Voting really matters, but our democracy demands so much more

In communities across Ontario, nominations are now open for October’s municipal elections.

It is local democracy in action: candidates put their names in the hat, lay out their promises — and you vote.

But is that enough? Does democracy demand more of us?

On this week’s episode of Village Media's Closer Look podcast, we revisit a very timely interview with an author who has some urgent things to say about the state of democracy around the world — and why it's really not enough to simply cast a vote and move along.

Peter MacLeod is co-author of the new book Democracy’s Second Act: Why Politics Needs the Public, along with Richard Johnson.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I feel uh like democracy in the United States is absolutely under threat. And if it's under threat in the United States, it is under threat everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Frisco is on assignment this week. Before we get to this week's show, just a quick note of thanks to you for watching our show last week with Don Cherry's son Tim. It ended up being one of our most watched and listened to episodes. So thank you for that. If you missed it, you can still find it on our website, closerlookpodcast.ca, on YouTube, and of course across the Village Media Network. Okay, on to this week's show. Nominations are now open in communities all across Ontario for October's municipal elections. Candidates are signing up to run for mayor and council, and they're promising a brighter future. It is democracy in action. Candidates run and you vote. But is that enough? Does democracy demand more of us? On this week's episode of Closer Look, we're revisiting a very timely interview with author Peter McLeod, who has some important things to say about the state of our democracy and why, for us all, it really isn't enough to just cast a vote and move along. Here now is that conversation. We hear it often. Democracy is broken. But is it? Or is democracy just stuck? That is the central question of the new book, Democracy's Second Act, Why Politics Needs the Public, written by Peter McLeod and Richard Johnson. They argue that the first act of democracy, anchored in voting rights and representative government, achieved extraordinary gains. But they also believe those achievements represent the promise of democracy, not its completion. So what do we need to do next? How do we usher in democracy's second act? We're pleased to be joined tonight by one of the authors of the book, Peter McLeod. Peter, appreciate your time tonight. Good to see you. Really great to be with you guys. All right, uh, Peter, let's start with the good news. As you say in the book, uh, democracy achieves some extraordinary things. Um, remind us what those things are just in case uh some of us have forgotten.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Well, you know, we can we can take it almost for granted, sadly. But the reality is that the vast majority of people living on this planet, they don't enjoy the basic rights, they don't have access to the democratic institutions that really provide the um the structure uh for our lives here in Canada. They don't get a chance to cast a vote, they don't have a free and independent media, they don't have an independent uh and trusted judiciary, um, and they don't have the peaceful transfer of power. And they certainly don't have universal suffrage. That is the idea that all adults have a chance to cast a vote. And for a very long time, we didn't have any of those things either. They are the product of more than 400 years of painstaking struggle as we have found a way to push the people who want all the power um off the throne and uh out of our parliaments so that each of us has a chance to decide the way we want to be governed in a way that is more or less fair.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

It's interesting because I think so many of us have forgotten that. I think we we we just enjoy the democracy we live in. That we that's part of the problem, isn't it, Peter?

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Well, it it it I mean, everybody gets used to what's around them. But let me assure you, in a country like Ukraine right now, what's at stake is very much uh front and and center. It's very much top of mind. And you know, the struggle, as we've seen uh with our neighbors to the south of us, um, continues. Uh, that when we get complacent is probably when democracies become most at risk. And, you know, going back to the time of the ancients, democracies have always been vulnerable to demagogues, people who want to promise easy answers to really bad things that might be going on. And um, you know, we can't fall prey to that kind of simplistic thinking.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

So for you, Peter, ordinary people, not politicians, uh, are the key to democracy's second act that we need to create new institutions that tap into the talents, uh, judgment, and capabilities of the people in our communities. Why is that so important? And how would it work?

