Citizens’ assemblies are hitting the mainstream of Canadian politics. Last week in a letter to Trudeau (en français), Jagmeet Singh remarked on the failures of our first past the post system to deliver fair and proportional representation to Canadians. Citing politicians’ inability to agree on a new voting system – exemplified most prominently by Trudeau’s failure to adopt the outcome of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform – Singh voiced his support for citizens to make this decision instead.
But citizens’ assemblies are a new topic to many of us. Aside from Ontario and BC’s citizens’ assemblies on provincial electoral reform, many Canadians don’t have much experience or knowledge of how they work. But with the concept gaining popularity across Europe and the UK, it’s a good time to learn how we can use them more widely here in Canada to drive progress on contentious issues.
Typically, citizens’ assemblies are formed by governments through randomly selecting anywhere from a few dozen to around a hundred citizens to gather for weeks or months to deliberate on a tough policy issue. Assembly facilitators bring in experts to speak to the members of the assembly, giving them time to learn and discuss the various dimensions of the issue. Following deliberation, the members then produce a set of recommendations to deliver to government or a parliamentary committee set up to process the results and synthesize them into real policy. Adding these types of processes to our existing decision-making system can have a multitude of benefits: balanced inclusion based on gender, race, socio-economic background, and geographic region brings a range of voices to the discussion of issues; the interests of citizens can be legitimized through the forum of an assembly, providing an alternative to voting when attempting to influence policy-making; and the deliberative and expert-informed process increases the likelihood that policy outcomes are more solidly rooted in evidence, rather than in the demands of party politics and election cycles.
The citizen assembly is an approach already being implemented in several countries with the intention of better addressing thorny policy challenges such as climate change. The most notable example of such an assembly is in Ireland. Launched in 2016, the Irish citizen assembly gathered 99 people from across the country to spend 12 weekends addressing five different challenges facing the country. One of these was climate change, on which the assembly deliberated for two weekends; in 2018, they delivered 13 ambitious recommendations back to a parliamentary committee set up to review the results. Most of these recommendations made their way into Ireland’s 2019 Climate Action Plan. Unfortunately, the assembly’s recommendations for three of the other five issues addressed were more or less ignored, and have still not yet been addressed by government.
Critically, citizen assemblies only improve democracy if there is a clear and pre-established mechanism through which outputs are directly translated into policy outcomes; the more room governments have to filter or synthesize the results, the more able they are to weaken or even ignore outcomes that aren’t in their interest. This weak link is evident in the Irish case – if clearer linkages had been established between assembly outputs and policy outcomes, all five of the assemblies’ addressed issues would have been followed by government legislation. Indeed, this mechanism must be addressed to ensure that the results of a Canadian citizen assembly on electoral reform would actually result in a new voting system.
Persuading governments to make moves against their own interests is never going to be easy. We must be wary of governments who agree to conduct an assembly without any intention of adopting the recommendations. Indeed, another failed attempt to pass electoral reform – something the vast majority of Canadians support – will only serve to demoralize supporters, as happened after Trudeau’s broken campaign promise.
Implementing changes to our system of governance will not be easy. To many, these proposals may sound overly ambitious – but we should also recognize their opportunity for high impact. Evidence from other countries shows that when conducted properly, citizens’ assemblies are powerful tools to drive citizen-centred change in society. Though some politicians continue to prioritize their own self-interest over the demands of the people, we must continue to advocate for a citizens’ assembly on electoral reform.
— Megan Mattes
Here’s what you need to know about Citizens’ Assemblies – Fair Vote Toronto
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