Today on the Hill: former budget officer, opposition leaders push youth vote

OTTAWA – Kevin Page wants your vote.

Well, actually, the former parliamentary budget officer just wants you to vote.

Specifically, Page is hoping to change the behaviour of young people by finding ways to improve political engagement.

Page recently teamed up with pollster Nick Nanos and discovered that, if young people had turned out to vote in the same numbers as the population overall in 2011, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives likely would not have won a majority government.

Page will be at the University of Ottawa today for an event dubbed “iVote.”

Other notable speakers and panellists include Opposition NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and Green party Leader Elizabeth May.

Here are some other things happening today around the parliamentary precinct:

— The current parliamentary budget officer will release a report on Canada’s labour market.

— The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will release its investigation report into the accident involving First Air flight 6560 in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, in 2011.

— Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. Daniel Yergin, and Jim Prentice of the CIBC, will discuss the future of North American energy at an event hosted by Canada 2020.

— Denis Lebel, minister of infrastructure, communities and intergovernmental affairs, appears at committee for a series of votes on the current fiscal year’s main budget estimates.

— The Commons health committee meets with a Finnish delegation.

— Speech-Language and Audiology Canada releases a report card on the status of all provincial and territorial early hearing detection and intervention programs in Canada.

— And members of the Wounded Warriors Canada appear at the veterans committee hearing witnesses on the Enhanced New Veterans Charter Act.