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Well, I think it's important to say that we need great politicians too, right? We need politicians who are doing the right thing for people. They're running for the right reasons. They may disagree, but they're trying to make life and society better. But, you know, one of the things that hasn't changed virtually since we all got the vote was the number of people who actually ever get to go to Ottawa or sit on a committee or make a decision in their local community. Um, the number of people who are actively engaged in our political life hasn't increased all that much. And frankly, I I don't know about you guys, but I feel like the two of you and most of your listeners and readers are probably capable of doing more than just voting every four years. And part of the reason we feel frustrated is because that's basically the only choice we get in our society. And, you know, we talk about ways in this book that in Canada and in other countries, you can see the green shoots of our next democratic evolution, ways in which people are helping to um uh participate in the governance of their societies and make things better in their local communities.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And the term we often hear here in the book is citizens' assemblies, this idea that we can grat these people together, random selection, representative samples. How do we do this, Peter?

SPEAKER_03 6:17

Yeah, well, this happens to be a made in Canada uh democratic innovation. Um, but it goes back to a democratic ideal that precedes the vote. You know, we are all familiar with the idea of a jury of one's peers, right? We we accept the idea that randomly selected people get brought into a courtroom where you have fancy lawyers and other kinds of experts, and they're all talking about the case. So in BC, about 25 years ago, they said, huh, wouldn't it be interesting if we got a really large jury of people randomly selected to look at that province's voting system? And you know, at a time when we often talk down the public as really apathetic, self-interested, doesn't care about politics, you know, they sent out 100,000 letters and 10,000 people volunteered to serve on this thing and spend you know almost a dozen weekends doing so. Other countries became inspired by Canada's example. Ireland, you know, which is uh obviously a very Catholic country, they struggled with the question of um same-sex marriage. Their parliament was just at loggerheads around it. So they sent out letters to randomly selected Irish people, invited them into a citizens' assembly, and they changed their country's constitution. Uh, there have now been more than a thousand of these assemblies taking place in countries around the world doing the stuff for which you know there are often lots of values engaged. This complex topics, but they trust people to work their way through the trade-offs and those values and actually give really durable, thoughtful advice. So citizens' assemblies bring the idea of a jury into our political process, not to decide, but to give parliamentarians uh a consensus opinion.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

It's fascinating because when I hear the term, you ought to at least I do. I assume, well, no one would want to participate in that. People have their own things going on, they're not going to, but what you the example you gave is true. A lot of people do want to come forward. And we've been having some of these kind of conversations with our readers in some of our communities, and it's been amazing when we reach out to ask them if they want to participate. Why do people assume what I assume, Peter, that people wouldn't want to be a part of this?

SPEAKER_03 8:34

Well, I mean, look, I think people are smart, I think they know the value of their time and they've got good noses. And sadly, too often when government reaches out and asks for them to come to a town hall meeting, they know the decisions have already been made. They know the questions that are about to be asked aren't really real and the whole thing feels a bit cooked. However, we found that if you give people the chance to do something real, to make a difference, um, and you know, not to get off easy, not to just have to like put your hands up at the end and you know, winner takes all, but to actually work, work through the issues so that everybody leaves feeling more or less okay. People are like, okay, I'm I like to solve problems. I care about my community. And you know, one of the reasons why we have the Primary Care Act in Ontario and$2 billion more going into making sure people have a family doc is because a bunch of Ontarians put up their hands when they were invited to have a conversation about what our primary care system should look like. And credit to the government, they listened.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Uh, Peter, we recently ran a uh trust poll with over 22,000 responses. I want to make sure I get these numbers right. 63% uh said you need to be very careful dealing with people these days, and trust in government is even lower. Yet, countries that score highest on well-being tend to have high trust in institutions and in each other. How do citizens' assemblies actually help rebuild trust, not in theory but in practice?

