In
August I
found myself reading a fascinating book
that taught me a lot about democracy that
I hadn’t expected. It made particular
reference to Canadian democracy – a form
of democracy worse than I was aware of in
various areas. Teardown: Rebuilding
Democracy from the Ground Up,
by Dave Meslin, Penguin, 2019 wants me
to engage in the many aspects of civic
life and democracy that Meslin hopes
will be rebuilt. I have already lived some
of that but I welcomed the many insights
from his book. How refreshing to read
relatively little about Trump and Brexit
and a lot about the flaws and fixes for
Canadian democracy. The
book does
not present a steady continuous
development chapter by chapter. Rather
this is
a book that offers a collection of
thoughtful and engaging articles on themes
around democracy. I present the themes
here in the order he presented them and
not in my sense of priority! 1.
Introduction
talks about current apathy in
democracy – a topic Meslin has delivered a
TED talk about. The largest number
of votes that were “cast” in Canada’s 2015
election and in the US 2016 election
were from those voters who just stayed at
home. People are not born apathetic –
they come bringing ideas and hopes. It is
the democratic system that fails to
engage or even attract people. Instead of
an ongoing participation with new
ideas flowing – democracy has become
largely a spectator sport. Years after
monarchies were ended people turn to
heroic leaders who promise to fix
everything by draining a swamp or making
the place great again. Change is
possible, says Meslin. Heroes are not
needed. Ordinary people can make change.. The
book promises
to cover the basics about current
democracy and more: a voting system that
doesn’t reflect the wishes of those who
voted; the lobbyists who dominate; the
influence of big money; the hollowness of
political parties whose adversarial
battling prevents constructive dialogue;
the intimidating, alienating and
hostile civic meeting places. Meslin’s
revolution is against the cynicism people
have about this state of affairs and the
system that has convinced them they
have no voice or useful role. 2.
Mechanics
of Exclusion tells how Meslin,
with friends and an artist, created an
a-legal painting on a city street. They
attracted media and went on to get Toronto
City Council to adopt a bylaw
allowing for public street paintings.
Within the tale is a lesson about how hard
it is to find the unfriendly and
intimidating council hearing rooms when
one
wants to speak in favour of a new bylaw –
if one can find the way into a civic
building. Meslin
puts a
typical council notice announcing a public
discussion before us – formal, full
of jargon and unfriendly. Meetings are in
the day and without childcare. There
are no greeters to point the way – just a
sinister-seeming security guard. There
is no colourful book of council meetings
like an Ikea catalogue. He caps his
point by drafting an advertisement for
Nike shoes in the dull format of a city
meeting notice. And he tells how councils
have added a layer of security checks
and baggage examinations and confiscation
of every pencil to make one’s visit
to a council meeting less than
comfortable. He
developed
an award for civic UX – by which he means
user experience – a concept drawn from
the world of technology where effort and
investment go into ensuring the
simplicity and comfort of a device or
application for a first time user. He
wants all our democratic bodies to have
departments for UX! And why, he asks,
do our election votes happen on weekdays
when kids are at school and parents at
work. Imagine the Santa Parade and the
Grey Cup on weekday afternoons. Can’t
we have
digital voter lists instead of paper lists
ruled with lines drawn through them voter
by voter like 19th century accounting
ledgers. And why can’t people just vote
online? There are intriguing experiments
too. Calgary has a Vote Bus – a mobile
voting booth going around like an
ice-cream van! The answer for UX is more
ease
of access to civic events that are more
colourfully advertised and that occur
at times people can go, that are fun to
attend and that include daycare. 3.
