Hello I am Charlene Seale, Brandon's teacher. Here is this latest blog that he emailed to me:

Now I will tell you my personal opinion towards the result of the survey question where most students said that they think that we should payoff the national debt in Canada.
I would say that I thought that the students would have taken the freedom to choose freely and to expand their horizons in the different possibilities. There are many other things we could do with surplus money. In the end I still agree with my fellow classmates who think we should pay it off so we can have a debt free future.
I am of two minds, on one hand I think we should be responsible and pay our debt.  On the other hand I feel we could do much more with the opportunity of a rare surplus. We should explore options such as putting more into education and health initiatives.  These are just suggestions, I am sure there are a multitude of possibilities.

civix vote program 2011 federal election

here is a picture of my classmates and I looking at the results and discusing and sharing opinions

In my next post I will introduce something: Ms O'hanley, our teacher, has written an explanation of the civix project

we did in 2012, and it is still how the project works today

Mrs O'hanley's participating classes  explored the breakdown of the revenues and expenditures for  the federal government and learn about the budgeting process, 

from pipelines to taxes and innovation to environment.  The purpose is to educate and engage students in a dialogue about the biggest issues facing the country.

To help  bring these issues into the classroom we were provided with up-to-date resources activities and exclusive video content including the one by the Minister of finance., as well as an issue panel of political insiders and representatives from all federal political parties.

Following the learning and dialogue students took part in an online consultation. Participant responses were analyzed and compiled into a report which was presented to the Minister of finance and the House of the Commons standing committee on finance.

I have to say that after reading these results I have been shocked and disappointed by the content because of the low rate of participation for our province. I think that it is our right and responsibility to participate and have our say because it implies us and no one else. In my opinion if we all stood up and participated in these our country could be run better simply because everyone would have their say.   It make me  feel aggrieved because I love Canada and I love where I live and I wish that people some day could understand the importance of participation. This applies to voting also since as of June 18 2015 I  am going to be 18.  I will take my responsibilities as a rightful citizen and i will vote.  I am aware of the low rate of people voting and it disappoints me.. People have fought wars for the right to vote!  People have given their lives for their country so I think that as responsible citizens it is our duty to vote.

Doing this survey was a totally new experience for me and I hope that in the future I can participate in more surveys. This survey is in fact very neat and touches on a lot of points. I really like the videos for the different parties that the survey asks about.    It gave me a brief yet effective insight into the different political  parties and their goals. I also liked the fact that most of the questions gave you the opportunity to speak for yourself. The parts of the survey that I liked least was the fact that it did not touch as much youth  simply because of the implications of an elevated vocabulary. I personally had no trouble reading the survey but my classmates had difficulty reading some of the questions.

I would also like to say thank you to all the people who participated in the creation of this wonderful survey

To describe myself a little I am a 17 year old boy who lives in the city of st Jerome Quebec. I am bilingual, English and French and I go to CDC Lachute adult center