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Well, you know, I want to just pause on on the statistic there for a moment because I think it it exemplifies part of the challenge here. You know, we spend a lot of time asking whether citizens trust government. Have you ever seen a survey that asks government whether they trust citizens?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

It's a great question. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do them. They don't tell us about them. Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Because I think a lot of people feel like, you know, government's just going to make the decisions and whether they vote for red, blue, or orange or green, like not enough changes in their lives. And I I think, you know, I have some sympathy for that position, but I also think people find themselves at such a distance from those decisions, it's hard to understand the decisions that government are making. So bringing them into the room in some way, giving them the chance to hear from the experts who have different views of the issue, giving them the chance to hear from one another and again work their way towards common ground. Yeah, we're also concerned about polarization, and we need to be because it can go someplace very ugly. But a lot of this preoccupation with polarization, I think, is a bit of a mirage. Because if you get people together and you give them a task and similar information and a chance to change their mind and explore different views, they generally can find their way again to common ground. And then when government acts on that, people trust it and they like it and they feel like government's listening.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Just to be the devil's advocate, I guess my concern is sometimes we deal with this too as as editors, right? I've been in journalism, I feel like for a hundred years. And sometimes a reader will a public member of the public or a reader will reach out with a totally insane suggestion that doesn't make any sense because they don't know how the system works or how this issue works. And I think that's maybe some of the issues with Sim. I'm sure some senior bureaucrats who know their file inside and out, they don't want to hear from 20 people who have no idea what the issue is about. How do you bridge that?

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Well, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we we need to we we've spent a lot of time in the last 60 or 70 years since the advent of public uh opinion research, uh, worried about what people like and dislike. Uh we've spent very little energy on what they know and don't know. Um and I'd like to see some polling figures about, you know, some of the basics in our society. Periodically, we ask Canadians, could you pass our own citizenship test? And they say, no. Well, okay, let's not worry too much about that. It'd be nice if they knew a little bit more about our history. But do they know how our criminal justice system works? Do they know how the tax system really works? Uh, do they know how bills become law or how they could, you know, reach out to city council if they were concerned about an issue in their community? You know, there's a whole idea that a an American, uh great American thinker named John Dewey uh gave us. He said, don't worry so much about civic literacy. He said, worry about democratic fitness. Make sure that people have a sense of moral courage, make sure that people have a sense of voice and agency. And the only way you build up any kind of muscle, of course, is through practice. So we need to give people a chance to practice, um, acting on their beliefs, learning and working with others. And, you know, the difficulty with social media right now, as you certainly understand in the press, is that it warps their idea of the public. Because often those with the sharpest opinions uh find themselves amplified by algorithms designed to torque up people's indignation. And lo and behold, it seems like suddenly everybody has a crazy uncle.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Uh, Peter, let's talk about the uh the practical side. What's the right funding model for citizens' assembly? Should governments be earmarking uh funds for them and at what level do they make the most sense? Local, provincial, national, or all of the above?

SPEAKER_03 14:06

Yeah, I think I think all of the above. Now, this doesn't mean that they're the right mechanism to uh just have a good think on a you know Saturday afternoon about what people might like in their community. Um, but hey, we've got lots of really challenging questions uh locally about infrastructure investment, provincially, about health and education, uh, nationally about climate or taxation or support for seniors, or controversially, you know, look at our recent um uh physician-assisted dime uh legislation made, you know, which is a very uh complex, values-laden question. In France, they ran a National Citizens' Assembly to work out a kind of social consensus on that question. Um, we could have done the same as well. But yes, I think government should be paying for it. You know, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year running our national parliament, the same for our provincial legislatures, tens of millions of dollars, millions of dollars running local councils. Why wouldn't we spend a fraction of that to get vastly more Canadians into the work of co-governing, right? Not just electing people to do the hard work and governing for us, but to see that everybody once in their life doesn't even have an opportunity to take a seat at the table, but at least knows someone who has.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

It's a big shift, right? If you if it would be a big shift for, and even for a political leader to come out and say, this is what I want to implement, right? We want to change this. I'm sure it's a it, you know, it would be you'd have to be uh it'd be a little risky to be the person that comes out first and says they want to do this. What have you heard from politicians who've heard your your arguments, who've read your book?

