Western Standard - Can participatory democracy put power back in the hands of the people？

00:00:00.000 Democracy is not a spectator sport. It lives on in vigilance and participation.

00:00:07.160 Alberta's past is founded in bottom-up governance. Alberta activism has rewritten our history time

00:00:13.480 and time again, but how can we create and enshrine this into the very foundations of

00:00:19.380 our democracy at every level of governance? This is a nation of people. I'm Natalie St.

00:00:25.540 and with me is randy ryer and our guest today is peter mcleod

00:00:30.780 our vision at nation of people is that alberta can create a principle-based participatory

00:00:53.740 democracy. What does that mean, though, and how do we bring it into existence?

00:01:02.440 Brandy, can you define what it means to be a principle-based participatory democracy?

00:01:09.620 Well, to start with, in episode nine, we talked about the difference between Canada and the United

00:01:14.700 States. If you haven't seen it, please go to that episode, because what we say is that Canada is

00:01:20.200 principle-based in its society and its way it operates, and the United States is rule-based.

00:01:26.460 So, and what happens is there's a very different set of consequences that happen. Most importantly,

00:01:32.840 half of Americans don't think that their fellow citizens are morally good, and they think they're

00:01:38.960 morally bad, and whereas in Canada, 91% of Canadians feel that their fellow citizens are

00:01:46.060 morally good. So they're very, very different things. So we want that to be incorporated in

00:01:50.760 our governance. And add on top of that, the topic of today, which is going to be participatory

00:01:56.720 democracy. Let's start with just the whole basic idea of a participatory democracy.

00:02:02.760 Okay, so what does that look like? Just ground level? Well, the first thing is that anything in

00:02:09.540 politics is just an idea until it becomes an industry and so i would suggest that you know

00:02:16.380 quebec separation was an idea a dream for a lot of people but then it became an industry people

00:02:21.640 figured out how to make money off of it how to make their living off of addressing the question

00:02:27.700 and you know we're kind of we're starting to see the early stages of that in alberta separatism

00:02:33.140 also but what i propose is that it needs to be an actual industry before it really takes root

00:02:40.220 and and uh and and and becomes part of our existence so choose a participatory democracy

00:02:46.860 industry instead of a separation or separation industry separation industry yeah okay yeah um

00:02:54.040 well i do we do actually have an expert with us today on participatory democracy we have

00:02:59.260 Peter McLeod and Peter McLeod is in fact to my knowledge joining us from out east so that should

00:03:05.960 be interesting in and of itself he is the author of Democracy's Second Act Why Politics Needs the

00:03:13.700 Public. Welcome Peter. Very nice to join you. Yeah and so I'd love to hear a little bit about

00:03:21.820 your history in participatory democracy what it is that you've been doing I mean to effectively

00:03:28.800 start to create an industry of participatory democracy for yourself? Well, I mean, it may be

00:03:34.560 a bit of an exaggeration to describe it as an industry. There are a number of organizations

00:03:39.460 across this country that are working very diligently to try and bring citizens into a

00:03:45.040 different relationship with government and to have much more say in the decisions that governments

00:03:50.120 make in the space between elections. But, you know, true to form as Canadians, we don't always

00:03:57.320 know our own stories. And so the story I want to tell you is one that actually began a little more

00:04:03.000 than 20 years ago now in British Columbia, which for a variety of reasons had the world's first,

00:04:10.300 what would come to be known as a citizen's assembly. So it took two of Canada's great

00:04:15.580 traditions, a royal commission, you know, when something's really difficult, we think,

00:04:20.340 all right, let's get some very clever people, maybe former judges and university presidents

00:04:26.560 and journalists and whomever the great and the good. We're going to impanel them. We're going

00:04:30.140 to give them the opportunity to study an issue. And in BC, which Randy just rightly, I think,

00:04:37.080 observed quite individualistic in its outlook, a bit populist, thought to itself, instead of

00:04:42.140 getting the great and the good, what if we were to replace them with a randomly selected group

00:04:47.680 of British Columbia residents? And so that connects to the second great tradition, part of our

00:04:53.480 common law inheritance of having a jury. So you bring together a jury of people and the policy

00:05:00.540 focus of Royal Commission, you get something called a Citizens Assembly. And in Canada,

00:05:05.400 we've had about 50 of them, beginning in BC and then Ontario. But here's the bit that maybe

00:05:11.480 connects to the idea of an industry. There have been a thousand Citizens Assemblies inspired by

00:05:17.660 what took place here around the world over the course of the past 20 years. And every year,

00:05:22.700 we see more assemblies taking place dealing with intractable issues that for a variety of reasons

00:05:29.500 elected politicians really struggle to address. Yeah, well I know it's sometimes difficult for

00:05:37.260 elected officials to execute their mandate, get re-elected, and address all of the issues that

00:05:44.720 come up on a day-to-day basis in all the various areas of their governance. So it makes sense that

00:05:50.560 there would be space for somebody to step in and kind of connect the dots back to the citizenry.

