In Canada, the House of Commons is debating a private member’s bill by a New Democratic Party (NDP) member of Parliament that would lower the voting age to sixteen. In fact, there are two such bills before the House right now and one in the Senate. There have been similar bills in the past offered by Liberals and New Democrats alike. All told, these bills number nearly a dozen. The bill ought to become law. It’s well past time.

In December, on the occasion of a legal challenge against the federal voting age, Aaron Wherry wrote a defense of lowering the voting age to sixteen for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He dispatched with the usual, tired counterarguments and offered a suite of reasons for making the change. Research indicates that the cognitive capacities of sixteen-year-olds are up to the task of democratic engagement. Furthermore, studies have shown that the civic knowledge of those at sixteen years of age is commensurate with that of eighteen-year-olds — the enfranchised age cohort immediately upstream.

As Wherry and others note, young people have the most at stake in the future of the country, especially given the existential threat of climate change. The current age of eighteen is arbitrary; you can do plenty at sixteen already, including leaving home, driving a car, taking a job, and dropping out of school. More than a dozen countries already allow folks to vote at sixteen, and they’ve yet to descend into a tableau reminiscent of the more chilling bits of a Hieronymus Bosch triptych.