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Well, you know, Belgium is a really interesting country in this respect because they've run a number of um citizen panels and assemblies. Uh they have um an area in Belgium, it's it's kind of like a regional parliament, and they have elected members. And every time there's an election, they also then randomly select a citizen's assembly. And that citizens assembly decides the three or four long-term issues that they'd like to examine, a bit like we've used royal commissions. And so you've got electeds and selecteds, and so you ask some of the Belgian politicians, how do you feel about having these, you know, ordinary people um sitting next to you and thinking about these issues? You know what they say? They say we always behave better when we have guests in the house. Right? Yes. So so let me let me take the two of you and some of your readers and stick them on a parliamentary committee in Ottawa. And I think they're probably gonna ask smart questions, and I think they might change the mood in that room, too.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

That's fascinating. I wasn't aware of that. So is that the national government that does that or a regional government in Belgium that does that? It's it's a regional government, similar to our provinces. Yeah, that's fascinating, though. I'd love to read that. Obviously, that's in your book somewhere. I haven't read the whole book yet, but it's in there. That's all right. I want to hear more about it. Yeah, that's that's fascinating because you do, you know, it it's that ability because you know, in the system we have now, politicians will will put out a press release about something political, you know, and governments will put out press releases, they might hold a press conference, some journalists may be able to ask a question or they might not. And that's kind of the extent of it. I mean, they don't really get a lot of face-to-face time with the average person. And then even when the average person emails a ministry, government should be, they don't even get a response. That's part of the problem, too, right? That's definitely part of the problem.

SPEAKER_03 17:41

And, you know, this is a phenomenon that's not unique to Canada. I think it's been at work over the last 50 or 60 years across the West. You know, we came out of the Second World War where we fully mobilized our populations in order to push back against totalitarian regimes. And we won. And we did it because we recognized that everybody had a role to play. That's what the mobilization was about. And it actually created an era um where uh income inequality was was less acute than it is today. People found themselves probably more connected to one another than they are now. At that time, we saw the public as a resource, an indispensable resource to do uh the work of managing a society and defending a society. I I think today we don't look at the public as a resource, we look at them as a risk that we need to manage, right? By communicating them in a certain way or pandering to them with you know particular policy. And, you know, the work of democratic government is really about building democratic publics, publics that are informed, that are engaged, that can be productive. Government isn't something that happens over here in the committee room. It it's something that actually happens every single day in how we interact with one another in our lives.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

But you've nailed it on the head for me, you said it way more than I ever could. It does feel like government happens over there. That's really the problem at all levels of government, I feel.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

And then, you know, you when they do reach out to you, they say, Well, would you give me a fiver?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Uh or would you go knock on a door? And again, I think people are more capable of this. You know, Canadians demonstrated this beautifully just 10 years ago during the Syrian refugee crisis. We were also moved when we saw that horrible photo of the young boy Alan Curdy on the shores of Turkey. And and Canada, to its credit, had already said we're going to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees. And bless them, lifeline Syria said, no, we can do more. And Canada has had this group of five program for more than a century for the private sponsorship of refugees. And the government really activated it. And you know what? Canadians like we are good-natured joiners, right? Like, we want to stick our red knits up in the air and say, How can I help? How can I help my neighbor? How do I make a difference? More than 100,000 Canadians all stuck up their hands, they volunteered, they adopted a family, they raised$30,000, they took care of folks who came from a part of the world they probably knew nothing about speaking a different language. And these families, they got those new Canadians jobs, education, housing, and they did it without much help from the government. But we now know a decade later that their health, social economic outcomes are as good or better than those who came through our fantastic settlement agency. So that shows us what the public is capable of. Why wouldn't every government, once in its mandate, surely have something that could mobilize 100,000 Canadians around, right? Because it pays a democratic dividend. I'll stop on this.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

No, no, continue.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

You know, it it's like the members, the the Canadians who supported those Syrians, they feel better about themselves. They feel more connected to their community. You talk to them, they say like it was good for us too. So we want more interactions that pay a democratic dividend. That's the stuff that raises trust and connection and belonging and that combats the loneliness that a lot of people in our society feel.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

It's I swear to you, when I read that section of the book talking about how um people will come together in a moment of crisis more quickly than maybe the government can. I thought of that because that was a great example of the Syrian refugee crisis. People all over the country just came together as groups to sponsor refugees, the people they didn't even know. And it does speak, it gives you hope about the kind of thing you're talking about, that the public is ready to jump up and put their hand up and act if the right moment comes across. They're not as apathetic as we think they are, right, Peter?

