Canada’s Next Prime Minister Was Chosen by 14-Year-Olds—Let That Sink In

Fourteen-year-olds played a role in deciding Canada’s next Prime Minister. That should be the headline dominating every news outlet in the country, but instead, the legacy media is silent. While Canadians must be at least 18 years old and citizens to vote in a federal election, the Liberal Party set the bar far lower for its leadership race—allowing minors as young as 14 and even permanent residents to cast ballots. This means thousands of children who aren’t legally recognized as responsible enough to vote in a general election were handed the power to install Mark Carney as the leader of the Liberal Party and, by extension, the Prime Minister of Canada.

It raises serious questions. What 14-year-old is truly engaged in politics, let alone informed enough to select the next leader of the country? More importantly, how many of these votes were actually the result of political engagement, and how many were simply children following the direction of adults in their household? The Liberal Party’s rules created an environment where young teenagers, who do not meet the legal threshold for voting in a general election, became a tool to boost registration numbers and provide a free labor force for the party machine.

If there’s nothing to hide, the Liberals should release the numbers. How many minors actually voted? How many of the ballots cast were from 14-, 15-, or 16-year-olds? How much did they factor into the final tally that made Mark Carney the leader? Without transparency, Canadians have no choice but to question whether this was a legitimate process or if the leadership race was engineered to serve the interests of party insiders.

The hypocrisy of it all is staggering. Time and again, young Canadians have pushed for the voting age to be lowered to 16, arguing they are responsible enough to have a voice in democracy. Every time, they have been met with dismissive rhetoric from politicians who insist that youth lack the maturity to vote in a general election. Yet, when it came to the Liberal leadership race, these same politicians were perfectly happy to let teenagers—two to four years younger than the proposed threshold—play a role in selecting the next Prime Minister. How does that make any sense?

And it wasn’t just minors whose votes were counted. Permanent residents, people who are explicitly barred from voting in federal elections because they are not yet Canadian citizens, were granted the right to vote in the leadership race. This sends a clear and troubling message: permanent residents are good enough to be used for internal party politics, but not good enough to have a say in Canada’s government. The Liberals were willing to exploit their presence for leadership votes, but when it comes to actual democratic participation, they are left out.

These deeply flawed voting rules are just one piece of the broader problem. The entire leadership race was a masterclass in manipulation. Two-thirds of registered members—about 250,000 out of 400,000—were unable to cast a ballot due to an eleventh-hour identity verification rule, effectively disenfranchising them. Meanwhile, South Asian candidates with strong grassroots support were disqualified under opaque circumstances, and the party has yet to return the money it took from their supporters. And through it all, the media remains silent.

Canadians are supposed to trust that democracy is functioning as it should. But how can they, when the process that installed Mark Carney as Prime Minister was riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and questionable decisions? If even a 14-year-old voter could look at this and call it “sus,” why isn’t the media doing the same?

A government that operates this way—manipulating leadership races, disenfranchising voters, and using children and minorities to pad its numbers—has not earned the right to govern. The silence from the press doesn’t change that. The only path forward is a course correction, and Canadians must demand one.