Local democracy in Canada is eroding from two directions at once. Voter turnout in municipal elections is shockingly low and, in Ontario, the provincial government has been steadily eroding the powers of city halls by slashing councillor seats, overriding council decisions that would improve local democracy, and appointing regional administrators with “strong mayor” powers that could undermine the role of elected councils.
At a time when democracy is under threat in North America, provincial erosion of local governments is exactly the opposite of what we need. What we need instead is provincial investment in local democracy.
Democratic innovations that give residents the opportunity to advise governments are one remedy to the democratic malaise: forums known as citizens’ assemblies or panels, made up of residents selected by civic lottery, are tasked to deliberate on an issue when policymakers need thoughtful, deep input before they make a decision. In theory, decisions rooted in informed public opinion are more aligned with the public interest, and are thus more democratic.
By giving participants time to learn and discuss an issue before making a recommendation to councillors, deliberative approaches to community engagement do what surveys and town halls can’t – and they solve many of the problems with traditional community engagement that plague staff and participants alike, like factionalism, low quality (and often low quantity) input and unequal participation of certain demographics.
Municipalities have put citizens’ assemblies or panels to use both for contentious issues – like considering the amalgamation of Victoria and Saanich, B.C. – and for regular, ongoing engagement with residents, as has been done in Toronto and in New Westminster, B.C. Assemblies have also been useful for guiding the direction of major community plan documents in the B.C. municipalities of Burnaby and Gibsons.
In each of these cases, a citizens’ assembly helped to find a path forward on an issue that evoked strong feelings across a range of perspectives, by providing both a strong foundation of information and the opportunity to hear from people with a variety of perspectives.
Cost and time deterrents
The challenge with assemblies is that they can take a lot of resources. They often span multiple weekends, and running one tends to cost more money and requires expertise that municipalities might not have in-house. Funding is needed to pay participants a stipend (and to feed them); for services of a third-party consultant or organization needed to plan and facilitate the assembly; and for overtime pay for staff, since assemblies have to happen on the weekend so participants can show up.
High costs are a major reason why it’s still rare for Canadian municipalities to initiate an assembly to tackle a big decision, and continued use of assemblies – either on an episodic or standing basis – is rarer still. While some larger municipalities have the resources to build in-house capacity and fund deliberative public engagement, many municipalities don’t have $40,000 to $600,000 on hand to allocate to an assembly nor staff experienced in organizing one.
Unlike in Europe, where centralized EU or state-level funds are available to support municipal citizens’ assemblies, funding for them in North America is a lot spottier. If municipalities don’t have the money on hand, options are limited. Some assemblies are funded through federal grant money related to the assembly’s substantive focus, and others are funded by donors. These funding streams aren’t renewable, and limited funds mean some applicants won’t be successful.
What municipalities need is a stable, accessible funding stream, and provincial governments are best placed to provide it.
A path forward from Germany
One model worth importing is already operating at scale in Europe: the Agency for Citizen Participation in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Functioning both as a centralized centre of competence and a funding body, the state-funded taskforce supports municipalities and public authorities who feel their governance would benefit from a citizens’ assembly (or any other kind of dialogical community engagement) but lack the know-how or funding to make it happen.
The agency provides practical advice to any municipality that requests it on how to design a forum, including refining the scope of the topic on which a municipality wants residents to deliberate, and how to conduct inclusive and effective deliberation.
Centralizing a centre of competence at the state level is more efficient than building in-house capacity in the state’s 1,101 municipalities, plus numerous other public authorities, making a good financial case for the agency’s annual budget roughly equal to $700,000.
Participatory budgeting is a low-risk, high-return democratic upgrade
The agency also disperses funds to small municipalities (20,000 inhabitants or fewer) that are too small to raise the entirety of the funds required to organize an assembly; up to the equivalent of $48,000 per municipality is available on a first-come, first-served basis. To minimize the administrative burden on municipalities, the agency has a streamlined application process and doesn’t mandate any post-assembly reporting from recipient municipalities. And they take care of all necessary service procurement, drawing on existing agreements with 24 professional engagement firms.
Application to Canada
The Agency for Citizen Participation could be adapted to fit within a province’s ministry for municipal affairs. Notably, the B.C. government has already co-funded several municipal assemblies; this proposal would be a natural extension of the arrangement through codification and pre-allocation of funds in the provincial budget. The B.C. government’s initiation of a Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform bodes well for intent to embed innovative democratic practices.
The prospects in Ontario, where the government is actively centralizing power and eroding municipal democracy, seem less likely for now. However, a future Ontario government that wants to rebuild the local democracy might keep it in mind. A modest provincial participation fund that is targeted at municipalities that couldn’t otherwise afford to run an assembly and that is easy to apply to would go a long way toward the goal of restoring municipal democracy.
Calls for reform
Adopting the Baden-Württemberg model would be one strategy to fulfil notable calls for provincial or federal governments to invest in supporting democratic practices; these include MASS LBP’s call for a Democratic Action Fund, the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue’s recommendation to the B.C. government for a Provincial Democratic Participation Fund and Apathy is Boring’s proposed Canadian Democracy Endowment.
Each of these initiatives emphasizes the importance of proactively building modern democratic infrastructure, noting its use for navigating trade-offs, establishing trust in political institutions and aligning policy with public values – concerns our traditional democratic institutions are struggling to address.
A provincial fund doesn’t solve every problem that municipalities can encounter when introducing deliberative modes of engagement – there can be opposition among both councillors and the community. But a leadership move by the province to expand access to deliberative public engagement could help normalize it, easing suspicions and modelling best practices for municipalities that are curious but cautious.
The erosion of local democracy doesn’t happen overnight. It happens gradually, when residents disengage and when higher-level governments quietly chip away at local powers. A centralized centre of competence and participation fund to support local citizens’ assemblies won’t reverse that tide on their own but investing in institutions for local deliberation is one concrete way to push back.
Promoting civic skill development and offering residents a hand in the decisions that shape their lives are two of the best ways to fight the erosion of democracy. A healthy democracy requires regular maintenance – let’s allocate the effort and funding that are required to keep it from breaking down.
