Defining Canada’s Role in the World

Jason Diceman

A nation’s global activities are carried out by far more actors than just the government. Individuals, private companies and not-for-profit organizations all travel, trade, collaborate, and in many ways interact with one another, representing their home country through their words and deeds around the world. Clearly, these actions go beyond national policy and regulation, and a new project called Canada’s World now aims to redefine Canada’s international role with bottom-up citizen dialogue rather than top-down government policy.

Public consultation on policy is already common practice for the Canadian government (see www.consultingcanadians.gc.ca). These requests for comment, however, frequently gather input that is more representative of lobbyist efforts than of well-informed public opinion. Alternatively, there is a growing model for gathering intelligent and representative public input by using citizen dialogues (e.g., juries, panels, councils, and assemblies of citizens), where randomly selected people learn about a topic and come to considered recommendations through facilitated deliberation. The B.C. and Ontario governments both used citizen assemblies to author recommendations for electoral reform, and Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN) lists many citizen dialogues that they have conducted since 1999, including the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care.

Yet, unlike most previous dialogues, the goal of Canada’s World is not to directly change specific government policy. Instead, the goal is to change the perspectives of all actors involved with international decisions, including the private sector, the public sector, NGOs, and individuals. The project aims to engage Canadians in developing a new common vision for Canada’s role in the world and to share this vision with decision-makers who can help make it a reality.

The Canada’s World project is independent of any government agency and will be launched in early February 2008 with a national poll. The project will then continue by conducting eight to nine regional dialogues across Canada on a variety of themes including climate change, shifting global powers, diversity and transnationalism, global inequality, the communications revolution, international law, indigenous rights and the power of cities. Each dialogue will include 30 participants recruited by EKOS polling firm who are over the age of 18 and screened for representative demographics (e.g., urban/rural mix, field of work, age, gender, and ethnicity). Special outreach will be conducted to include hard-to-reach populations, with an emphasis on connecting with ethnocultural and diaspora communities, and ensuring that youth take leading roles in organizing the engagement of other young people. After reading the specially authored Citizens’ Dialogue Handbook to inform them on topics related to Canada’s role in the world, the selected citizens will participate in a two-day face-to-face facilitated discussion. Participants will debate various approaches, question experts, make trade-offs about key policy choices, and together author their own set of policy options. The outcome of each dialogue will be recorded in wiki software that allows participants to review and correct any inaccuracies.
The strength of the citizen dialogue model is that participants are neither elected with a mandate, hired by any outside group to promote a position, nor self appointed with a fixed agenda. They have no clients or constituencies and thus are free to engage with the various perspectives and to modify their own position as they deliberate with their peers. Like a court jury, the citizen dialogue model aims to be independent, impartial and rational — in strong contrast to the parliamentary system, which is partisan, heavily influenced by lobbyists and shaped by popular media. Unlike a jury, which is forced into a guilty or not guilty decision, citizen dialogues are open ended to produce any statements they see fit to address the questions presented.

There are, of course, several weaknesses to the model. The greatest of these is the potential for bias or incompetence in the creation of educational materials and selection of process facilitators. The editing of the handbook and the choice of presenters and facilitators could drastically undermine the sensibility and representative value of the dialogue. Transparency in decision making and the application of independent evaluations help address this challenge, but as an emerging practice, clear standards to improve legitimacy are still lacking. There is also debate on whether average citizens are competent enough to address policy questions; and without elections, what holds them to account? With the same breath, however, one can ask whether elected politicians and their appointees are oriented to make decisions in the best interest of the citizenry. The record on both questions is certainly not clear.

Our world needs more democracy success stories where the public is led by its own common voice discovered through informed deliberation. Canada’s World could be one of those success stories. The question is: Will it be considered legitimate? And if so, will it have influence? Citizen dialogues are still considered new and experimental and are thus open to criticism regarding potential bias and insufficiency. Of course, the voices of politicians are known to be influenced by lobbyists, insiders and personal agendas, but their legitimacy and influence are maintained by tradition and institutional structures. Hopefully Canada’s World will help build new policy traditions that are created by the citizens themselves.

Jason Diceman is a stakeholder engagement consultant, the newest member of Lura Consulting and a board member of the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2).