December 2000 Fraser Forum:
Can Technology Lead to Parlimentary Reform?
From October 23 to 26, 2000, a conference and exposition called Smart 2000 was held in Calgary. Its aim was to combine a trade show with a conference on the topics of business, the professions (including geology, teaching, engineering and science), learning, and communities in the new digital world.
Much of the four-day event examined health, technological advances, education, and the role of government in the new economy. But the last day dealt with the loose theme of "Smart Communities." Two of the topics that speakers addressed were governance and what new technological advances mean for our parliamentary system of democracy. These were large topics for this conference, considering that our parliamentary system of government means that we elect representatives to make laws and policies on our behalf.
On the issue of governance, a central theme emerged. The main prediction by speakers such as Diane Francis of the Financial Post and Roger Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation was that new technology, and particularly the internet, provide a platform for the more widespread application of direct democracy. Direct democracy involves citizen-initiated laws; citizens vote on legislation and have a direct say in government policy.
Francis and Gibbins both cited the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle and Washington, where protestors organized themselves through chat groups, emails, and web sites, as an example of the rise in direct democracy. Unfortunately, the speakers were incorrect. While it is true that new technologies helped to mobilize protestors, it hardly follows that their protests will lead to changes in government trade policies. Moreover, the protests in Seattle were not against the direct outcomes of North American democracy, but rather against globalization, and the role of supranational organizations (both multinational firms and international governing bodies like the WTO) which make decisions auxiliary to or in place of the democratic process. In the case of international bodies, those policies can bind democratic legislatures. Thus, these demonstrations were not protests against representative democracy, but against perceived antidemocratic forces.
Make no mistake: in Seattle and Washington we were not seeing protests against duly elected governments conducting government business. Nor were the protestors asking to be at the table to help make policy. They simply don’t want the WTO to be a decision-making body. Protests against the WTO do not equate to a mass public movement demanding direct democracy.
Another aspect to the theme of technology’s impact on direct democracy, found in the "Smart Communities" component of the conference, was that technology will make it easier for the public to take part in direct democracy. The argument was straightforward: all one needs is a gadget that will allow one to vote on any issue. Francis, in fact argued that the future would involve Canadians voting on policy issues once a week.
Certainly, while this device would make participation easier, there are two problems with the concept. First, not everyone has the same access to technology. A competing theme of the conference was that there is a "digital divide," where the poor have less access than the middle class or the wealthy to technology. Rather than open up the system, the digital divide exacerbates the existing problem of lower income groups’ inability to participate.
A second problem with the proposal is that even if one could overcome the problem of access to technology, there is no compelling evidence to show that people would be interested in or able to vote on public policy issues. Over time, there has been a consistent decline in voter turnout not only in Canada, but in the US as well. The problem becomes more acute at the local level. In some municipal elections, a turnout of 30 percent decides government. Why should we expect the public to become involved and interested in the multitude of policy issues that are put before provincial and federal government legislatures? On the other hand, it is at least possible that by lowering the cost in time and effort of becoming informed and voting, technology could have some impact on involvement in the democratic process. Nevertheless, the most recent American election illustrates how seemingly simple choices can be confusing to some voters. If voters have difficulty marking their ballots, how can we then expect them to make wise decisions on complex pieces of legislation?
It is appealing to think that some technological advances can overcome the many flaws that exist in representative democracy. What this hope ignores is that the problems with representative democracy are not entirely or even mostly technological, and therefore do not, for the most part, have technological solutions. Representative democracy provides for specialization in the governing process. The business of government is complex; we elect people who will spend the time to make issues and policies their full-time occupation. The internet does not change this. While the internet and new technologies can improve access to the political system, they do not make people any more informed, any more interested, or any more capable of making governance decisions. Moreover, the well-documented flaws involved in governmental favouring of special interests and, more generally, of politicians pursuing their self-interests, often contrary to the public good, are not clearly ameliorated by technological advances.
The speakers noted that the public should have a greater voice in political matters. They provided irrefutable evidence that the Canadian parliamentary system is seriously flawed, the greatest flaw being that too much power is concentrated in the prime minister and cabinet. But it is wrong to believe that technology will be able to change that political fact. Even if it were unquestionably desirable to do so, it would take considerable political will and perhaps even a constitutional amendment to change the current status of the prime minister.1 In any event, the constitution is clear about how amendments are to be made, and the process does not provide for public participation in that decision. In fact, section 38 of the 1982 Constitution Act specifies that constitutional amendments can only be made with resolutions of the Senate and the House of Commons, and resolutions of the legislative assemblies of at least two-thirds of the provinces that have at least 50 percent of the population. Given the inherent difficulty of this threshold, it is unlikely that such an amendment can pass.
Besides, it is likely that any attempt to introduce direct democracy would change the constitutional position of the Lieutenant Governor or the Governor General, and that would require unanimity.
It is always tempting to think that technology can change everything. When we look at how the economy, business, and day-to-day activities have changed over the past century or so, it is easy to think that the same thing can happen to governance. Sadly, the brave new world does not include direct democracy. The invention of radio, telephones, and television did not change our basic political institutions. They might have made some things easier and some things more difficult, but the business of parliament remains very similar to what it was 100 years ago. Each of these inventions had the potential to allow direct democracy to be influential. That did not happen simply because technology alone cannot be the impetus for major parliamentary reform.
Note
1Our system of government gives incredible power to the prime minister and his cabinet. Francis and others perceived that as a flaw. But even if people can participate directly in policy-making from a technological point of view, it won’t necessarily happen because our constitution does not recognize the sovereignty of the people. In the US, such change is possible, because the US constitution says that the people give the government their authority. Our authority comes from a British statute which was enshrined in our constitution. The only way to change this is to change the constitution, which is extremely difficult.
Lydia Miljan (lydiam@fraserinstitute.ca) is the Director of the Alberta Initiative, as well as the the National Media Archive, of The Fraser Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Calgary.
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