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Not not a bit. And look, the nature of volunteerism has changed, right? It's not that everybody necessarily wants to. To go to the Rotary Club every Wednesday afternoon for the for the luncheon and do that for the next 30 or 40 years, right? But what we have seen with these civic challenges is that people are prepared to engage intensively and episodically. So a lot of energy for a short period of time that has a real impact. And when you look around our society, you see problems that we define as problems of scarcity, right? That, you know, there are not enough educators for the kids who need a little bit of extra help. There, there aren't enough folks to to you know engage with some of our older members in society. Um, and yet all around us, we see people with talents and capabilities that just aren't being tapped. And in some of the more successful societies, you know, yes, they need strong public services, but you know, mutual aid is a thing, right? And connecting communities is a thing, and they've got better infrastructure to do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Peter, if we were to look back and say 20 years and say democracy's second act actually happened, what would we see that tell us it worked?

SPEAKER_03 23:12

I think we would see government as a whole looking at the public very differently. Um, it would see it, as I've said, as a resource, uh, and it would be developing programs um right across the wide suite of social needs, from involving people in the work of government to sadly right now thinking about civil defense um and mobilizing and organizing the community um in case of uh disasters and and you know other, I'm afraid, challenges that that might confront us. Um political parties would be very different. They wouldn't think about us as donors. They would think that actually involving us in their work is is good for them and good for us. And we would pay a lot more attention, as I mentioned, to not just what people like and dislike, but what they know and and don't know. And in an era of misinformation, I think that's pretty vital.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

I can't leave this interview without asking you about President Trump. Because democracy when people think of democracy and democracies that are under threat right now, people think of America. You're following closely what's happening there, and people with people saying that they feel like the end of democracy is near in the United States. Do you feel the same way?

SPEAKER_03 24:22

Um I feel uh like democracy in the United States is absolutely under threat. And if it's under threat in the United States, it is under threat everywhere. Uh and we have seen how the U.S. Treasury and its State Department, you know, are actively funding mega-like entities in liberal democracies around the world. That is not the America that, you know, Canadians know, it's not the America of the post-war era. Um, am I hopeful that America is going to um see through uh the Trump era and return uh to the kind of uh liberal democratic commitments that that we have um known it for? I do. Um, but it's gonna require incredible energy and incredible vigilance, and it's gonna require uh uh the Democratic Party and Republicans of a different breed to think about and work with their publics in better ways.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Uh Peter, before we let you go tonight, uh anything that we didn't cover that uh we should have?

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Only that I hope people will uh will will buy a copy of the book. Uh it's it's democracy secondact.org. And uh Richard, my co-author and I, we're gonna be traveling around the country. We love to talk to people, we love to talk to communities. Uh, we hope it's inspiring and what can feel like dark days.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

All right, good stuff. There it is. Democracy's Second Act, why politics needs the public, co-authored by Peter McLeod. Peter, we appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. It's been a treat. Thank you. Our thanks again to Peter McLeod, co-author of the book Democracy's Second Act. That's it for Closer Look for this week. This week's show was produced by Zach Tronzo. You can find us online at closerlookpodcast.ca. Reach out anytime at closerlook at villagemedia.ca, and of course, follow us on YouTube or any of your favorite social channels. We'll be back next Sunday morning at eight with a brand new episode. For all of us here at CloserLook, thanks for watching. Enjoy the rest of your long weekend.