00:05:55.600 Is that what I'm hearing? Well, look, I have a lot of sympathy for elected politicians. They

00:05:59.640 have an impossible job. You know, not only are they having to mind all of the kind of community

00:06:05.660 business that goes on with their constituency office, they've got to be up on all of the

00:06:10.680 various legislative files. The thing that's advantageous about a citizens assembly is look,

00:06:16.020 when we go into vote on election day, I might be voting for health care, you might be voting

00:06:21.660 for jobs, somebody else is voting. We never actually have a chance to separate and think

00:06:28.080 discreetly about the different agenda items. And government just gets one signal. We either like you,

00:06:35.460 say the people, or we don't. And they either have a mandate or they don't. So what a citizens

00:06:41.200 assembly does, and I think what's so powerful about a more participatory approach is it says

00:06:45.920 first of all, people have a lot more to contribute than just their vote. And turns out people are

00:06:52.500 much more giving of their time than we might assume. Reasonably, people get turned off from

00:06:57.900 politics. But if you ask people to help, if you ask them to do something real with their time,

00:07:03.800 if you ask them to use the stuff between their ears and really think hard about some of these 0.82

00:07:09.440 issues, I've seen time and again, Canadians will put their hands up in the air and they get to do

00:07:15.640 something that most politicians will never have the opportunity to do. And that's to actually

00:07:20.600 spend 40 uninterrupted hours focused on just one topic, right? So they become not experts in it,

00:07:29.740 but very knowledgeable. And one of the beneficial things is not groupthink. It's that everybody

00:07:35.820 actually has a chance to change their mind a couple of times before they work their way towards

00:07:41.640 a kind of rough consensus. So it plays against, you know, one of the, I guess, beliefs right now

00:07:49.720 that the public is so polarized, they can never agree on anything. No, no, it's the politics.

00:07:55.600 Unfortunately, it's many of the political parties that are doing the polarizing.

00:07:59.360 You get regular folks together and you give them a problem to solve. They're going to be generous

00:08:03.980 to each other. They're going to think it through. They're going to take on information they might

00:08:07.700 not like but they're not just going to plug their ears and close their eyes they're going to work

00:08:13.080 through what they're hearing and learning think about the implications for other people and come

00:08:18.160 up with something sensible and long term that's a really uh you know wonderful thing to hear because

00:08:25.320 i think i know i feel that i encounter so much polarization day to day so it's wonderful to hear

00:08:30.640 that there might be an access to getting people together and finding solutions and having them

00:08:35.440 collaborate also feels very canadian and i know randy and i have spent so much time discussing

00:08:41.040 the differences in canadians regionally speaking and i know you've done uh work all over the

00:08:46.880 country and while i can accept that canadians are open to uh what you're doing no matter you know

00:08:52.480 where it is i'm wondering if you have encountered any of that sort of cultural difference in

00:08:58.320 different areas of canada well you know i i've run processes like this where we'll send out

00:09:03.520 five or 10,000 letters randomly across a community or across a province or across the entire country.

00:09:10.640 People from every walk of life, they put up their hand to volunteer and we bring them together. I've

00:09:16.080 done this in Lethbridge. I've done this in Calgary. I've done this in Victoria and Vancouver. I've done

00:09:23.840 this as a province as a whole in BC, as I've done in Ontario and Quebec and Eastern Canada as well.

00:09:30.960 And I think we have to be careful about making too much of these regional distinctions.

00:09:38.140 You know, there's certainly more that connects us as Canadians than will ever divide us.

00:09:45.940 And we have many similar, I think, political and social instincts.

00:09:51.540 You know, we are good listeners.

00:09:53.760 We want to give people a fair shake.

00:09:56.440 We don't like too much flash.

00:09:59.280 We want people to kind of just speak plainly about what's going on, and we're pragmatic people.

00:10:05.380 But one of the things that I think is most dangerous about this political moment is that whether it's east or west, whether it's team red, blue, or orange, we have a very dangerous tendency to treat this public, this public that's willing to put its hands up in the air, leap into action, help a neighbor out, do something constructive.

00:10:27.980 we have a tendency to try and push them out of politics, to treat them more like a risk than a

00:10:34.920 resource. Now, I think that the crux of a more participatory, more engaged, more responsive

00:10:41.740 democracy is one where we start tapping into the talents and capabilities of people and stop

00:10:48.400 telling us defeatist stories, to stop telling each other defeatist stories about us all being

00:10:56.000 too divided and too apathetic to make a difference. And I think that's a challenge that actually sits

00:11:03.580 with our political parties, to recognize that people can do more and want to do more than just

00:11:09.120 knock doors and write checks. But that means they have to share some of the power with us

00:11:14.160 so we can make better decisions closer to home that government can then use.

