Quebec Teens to Lawmakers: Come Talk to Us, Not About Us

As a brand-new legislature gets to work in Quebec City, Quebec teens have a message for the people who will make decisions about their lives: come talk to us, not about us. A survey released October 12, 2026 by the Regroupement des maisons des jeunes du Québec (RMJQ), the province's association of youth centres, found that forty-one percent of Quebec teens feel adults and elected representatives listen to them very little, not really, or not at all.

For Quebec teens who took part in the survey, being heard is not a nice-to-have. They describe themselves as people living right now with the consequences of decisions made above their heads — and they are asking the new government to treat them that way. The results land as the province marks its annual youth centres week, running October 12 to 18, 2026 under the theme ACTION!, which casts teenagers as agents of social change rather than passive observers.

The survey asked Quebec teens which issues they most want their representatives to take seriously, and mental health came out on top by a wide margin: nearly half named it a priority. Bullying and cyberbullying ranked second, named by about a third of respondents, followed by education, also at just under a third. That ranking matters, because it differs from what national polls keep finding among older youth. According to CIVIX's Youth Voices Survey of students across Canada, conducted with Abacus Data earlier in 2026, affordability dominates — everyday cost of living at sixty-nine percent and housing at sixty-three — though mental health support resonated more strongly with the youngest respondents there too.

What Quebec Teens Want Their Lawmakers to Hear

When asked what concrete action they expect, Quebec teens were strikingly specific, as reported by the RMJQ in its release. Their demands: more mental health resources, real action against bullying, schools better suited to their realities, more gathering places, and stronger support for youth centres themselves. None of these are abstract. They read like a to-do list from people who have watched plans get announced without them in the room.

The funding demand is the sharpest. The RMJQ used the survey's release to ask the government for stable, predictable funding for youth centres across the province. The network supports more than two hundred and fifty youth centres in nearly three hundred and forty Quebec communities — places where teenagers can drop in, be taken seriously, and learn to participate. The ask is simple: if the province wants young people engaged in civic life, it should invest in the places where that engagement actually starts.

The RMJQ's executive director Nicholas Legault put the case bluntly: "teenagers are not just the citizens of tomorrow, they are active participants in our society." According to the release, he argued that young people are directly affected by decisions taken today, yet their voices are still too often ignored in the decisions that affect them.

Why Quebec Teens Say Youth Centres Work

The survey also hints at why these places matter so much to Quebec teens. More than nine in ten respondents said their youth centre helps them express their opinions, and ninety-five percent said it helps them respect opinions that differ from their own. Those two numbers side by side describe something rare in public life: a setting where teenagers practice the skills of disagreement and debate, not just consumption of content.

That finding has a counterpoint worth keeping in mind. The survey reached teens who already walk through the doors of youth centres — young people who are, by definition, more connected than the ones who stay home. If anything, the forty-one percent who say they feel unheard probably understates the disengagement of Quebec teens with no such support around them. The survey is a floor, not a ceiling, on how unheard young people feel.

Still, for the teens who answered, the contrast is clear: in one part of their lives, their opinions are welcomed and debated; in the rest of it, they feel ignored. Closing that gap is the task they are handing to Quebec's newly elected officials. And they have given the province a full week — the annual youth centres week — to start by showing up and listening.

Readers can find the full survey results as reported by the RMJQ in its October 2026 release, and the national picture on what Canadian youth care about according to CIVIX's Youth Voices Survey. For more coverage of how young people are pushing for a say, see EU youth demanding climate justice at the 2026 UN climate summit, and browse the Social Justice topic page for related stories.