentage points over Mr. Smith, his closest rival. So that showed his work on the hustings, and his relative comfort level in council chambers over his first few months shows that he does his homework as well. Our cover photo this week shows that he takes his environmental portfolio seriously.
In short, Mr. Mantle has demonstrated that his youth has very little to do with his ability not only to win his Ward 4 job, but to carry it out effectively. Besides, he’s turned 22 since the municipal election, so he’s getting older and wiser as we watch. And compared to some of the MPs now representing Quebec in Ottawa, on whom the spotlight has unrelentingly shone over the last week, Jacob Mantle is comparatively ancient.
“I guess I’m not very special any more, eh?” he joked at Monday’s Council meeting. He probably has a little jealous twinge at how easily these babes-in-the-woods vaulted into high-paying jobs in the senior level of government (a level to which we suspect he aspires down the road), especially considering many of them (not figuring they had a ghost of a chance on May 2) probably didn’t work nearly as hard during their campaigns as he did during his.
But in fact many of Jack Layton’s young Quebec troops have quite a bit in common with our Jacob. Not the infamous Mlle. Brosseau, perhaps, whose very candidacy, let alone victory, seems to be a bit of a stretch. But many of the other young ones (including the youngest, a 19-year-old) have been very much involved in student politics, and are majoring in political science at university (as Mr. Mantle did at Queen’s in Kingston). As exciting and unexpected as their victories were, it won’t be long before they get down to business as seriously as Mantle has. Certainly the experience of public speaking won’t be new to them, as several have already demonstrated, and even if they’ve never been in the House of Commons before (as many probably have), they know all about how it should work, how it really works, and how it doesn’t work.
Although Mr. Mantle certainly respects the experience of his fellow members of Uxbridge Council, he doesn’t go into a given issue assuming they know the answers and he doesn’t. He does his homework and comes with his own ideas, his own questions, his own contributions. We suspect that for Mr. Layton’s young Quebecois, the learning curve won’t be as steep as most are predicting, and they too will be soon be confidently making themselves heard (and better, listened to) at the caucus table, in the committee rooms and in question period.
In Uxbridge, we know how strong youth can be; there are many fine examples beyond Jacob Mantle. We expect great things from the youngbloods on Parliament Hill.
