Democracy is under threat globally and here at home.
While Canada might not be in an American-style democracy crisis, trouble is brewing – trust is lacking in our democratic institutions and most people feel powerless over political decisions.
A key problem is that Canadian democracy runs on legacy systems – established before the telegraph – using outdated and inadequate consultation processes in between elections that leave citizens frustrated.
To build a more robust and resilient democracy, governments must modernize the way they engage with citizens by adopting proven, innovative digital, cloud-scale participation processes like digital democracy platforms.
Governments at all levels are grappling with complex and often contentious issues – climate change, affordability, housing, immigration, land use, addiction and artificial intelligence (AI) governance.
While this is not new, elected officials do so today in a different cultural landscape with a much larger and diverse population.
The Internet – and social media in particular – have created echo chambers where algorithms can quickly spread false information and political polarization, fostering discord and distrust in democratic institutions.
Traditional engagement processes – centred around tools like townhall meetings, public hearings, polls and petitions – are falling short.
Too often the level of participation is too low or unrepresentative to constitute legitimate feedback or it is dominated by people with greater social or political influence.
Additionally, traditional engagement processes are poorly suited to substantive policy deliberation, oversimplifying complex problems and often failing to achieve lasting results.
The resulting policy decisions tend to create winners and losers rather than consensus-driven solutions – undermining trust in democracy.
These traditional models for democratic engagement are failing to meet the complex challenges of today, such as climate change and AI governance.
Instead governments must deepen and broaden public participation by bringing in new voices, cultivating collaboration and de-polarizing contentious issues by building fair-process legitimacy
Online digital democracy platforms are an innovative tool that enable governments to consult more widely, offer comprehensive solutions to policy problems and give citizens a real say in policy development – ensuring decisions that are fairer and enjoy broader support.
While there is no question that digital technology presents genuine risks to democracy – the proliferation and amplification of misinformation on social media and the potential for AI to exacerbate it pose serious challenges – it holds even greater potential for safeguarding and strengthening it.
By proactively designing official, trusted online participation channels that feel as seamless as social media, governments can harness the power of digital technology to better engage with citizens and build consensus on complex policy issues – fostering greater trust in democracy.
Forward-thinking governments are already doing this, recognizing that democratic processes must be continuously renewed to remain resilient. We need to learn from them.
Taiwan – considered one of the world’s strongest and most resilient democracies – is a world leader in digital democracy, utilizing technology to foster citizen engagement, exchange of ideas and consensus in public policy decisions.
Digital technology has played a critical role in the emerging Nepalese democracy movement.
The State of California also recognizes the value of using digital platforms to empower citizens between elections. That is why Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration hired our company to build an online platform to give Los Angeles residents a voice in how the city recovers from deadly wildfires that occurred earlier this year.
The Engaged California platform enables residents to evaluate policy options, share ideas and collaborate in real time with others to find common ground on recovery policies – giving them a powerful voice in shaping the government’s rebuilding plan.
Closer to home, Canadian municipalities have utilized our group solutions technology to defuse contentious issues – like setting budgets, formulating transportation policy and selecting sites for waste management facilities – and find fair, broadly supported solutions.
Expanding innovations like this to other government bodies will only strengthen our democratic foundations.
Canada is home to several world-class digital democracy platforms and a plethora of deliberative expertise. It is time governments leveraged this home-field advantage to fortify democracy here.
Federal, provincial and territorial governments must establish and support Democratic Innovation Funds to give all government entities – ministries, agencies, Crown corporations, municipalities, school boards and Indigenous governments – access to the resources needed to adopt innovative systems that more meaningfully engage the public in tackling complex policy issues.
The funds can start with small pilot projects – measuring the success of the platforms on their own or in conjunction with other forms of participatory democracy like citizens’ forums – and then scale up what works.
With democracy backsliding around the world, building democratic resilience is a national security imperative.
Now more than ever, governments in Canada must invest in democratic innovations – demonstrating that democracy is about much more than marking a ballot every four years.
Photo courtesy of Office of the Governor of California, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
