Aging & Wisdom Quote by Peter MacKay

Politics hates a vacuum, and MacKay is naming the one that terrifies establishment parties: a whole generation that doesn’t feel spoken to, served, or even courted. “Growing the party” sounds like harmless organizational hygiene, but it’s really an admission that the party’s current coalition is aging out. The phrase frames youth not as citizens with demands, but as a market segment the brand has failed to convert.

The key tell is “see us as a viable option.” That’s lower than “inspiring,” “leading,” or even “earning trust.” It’s the language of triage and relevance, the recognition that the party has slipped from being a default choice to a maybe. “Viable” implies the party is competing not just against opponents, but against abstention, cynicism, and the sense that politics is a closed loop. It also signals internal realism: the problem isn’t simply messaging; it’s credibility.

MacKay’s intent is pragmatic, not poetic: modernize, recruit, and keep the electoral math from collapsing. The subtext is strategic anxiety about demographic churn and a political culture where young voters are more mobile, issue-driven, and suspicious of institutions. In a Canadian context, it echoes a recurring Conservative challenge: translating traditional strengths (fiscal restraint, order, incrementalism) into a story that doesn’t read as nostalgia or punishment.

It works rhetorically because it’s blunt about the task: not to win an argument, but to re-enter consideration. That’s a small sentence with a big confession inside it.