Levelling
the Field talks about the huge
role of corporate lobbying as legislation
or policy makes its way through a
government process. Even with good UX, the
average citizen seeking to be a
voice for change is alongside corporations
with well-paid well- informed
lobbyists guiding them through all the
steps on the progress of legislation to
points where their voices can be most
influential. Every local advocacy
campaign, from resisting toxic garbage
dumps to promoting protected bike lanes,
has had to deal with corporate sabotage by
high paid lobbyists with more time,
money, and connections. The
recent
proliferation of electronic billboards
along highways – the leading cause of
fatalities on our roads - is testimony to
their effectiveness. Lobbying can
provide insights. The problem is the lack
of balance. Meslin suggests
empowering everyone else to lobby
effectively by government grants for
lobbyists,
or payments by corporations to pay for
opposing lobbying, or for a Public
Lobbyist to act like a legal aid worker
for anyone. Another
area
that can help the leveling is education
about “civics.” If people learned as kids
how the political processes worked, that
would take away some of the advantage
of corporate lobbyists. However, the
schools tend to teach civics as a tag-on
to be rushed through and the kids don’t
see how it relates to their say, to some
control or to meeting their needs.
Alberta’s city halls in Edmonton and
Calgary
have shown what a good education program
about civic life looks like.
Unfortunately, such good initiatives can
be short-lived. Meslin
tells us
that the jargon and procedures of councils
or governments can hide important
issues. For example having city councilors
in Ontario elected for 4 instead of
3 years was tucked away with other matters
in a big budget bill. “Consent”
agenda allows school boards to bundle many
“small” issues into a single bundle
for one vote. Or a meeting can decide to
go “in camera” – in secret behind closed
doors. One TV camera in the House of
Commons gives a controlled and phony
picture of what the chamber is actually
looking like. And many things are
banned for visitors to parliament –
including a pencil, a camera, binoculars
and any recording device. Two big needed
changes are reforming the use of
omnibus bills and getting freedom of
information to work. Both are slow
processes. Contrasting
with
the removal of representation in Toronto
because of the recent reduction
in the number of city councilors, there
are examples in Montreal of active
small-scale
neighborhood civic meetings that allow for
people to attend, to stand up and
speak to raise a matter of concern to
them. There is thoughtful discussion of
local things. 4.
Better
Ballots is a good simple clear
critical
look at how the wishes of voters may not
be reflected by the election result
and how the type of election procedure
used can improve things. As I noted in
one of these articles, for the recent
Ontario election, 60% of voters wanted one
or the other of the related progressive
programs of the Liberals and the NDP,
but the Ford government with an uncertain
program was elected with around 40%
of the vote. Meslin
has
additional examples and he delightfully
illustrates this flaw of the Canadian
“first past the post” election system. The
number of seats won by a party simply
does not reflect the votes cast for a
party. The wishes of voters are thwarted
by the balloting system. People are robbed
of their intentions. Run off
elections, used to elect the party
leaders, better reflect the wishes of the
party
members. And there are other election
options. Strict
proportional
balloting in which votes for a party go to
a list of each party’s candidates
is one way. But that takes away a
representative for an area and leaves out
the possibility of independent
candidates. Two principal systems falling
between first past the post and
proportional balloting are in use in other
countries. Mixed member proportional,
MMP, used in Germany and New Zealand, has
half the candidates represent districts
plus the other half of the candidates to
be chosen from party lists of candidates.
A voter gets two votes. One is for the
district representative and the second is
for the party preferred. Meslin shows
delightfully how this works to better
reflect
voter wishes. Single
Transferable
Vote, STV, used in Australia and Ireland,
has multi-member
districts or clusters. Voters rank the
members they want in their district on
their ballot. To “win” a candidate needs
to pass a threshold vote - 20% of the
votes in a 4-member district. Votes not
needed once one candidate has the
necessary 20% get transferred to the other
candidates according to the voters’
next rankings. Elections run in this way
increase civility and creativity and
they encourage diversity. Again, Meslin
shows how this works in practice. Attempts
to
change our election system evaporate once
a party is elected. Meslin talks of a
“parliamentary cartel” of old parties. Also,
the
major parties block efforts to have a new
party’s views heard in leader’s
debates. There is a reluctance to extend
the vote – to youth old enough to
drive for example, or to non-citizens who
are permanent residents. Meslin
favours opening things up to these. 5.
