Twenty years ago, British Columbia embarked on an audacious experiment that quietly set the course for how representative democracy will evolve. No one imagined at the time that a giant jury called a Citizens’ Assembly — made up of 160 randomly selected BC residents charged with examining the province’s electoral system — would come to be replicated more than a thousand times in countries as different as Japan and Ireland.
And while the first assembly never secured the electoral change British Columbians overwhelmingly endorsed, it has become one of Canada’s most significant democratic innovations and exports: a genuine tool the world can use to reduce polarization and re-energize tired politics.
Citizens’ Assemblies build on some of the best features of Royal Commissions, another Canadian tradition, which are lauded for their thorough study and thoughtful, far-sighted recommendations. But instead of relying predominantly on former judges, politicians and academics, Citizens’ Assemblies rely on members of the public to exercise good judgment.
The result is a quality that often eludes today’s more combative style of politics: consensus.
None of this is magic. Citizens’ Assemblies show us that when members of the public are provided with quality information, space for real dialogue and the obligation to work through trade-offs and find agreement, what prevails tends to be practical and less ideological solutions to tough policy issues.
Ireland legalized same sex marriage and overturned its abortion ban after recommendations by two Citizens’ Assemblies were overwhelmingly supported in national referenda. A Citizens’ Assembly in France created a detailed framework to permit medical assistance in dying. Dozens of national and regional climate assemblies have helped put popular, far-reaching policies above the political fray.
Here in Canada, more than 50 assemblies reaching some 500,000 households have helped us rethink what democracy can look like when regular citizens take a seat at the table and use their voice to find common ground. This has included Yukon’s own Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, which concluded recently, and the Victoria-Saanich Assembly on Municipal Amalgamation, which launches this month.
These assemblies matter because democracies around the world, and the political parties that lead them, too often treat the public as a risk rather than a resource. They underestimate the public’s capacity to govern. Not surprisingly, these same democracies are struggling to sustain public confidence and have lost much of their reforming spirit.
Citizens’ Assemblies upend our assumptions about an allegedly apathetic, ill-informed public. They give voters a second franchise by offering them a chance to serve and to practice the skills required to govern well: an openness to different perspectives and a willingness to compromise.
Thankfully, just as our democratic politics have come to feel spent, its future has come into view. The European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyden gets it and has stated that future commission policies will be shaped by these assemblies.
Now we need more politicians to seize the shift that’s well underway.
Tomorrow’s democracies will look to people as much as politicians to find the right way forward. We need leaders less obsessed with control and who understand that real change comes from creating the space for durable agreements to emerge.
Twenty years on, Canadians can feel proud of the legacy that began when 160 of their fellow citizens answered the call to serve democracy in a new and exciting way. What they achieved by working together is measured not just in reforms enacted or legislation passed but in the waves of people across the country and around the world who have put their hand up too.
Where democracy shows its strength is in the willingness of people to put opinions and differences aside to work for the benefit of everyone. Citizens’ Assemblies provide the world with a new way to achieve that uniquely Canadian promise: Peace, order and good government.
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