After Nova Scotia cut funding, HRM students, parents, and community members spoke up and won. Thousands of Grade 7-12 students keep free transit access for 2026-27 through a new funding partnership.

As provinces and territories head into municipal elections, youth transit deserves a spot on the agenda. See how Burlington, Ottawa, North Bay, Kingston, and Halifax are proving that investing in youth mobility pays off for families, businesses, and future ridership.

After nine days at the Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference, GotB Program Director Dan Hendry kept coming back to the same idea — people can't participate in opportunities they can't access. Here's what conversations with 45+ national leaders taught him about leadership, collaboration, and why youth mobility belongs in the conversation about Canada's future.

Sophia Young joined Alberta's Top 30 Under 30 at Edmonton's Newcomer Centre for the Youth Leading Change panel on March 27. The conversation touched on resilience, patience, and the power of storytelling, but what stayed with her wasn't what the panelists said. It was what she saw in the room.

Sophia Young received Alberta's Top 30 Under 30 Award in February 2026 — but the recognition belongs to every community, mentor, and young person who made this movement what it is.

Over 50 student projects. 10 industry leaders. One clear takeaway: youth are already building the cities we talk about. Here's what Connect 2026 showed us about transit, design, and what's possible when we invest in young people.

At the University of Alberta, students aren't just studying community design — they're doing it. Civil Connect's award-winning projects show what happens when youth are trusted to build, not just advise.

Across Canada, more communities are asking an important question: When we talk about youth transit, what are we really talking about? At its core, youth transit is not just about free fares or discounted passes. It is about intentional investment in young people so they can experience, understand, and grow with public transit as part of everyday life.

In November 2025, I had the privilege of joining a webinar hosted by Queen’s University through the Certificate in Professional Impact Analysis (CPIA) program. Dr. Bahman Kashi and I discussed the impact of investing in youth access to transit and the need to rigorously measure what truly works.

For me, this session was especially meaningful because it highlighted something we don’t always see in community initiatives: a thoroughly completed cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, in this case of youth transit access in Kingston.