Bribes
Winks and Nods looks as the present
public concern that wealthy donors have
more say about what politicians decide to
do than ordinary citizens do. Some of us
remember Mulroney and the Airbus purchase
scandal. The
big
problem is mass institutionalized bribery
– like the Wynne Liberal government’s
cash for access to Ministers. Meslin shows
money finds ways around formal
prohibitions on corporate donations. Money
can flow from individuals, through
political parties, riding associations or
leadership campaigns. Sometimes these
are not banned but just measured so we
know how much is happening. But when data
on donations becomes large it gets hard to
match each amount with particular
lobbyists with particular individuals and
with particular companies promoting a
particular Council decision. Allvision
asked
Toronto Council for permission to install
8 massive electronic billboards
on roads into Toronto. City staff and its
sign advisory committee recommended
against. Safety issues were presented.
There was lack of community consultation.
There was incorrect information in the
application. Nevertheless councillors
voted in favour. Allvision spent 10s of
thousands of dollars on lobbyists.
Meslin tracked 2 lobbyists and found that
as individuals they happened to
donate thousands of dollars to the
councilors they were lobbying. The need is
for digital records of donations to make
these sorts of connections easy for
the cynical ordinary citizen to research.
Or better, before a vote, city IT staff
should publish a list correlating
individual donations to the existing
lobbyist’s
record. Information about the donations
given to a member before a
parliamentary vote might enable
questioning. Electioneering
funds
are necessary to pay campaign bills but
this makes candidates vulnerable
to rich donors or corporations. One
solution sets limits on who can give and
what
can be received. Another solution
encourages ordinary people to contribute
by
allowing a tax break on their donations.
Meslin suggests matching grants like
US presidential primaries or multiple
matches, as in New York City, which
matches 6:1. This approach brought a large
reported increase (30% going to 90%)
in modest donations (under $175) from
poorer districts. Then
there
are funds paid by a government to
political parties based on votes cast in
the
last election – such as the 2004 Chrétien
model in Canada. But that disfavors
emerging parties and there is a history of
program cancellation. In Canada the Harper
government ended the Chrétien program. Finally,
Seattle uses “democracy dollars”.
Citizens all get by mail four $25 coupons
to donate to the candidate(s) of
their choice. Meslin
tells
of an idea to allow secret donations in
parallel with the idea of secret
ballots. But I don’t see this helping
candidates to be free from anxiety about
getting enough money for election
expenses. Equally impractical, but
intriguing,
is a suggestion that candidates wear large
logos identifying their donors – logos
proportionate in size to the donations
given. 6.
It’s
my party (and I’ll cry if I want to) takes
a
look at the role and functioning of
political parties. It is a stunning
critique of the centralized control, siege
mentality, rewards for loyalty and
the resulting insider club unwelcoming to
new voices. Former insiders reinforce
the view that the political party system
requires a big reform. Meslin
explores
how parties treat their own using the book
Tragedy
in
the Commons … by Alison Loat and
Michael MacMillan, who held exit
interviews with parliamentarians from all
5 parties. A picture of
disappointment and frustration emerges.
Most felt they had no voice, felt
controlled and manipulated – even bullied
– by the offices of their party
leaders. Party
leaders
have dictatorial powers so that MPs show
up for votes in their party’s rather
than those in their constituents’
interests. No other modern democracy has
tighter party discipline than the Canadian
House of Commons. When MPs no longer
feel they belong to a party that brings
like-minded people together to work
together on legislative goals, it is not
surprising that the situation lacks
the respect of the wider party membership.
It wasn’t always thus. Initially,
individual MPs were empowered and the
prime minister’s power limited. This is
the direction for reform. Local
constituency
groups nominated their candidates until
1970. Since then party
leaders can overrule local nominations
giving the party power over MPs. Then
there is the lure of a cabinet post. Plus
the party whips assign seats in the
Commons and authorize trips. It would
empower MPs if seats were assigned
randomly or on a formula or
alphabetically, and if a treasurer were
named by
the caucus to authorize travel costs. Finally
party
leaders and whips can banish an MP from
the party caucus. This is a reversal of
the earlier norm of the Westminster system
in which the party leader is
accountable to caucus and not the other
way around. The leadership convention with
its current party member-elected leader
rather than the older MP elected leader
has led to a focus of power on the party
leader’s office. Meslin
joins Andrew
Coyne and former speaker Peter Milliken in
suggesting that a party caucus
should again nominate its leader. But
other changes could help empower MPs -
such
as giving caucus the power to call a new
leadership race. A private member’s
bill was passed, the 2015 Reform Act,
which was intended to restore local
control over nominations, to give MPs the
collective power to remove members
from their caucuses and to dismiss their
leader. But loopholes in the act have
meant little change in practice. Meslin
shows
some belittling pretend-personal
fundraising emails from major parties to
their
members. There are new lows in the
language used on election signs, which is
party-controlled
and which uses one- or two-word messages.
