May 2001
Enhancing Democracy with a Citizens' Assembly
Gordon Gibson
At the beginning of this year, an ad hoc committee of which I was a member delivered a report on needed democratic reforms in British Columbia. The other members were Gary Lauk, Nick Loenen, and Rafe Mair. All of us have been MLAs; two were cabinet ministers. There were no partisan difficulties in reaching agreement on these issues.
While we represented no one, and certainly not the diversity of the province, our hope was that the technical expertise brought to bear in the report might be helpful to others, including BC’s next government. As an even greater ambition, democratic reform in BC could stand as a lighthouse for the same destination across the country. All our federal and provincial governments suffer from the concentration of power in the executive branch, the "four-year, elected dictatorship" problem. If we can get it right in BC, others could learn.
The full committee report is available on the web at www.fairvotingbc.com, a non-partisan group calling for reform of the electoral system, and at www.rafeonline.com. The report gives a background of democratic theory and progress, locates BC on that continuum, and looks at necessary subjects for study and action.
While direct democracy received attention, the main focus of the report is representative democracy, that being the main mechanism for conduct of the public business. We conclude that both the means of selecting representatives (electoral reform) and the machinery by which those representatives go about their business (parliamentary reform) are in need of change.
In the case of electoral reform, the challenge is to more sensitively represent the many views extant in our society. Parliamentary reform really comes down to the question of empowering the MLA or MP vis à vis the executive branch, which effectively means vis à vis the First Minister—that four-year, elected dictator.
Our core recommendation was on the machinery for considering vital questions. How should we go about considering change to the very foundations of our democratic system?
Caution is required. The Law of Unintended Consequences is awesome in its scope, and nowhere is it more to be feared than in matters constitutional. Certain grievous results of the 1982 amendments to the Canadian constitution bear this out. Proceeding by way of great principle rather than the small steps of incremental wisdom and pragmatism opens the way for errors as great in themselves as the principles intended to be served.
But there is another argument which we thought on balance persuasive in this case. Experience shows that any entrenched system (such as the massive power of First Minsters) must be changed sufficiently to permanently alter the old power balances, for another law that confounds reformers is the Law of Equal and Opposite Reaction. If you try to change certain behaviours in a minimalist way (simply reform the legislative committee system, say) the old elites will find a way to restore the status quo. Change must be sufficient to deliver a new equilibrium. Sometimes mere tinkering will not do.
Such change requires a powerful mandate, of a sort that can come only from the electorate. Change always harms powerful interests and always brings unexpected problems. To stay the course, change must have great support.
We believed that the constitution is the people’s business, and that a body democratically selected by the people is the correct instrument for constitutional review. Accordingly we proposed a "Citizens’ Assembly." Such a body has much successful historical precedent. Assemblies were used to fashion the constitutions of the United States (1787), France (1791), Switzerland (1848), Australia (1898), Germany (1949), India (1949), Spain (1978), and South Africa (1996). In the United States, some states have citizens’ assemblies at regular intervals.
Citizens’ Assemblies are special-purpose bodies existing alongside regular government institutions. They have a limited mandate for a limited time, and dissolve when the mandate is completed. Such bodies normally have no authority other than to recommend proposals that are then placed before the Legislature or the people in a referendum, for approval or rejection.
An Assembly can be created by a simple act of the Legislature. The critical question is its membership. Our committee’s idea was that there should be one member for each of the 79 constituencies in the province, with the 79 persons thus chosen being free to add another 21 as they saw fit to remedy perceived deficiencies in representativeness or expertise. However, this question is less important than how the constituency representatives are to be chosen.
Our committee recommended—and I consider this the most important single recommendation—that members of the Citizens’ Assembly should be chosen by election rather than appointment. There are respectable views that an Assembly might be chosen by lot, rather like a jury. However, the work to be done is not the work of a jury—to say "guilty" or "not guilty." Rather, the work requires making multiple, complex, and inter-related choices about rules of governance that will affect our children and grandchildren. The work requires dedication and suitability, both characteristics to be sought by the electorate from among those offering themselves for the job.
Another reason for election is legitimacy. Unless an Assembly has the democratic legitimacy of election, its work will be too easy to ignore, just as we would (properly) ignore the views of any jury on how to change the Criminal Code based on one case.
The recommendations of this Citizens’ Assembly, in our view, should then be put to the people in a referendum.
Finally—and this is a new idea, the invention of colleague Rafe Mair—we recommend a new Officer of the Legislature (with the independence of the Auditor General or Conflict Commissioner) to sit as a Commissioner of Reform. This person would in the first instance be charged with chairing the Assembly, and thereafter with reporting to the Legislature on the implementation and adequacy of any changes adopted as a result of the Assembly process, and to consider and comment on new ideas in the light of experience. Such an office—to automatically end in ten years unless renewed—would serve as a useful monitor on the overall process. The net result could be—and we think would be—a much better functioning democracy than we have at present.
Gordon Gibson (gordong@fraserinstitute.ca) has an MBA from Harvard and is The Fraser Institute’s Senior Fellow in Canadian Studies. He has served
in the Prime Minister’s Office under Pierre Trudeau and as both an MLA
and as leader of the BC Liberal Party (1975-79).
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