A fascinating result of the recent federal election is the role that young people - Generation Y in particular - will play in Canada’s political future.

We have all heard about Canada’s youngest ever MP - the new 19 year-old NDP and his caucus colleague the young mom who spent part of the campaign vacationing in Vegas.  

Most comments and editorial cartoons mock their inexperience, revel in the challenge Jack Layton will have controlling them, and some even fear it is the end of parliamentary decorum.

In conversations I have had over the last week with people from all over Ontario, I think there is a cynicism under all of this…a jealousy that they will get the big paycheck so easily and a fear that change is actually afoot… that the power is indeed slipping from the old guard.

You can look at the Arab Spring in Africa and the Middle East and see evidence of the impact of politically active people under 30.

But there is evidence of the youth political phenomenon closer to home and it is not just the chance election of those NDP MPs in Quebec.

While participating on the inaugural podcast for Pundit Central last week I was struck by the fact that at my youngish age of 38, I was probably the oldest pundit on the show (a first!).

And in listening to intelligent, passionate pundits from all three national parties defend their positions it occurred to me that they were convinced that the political landscape was changing and their generation was leading the change.

Leading it. Not sitting at the feet of the elder party statesmen. Not waiting in a queue to get the authority when someone tells them they have earned it. In fact as one responded to a challenge I made about the sad state of the Liberal party - watch the young Liberal groups. That is where the real action is.

So look past the fear-mongering around young MPs and rid yourself of the notion the old guard still has all the control.

Today’s under 30s aren’t going to wait a few decades to run things. 

They are starting to change our politics right now and that may be a very good thing.