Candidates use teleprompters for
talks. All these take the reality,
spontaneity and fun out of a political
gathering. A politician who wants to
connect with voters and inspire volunteers
needs to learn to talk to them first. There
are
harsh words for the party election
processes and the disproportionate effort
that goes into “identifying the vote” and
getting the vote out. Meslin found
the door-to-door clipboard canvassing
which is aimed only at identifying a
person
who will vote for the party to be soul
destroying. First, it is not clear the
approach works. Then the listing and
constant phoning of the person to go and
vote is insulting and harassing. Such a
party election process allows for little
listening and discussion or new ideas
about peoples’ concerns. Being
a
member is key to seeking party changes
from within. Party membership in Canada
is at an all time low and parties do not
seem to encourage membership.
Constituency web sites go dead after
election night with messages like “see you
next time.” Meslin’s experience of
membership in three Canadian parties was
interest in donations, presence at events
to make a big crowd, and little else. Perhaps
such broad
issue parties mean that leaders have to
worry about “extreme elements” and make
sure nominations are controlled and
volunteers muzzled. If so, that could be
improved by different election balloting,
like proportional representation.
That would allow for more parties to
emerge with particular concerns so the
role of ‘big tent’ parties would be less
necessary. So join a party, find
like-minded others and try to make change! 7.
Blood
Sport looks at the culture of lack
of civility in parliamentary process.
Opposition to every detail of everything
in a war-zone context is required. A new
MPP’s first speech about constituent
needs was visibly ignored. An opposition
member who says a positive thing about
a government is warned by the media he
will get less time if he is not more
exciting.
The parties want their spin pushed despite
everything. It makes any listening
hard. Competing
corporations
such as realtors meet in trade group
meetings to discuss common
problems with civility, but anything like
this seems hard for parliamentarians.
Could a different culture be taught?
Meslin shows maybe it could. (I suspect
the legislative committees would be a good
place to start.) Maybe restoring
some power to individual MPs and weakening
the party’s and the leader’s control
would help. And of course some move of
voting from the “winner takes all” model
would make more space for civility and
creativity in legislation because some
cross-party discussion would be needed. 8.Taking
the Reins looks at ways people
can play direct roles, often at the
community level. In Port Alegre Brazil,
control of 20% of the city budget is up to
citizens. Such participatory
budgeting spread to a ward of Chicago. It
attracts people not normally
politically active. Montreal’s Right of
Initiative allows citizens who get
15,000 petition signatures in 90 days to
require a matter to go to public
consultation and be considered by council.
This approach was used to enable
legislation in favour of those wanting
urban agriculture, including chickens. A
Manitoba MP invited constituents to
suggest issues for his annual private
member’s bill. A large number of proposals
came in. The list was reduced to 11
finalists by a group of political science
students. All these proposals remain
excellent
proposals for legislation. And they came
from the people in an open process. Meslin
ends
his chapter with the do’s and don’ts of
referendums in 7 points - with real
examples for the era of Brexit. Things
like
an independent advisory body to offer
education; spending limits; dangers
of government as the source of the
question, and the better use of several
questions
to rank. All these are ways of increasing
public participation; but in the end
Muslin is clear that a civil deliberative
process with time and eye contact
should remain the central feature of
democracy – not a referendum. 8.
Street
Neutrality explores the role of
the streets. Billboards are an invasive
species – they come from outside with a
message from an outside interest and they
drown out our own local talents and
possibilities. More local control of the
streetscape of a neighbourhood is
desirable.
It should use local public art. I would
prefer good public art as
well as children’s art to make the streets
reflect the people who live on them.
