by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

• With all this talk about young whippersnappers trying to get involved in politics, it has been largely overlooked that old coots aren't exactly in the middle of the action. Canada's oldest-ever MP was the relatively spry William Anderson Black, who was almost 87 when he died in office in 1934. One guy who might've eventually beat that record, 75-year-old Clifford Lincoln, has now sadly emptied his desk. His aide Francis Scarpaleggia succeeds him for the Liberal nomination in their Lac-St-Louis stronghold after edging out the Turkish-descended Ayse Dalli and Caroline Savic in a notoriously competitive race.

• Remember Craig Kielburger, the 12-year-old Torontonian who led an international campaign against child labour? Well, he's 21 now and he's not running in spite of pleas from a certain Election Notebook reporter. Kielburger, who keeps on being famous as the head of Free the Children (he's appeared three times on Oprah, who's one of his big backers), is politicking nonetheless. He's lobbying to make the working age and the voting age one and the same. "If you lowered the voting age to 16 you could start a trend where high school students believe that they play a role as active Canadian citizens. Civics is part of the curriculum in much of Canada, where they learn about the founders and how wide and vast our nation is. One way to learn what their responsibility is as Canadians is to cast a ballot."

• In case you're curious, Canada has never elected a teenager to the House of Commons, but they came close. Claude-André Lachance was 20 years and three months old when elected in 1974, eclipsing the record of the late Sean O'Sullivan, a 20-year-old PC elected in '72. When his father, the local MP quit, the young Lachance tossed his hat in the ring and, to his own surprise, won the nomination and then the election. He was re-elected in '79 an again in '80 but chose to retire from politics for the regular "personal reasons" at 30 rather than run in '84.

• Since the dawn of time NDG residents have wished to be Westmount residents and the federal government has come up with a solution, very quietly, and with surprisingly little protest from NDG's Liberal MP Marlene Jennings. For the first time, every NDG resident east of Hingston has now been shifted into the Westmount-Ville-Marie riding, home of Lib Lucienne Robillard, who was rumoured to have angrily rejected an offer from party brass to jump into a patronage post rather than run again. Meanwhile, Jennings' NDG-Lachine's western boundary has shifted west, somewhere near the airport, which gives hope for Conservative William McCullock, who will try to wrest the crown from the parachuted incumbent. Candidates from both ridings will converge at Loyola High School (7272 Sherbrooke W.) in a "meet the candidates night" organized by the NDG Community Council on Thursday, June 17, from 7–10 p.m.

• Although she'd presumably rather be out growing tomatoes than watching the boob tube, Con U poli-sci grad and NDG star Green candidate Jessica Gal believes her party should get a court injunction, if necessary, to force the inclusion of her party in the leaders debate, which features Harper, Martin, Duceppe and Smiling Jack Layton on June 14 (French) at 8 p.m. and June 15, same time, in English. Thanks to the eco-conscious West Enders, Gal attracted a party-high three per cent of the NDG vote in the last provincial election, and, with the party running around twice that nationally, she expects to do even better federally. She thinks that Jim Harris, as leader of a party that has candidates in every riding across Canada, deserves a spot on the TV debates. "I'm trying to convince the party to go further in their approach to protesting this because we've circulated a petition [available at www.greenparty.ca], and we've filed an official complaint to the CRTC. I'd like to see an injunction, it's that important. It makes that much of a difference to be seen on TV."

• If you're one of those Canadians who doesn't want kids and doesn't want to pay for other people's brats, there's a solution: move to Kurjuristan, you freak! Every national federal party is promising generous handouts for successful breeders. The Conservatives' plays up to stay-at-home parents by offering a $2,000 taxbreak for each of your bambinos under 16. The Liberals and the NDP promise to make it easy and cheap to pop your kid into daycare, which they call "an early childhood education program" (as opposed to anti-education stay-at-home parents who force their kids to stare at the wall all day). The Libs and Kneedippers are undoubtedly rubbing their hands together at the extra paycheques they'll be taxing by hustling parents back out onto the workforce faster.