Our Vision

The VOICE: The Childhood Ethics Project, involving multigenerational researchers and practitioners, has documented how insidious harms continue to be pervasive and affect all spheres of young people’s existence, oppressing their childhoods and impeding their opportunities to fully develop their capacities as human agents. 

A positive leap for children and young people, the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states that (a) the best interests of children shall be of primary consideration in all actions concerning them (Art. 3) and (b) young people have the right to express those views freely in all matters that affect them and that their views should be given due weight (Art. 12). More recently, the government of Canada has pledged in 2019 to create meaningful opportunities for youth’s voices to be heard through Canada’s Youth Policy. 

And yet, there exists in Canada a chasm between what officials — in government, academia, and public institutions — express about young people’s concerns and aspirations, and the actual circumstances encountered daily by youth. Many are further marginalised by the mere fact that their identity as young people intersects with their gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, class, and neurodiversity, as well as their cultural backgrounds. 

The VOICE research collaborative will continue to speak out against the violations of young people’s inalienable rights to be protected from harm and to be heard, and firmly promotes the recognition of their rights in Canada, placing the values of equity and humanity at the heart of any discussions relating to young people. Specifically, regarding young people’s CRC Article 12 right to be heard, when youth inclusion is sought, they are commonly included in largely symbolic and insincere ways, largely based on outdated conceptions of im/maturity. 

VOICE denounces these discriminatory and tokenistic practices, and calls for the recognition of youth as moral agents in their own right. This historical imbalance must be immediately redressed, for due weight should be given to young people’s voices in accordance with their capacity to engage in morally significant matters. 

As a research collaborative aware of our societal obligations, we seek to optimise participation opportunities with young people, which can help bolster their capacities as moral agents. VOICE thus reaffirms its commitment to respecting youth agency by adopting an emancipatory mission aimed towards the dismantlement of ageist and other discriminatory barriers that continue to plague the participation of youth in all realms of their lives across this country. Youth are not only the stakeholders of tomorrow, but also rightful actors of the present.