Meslin tells of initiatives like a “Before
I die I will …” wall inviting residents to
write their thoughts. Then
there is
Yonge/Dundas square. Metres away from the
square are Ryerson University’s Media
Productions program, George Brown
College’s School of Design and OCAD
University’s New Campus for a Connected
World. How fascinating if the screens
of the square were fed a stream of
creations from our talented young people
instead of … but I’ll let you read Meslin!
So remember, public spaces are
important places where citizens meet each
other as equals and public spaces deserve
neutrality as much as the internet does. 9.
Seeds
of Change is a fascinating look at
the practicalities of financing change in
our society. The public process that
managed to defeat Toronto City Council’s
proposal to dump garbage into an
abandoned mine sets the scene for Meslin.
The conclusion: people will give time
and energy if helped with ways to
participate in the democratic process and
if there
is a chance of a favourable outcome. The
fact: there are few advocacy
organizers out there! It
is true,
the body of non-governmental
organizations, NGOs, is large, with a
range of
sizes and much money flowing. But
community organizing and plugging people
into
the public democratic processes is a
minuscule part of all that. The reason:
half
of NGO funding comes from government to an
NGO for services provided. And
“don’t bite the hand that feeds you” means
no activities such as mobilizing
around a Council decision to use an old
mine as a garbage dump. The rest of
NGOs’ money
comes from their having
“charitable status” so people get that
welcome tax break when they make a
donation to them. However
it is
the government that defines and sets
limits on “political activity” when it
gives charitably status. The result is –
as Meslin puts it – a lot of NGOs are paid
to pull kids out of the river, but there
are very few NGO dealing with the
political causes of kinds in the river
upstream. The community organizer’s work
is critical – telling people exactly
who their council member is and her phone
number and how to get a concern to
her and when best to do that. Tax
fears about
charitable status undermine good advocacy
proposals in NGO discussions. Some
have suggested charitable status should be
done away with to simply remove
governmental control. And beyond that, why
should millionaires be compensated
for giving some little something they will
hardly miss? Some
NGOs
take the tax receipt issue head on and
warn donors they don’t give tax receipts
and why. Meslin gives the examples of
Toronto Environmental Alliance, Leadnow,
Dogwood;
and I add Greenpeace. Meslin suggests
donors and NGOs with charitable status
could help the situation by encouraging
donors to add a more modest donation to
a related non-charitable NGO body doing
the upstream work. Meslin
then
deals with some myths. He shows how
non-profit and business companies can be
very similar. He says it is not just
agencies like the Red Cross that get a lot
of revenue from charitable donations but
ironically also the Canadian banks.
Stereotyping
business and non-profit is bad because it
tends to focus the bleeding heart small-l
liberals on employment in NGOs and the
business skill folk on being employed in
a business. However, a bleeding heart on a
corporate board and business skills
in NGOs would be useful. Meslin ends
reminding us that advocacy is harder than
charity. Significant change inevitably
ruffles feathers. 10.
End
of Heroes explores leadership in
democracy – a single person or a duo or a
group or a limited leader. Meslin
begins with the barons whose rebellion
challenged the supremacy of King John of
England and produced the Magna
Carta,
limiting John’s powers. Parliaments,
talking groups about laws, evolved. The
Glorious Revolution involved beheading the
King of England and it established
the supremacy of parliament. The
prime
minister was a first among equals and
remained so until the 20th century. Then
things shifted in the UK. They shifted in
Canada in the era of Pierre Elliott
Trudeau
when power shifted onto the PM. More
widely, power has over time moved from the
legislative to the executive. In the US
the original intent of the Electoral
College has been subverted and Presidents
nominated by parties are essentially
elected. Meslin
notes
that in our time capable civil servants
can carry out the wishes of parliament
without a King, President, Prime Minister
or other hero. Watchdog media
minimize the risk of a coup. The focus on
a single hero figure converts concern
with policy and laws into personality
preferences, and casts collaborative
power and the on-going role of the people
into a shadow. A leader is known. The
name of a representing legislator or city
council member is not. Meaningful
participatory democracy and a single hero
model cannot coexist says Meslin. And
Meslin provides some history and rationale
from founding fathers and
philosophers – Locke and Montesquieu. He
claims
a Single Leader Annihilates the Group and
that this “SLAG” is the
biggest threat to democracy. Leadership
is
the courage to take action without
invitation. So goodbye to legends of
leaders
magically chosen. How sad we elect the
sons of former leaders – almost totally
sons too, not daughters. The
last 100
years have witnessed huge improvements in
rights, press freedom and voting
franchise but the shape of power has
back-tracked into the Dark-Ages says
Meslin. He might have said our
parliamentarians need to rebel for a Magna
Carta
with King Justin! There
are alternatives
to the hero-with-power model floating out
there. The American National Civic
League has a model City Charter with all
powers vested in a council that
appoints a manager to administer the city
operations. Toronto City Council
intended a weak mayor, but SLAG has pushed
the mayor into every decision. When
mayor Rob Ford went into rehab there was
no major problem. Councillors began to
lead collaboratively without him. There
can also
be sharing and dilution in leadership –
co-leading. Then there can be rotation.
My high school friend, who retired to
become a councillor at the local council
for Keighley, UK served for a term as
mayor in rotation with other councillors.
It was no big issue. Then,
why
have elections at all? Why not just
appoint people to serve a term as
legislators
the way we do with juries for big legal
decisions? There is evidence that a
randomly
selected Citizens Assembly works. BC used
one in 2004 to develop proposals for
the best voting system for BC. After
taking almost a year to get informed, the
Assembly went on to produce a detailed
report with a proposal for proportional
representation. (The subsequent vote on
the proposal got 58% of voters in
favour – just short of the 60% required by
the government.) Meslin
ends
with a warning and a challenge. The
warning is that the hero model leads to
burnout and nervous breakdowns as much for
NGO leaders as for politicians; and the
hero model leaves people out. Behind every
hero is a team. Acknowledging the
team is important and it helps everyone.
Promoting the team can help deal with
the hero model. The
challenge
is to appreciate just how radical King
John’s barons and the US founding
figures were in their day. We should take
action and think as creatively as they
did. It is not the US Electoral College
that should go – it’s the Presidency. 11.
Close
to Home explores our conditioning,
by our schools and beyond, to be docile
and to conform. Schools could have ways
for students to pass on ideas about
changes, or ways to give students partial
control of discipline, staffing,
curriculum, budget. There are democratic
schools and there are alternative learning
centres that involve students’ dropping
out of the school system. Meslin visited
some of these and gives his findings.
He found places with trust – places where
teens were trusted to make real
decisions, and there was no bullying. In
2003
Argentina, in the financial crisis, bosses
closed factories and took their
money out. But workers entered those
closed factories and ran them. Unions can
provide a means for workers to talk to
management – and unionized workers tend
to have more democratic participation
beyond their workplace. In
Canada there
are worker Coops. But, in contrast with
Italy, Coops are not an accepted part
of the Canadian economy and part of
routine teaching in Canadian schools or
business schools. And registering a Coop
business in Canada is not streamlined!
In Italy there is a fund to help workers
purchase the company from their
employer! Canada too could have tax
credits or funds to help company purchases
by workers and could have MBA training for
workers and others in matters surrounding
the founding and running of Coops. Then
there
are neighbourhood projects and
neighbourhood sub-units of city councils.
Meslin
describes his neighbourhood maple syrup
production project. He tells of Los
Angeles’ Neighbourhood Councils and
Edmonton’s Community Leagues. These give
people a voice, some political influence,
and insights into the functioning of
their larger metropolis. Since effective
inclusive organizing requires funds,
memberships or fundraising is important
and problematic for any form of
neighbourhood group. In LA and Edmonton
the neighbourhood groups are given
basic funding by the city. In Toronto,
there is none and even decent space to
hold meetings is a big issue of cost. The
final ingredient is central support
to maintain the network of neighbourhood
councils that LA’s councils enjoy. Meslin
ends
with a description of his neighborhood’s
simple, graphic participatory way of
demonstrating how a bad intersection in
the neighbourhood could be changed.