00:11:20.620 And what I'm getting, Peter, is just how passionate you are about this project that

00:11:24.500 you're engaged in and i'm wondering how it is that you find yourself doing this work like what's your

00:11:29.160 story well i i suppose now having written a book that that gathers up a lot of what i've been

00:11:35.400 learning over the last 20 years i might have easily have called it lessons from canadians

00:11:39.560 because anything that i'm communicating to you is just what's been taught um to me by folks in every

00:11:46.780 corner of the country and and you know this is part of the problem too right we all talk about

00:11:51.980 the public as though we've ever met it right like we see folks you know in the grocery store and

00:11:58.460 on main street and you think you have a sense of things but the reality is that this quote

00:12:03.340 unquote public is always a representation right it comes to us through public opinion research

00:12:10.860 like polls and polls are actually a a really devious way of trying to uh to tell you what

00:12:18.940 somebody wants or likes or thinks because so often we say well do you want jobs or do you want climate

00:12:25.980 action as though those two things are diametrically opposed right a lot of people would support clean

00:12:31.740 jobs for instance but we then say oh well the public they only want this party and they only

00:12:37.500 want the other party no no i mean you know from sitting around with friends over a cup of coffee

00:12:42.460 people are a little bit more thoughtful about these things and they often hold contradictory

00:12:48.380 views as well. So, you know, we talk about ourselves being a modern democracy, but we

00:12:54.960 actually have very simplistic ways of understanding the public, much less reaching into and creating

00:13:00.920 problem-solving publics that can help us. I got into this work because I was very fortunate

00:13:07.560 when Ontario, just because I know you guys are keeping score, when Ontario copied British

00:13:13.360 Columbia and replicated its own citizens assembly. I was very skeptical. I thought this was some

00:13:20.140 flaky gimmick and, you know, was probably as skeptical as many might be about whether the

00:13:28.660 public could ever find that common ground that seems so elusive. But, you know, I had a good

00:13:34.900 former professor who was involved in the process. He said, Pete, you need to come and see this thing.

00:13:40.560 I walked into the room and I tell you, it didn't sound like question period. It didn't feel like a

00:13:46.160 legislature. First of all, it was half women and that was a really great thing. There were a lot 1.00

00:13:51.200 more young people in that room as well because it matches the demographics of the community it

00:13:55.920 represents. People weren't sitting two sword lengths across from each other. They were sitting

00:14:02.080 side by side and they'd really rolled up their sleeves and they were listening carefully and

00:14:06.400 they were learning. And I thought, boy, wouldn't it be great if more of our democracy felt and

00:14:12.340 sounded like these folks? And that's when I created this organization that would try and

00:14:17.860 take this model, build it, make it part of our democratic culture. And what I never expected to

00:14:24.100 see was a way in which other jurisdictions like Ireland would get inspired from Canada.

00:14:30.500 You know, they've changed their constitution three times using citizens' assemblies that came out of our country.

00:14:38.920 And if you ask someone in Dublin, what do you think about a citizens' assembly?

00:14:42.300 It's one of the few cities in the world that's going to give you a clear answer.

00:14:45.740 Folks understand that democracy can work in new and better ways, and they want to be a part of it.

00:14:52.620 It's very cool.

00:14:53.700 I mean, it's cool that Canada is actually exporting that to the world.

00:14:58.040 And I think it's also the opportunity is because I think so many Albertans will buy into this that perhaps Alberta can lead the charge of transitioning Canada to being who they are, as you said, Peter.

00:15:12.960 Yeah, okay.

00:15:14.020 Well, so that's a little bit of the history of participatory democracy,

00:15:18.880 but I'm wondering if there's, you know, before Citizen Assembly

00:15:22.120 and before democracy as we know it without Citizen Assembly,

00:15:26.680 so that what's really the history?

00:15:29.660 How did we get to participatory democracy as a thing?

00:15:33.260 Well, I'll jump in front of you on this one, Peter, if I may.

00:15:36.560 We've said it a few times that it's actually an Indigenous concept

00:15:39.660 in Turtle Island here, North America,

00:15:43.100 that they, you know, believed in the sovereignty of the individual

00:15:46.440 and they respected that in their governance system.

00:15:49.580 And I think it's Hanusine, I've never actually heard the word pronounced,

00:15:53.060 but it's the Iroquois Confederacy, which is in your part of the world, Peter.

00:15:57.340 They were the oldest participatory democracy in the world.

00:16:00.900 I think it was established in 1153 in the Great Law.

00:16:04.900 and that was actually, you know, part of the U.S. Constitution

00:16:09.840 modeled after that, and that's the longest standing.

00:16:14.160 So, Peter, what's your view on the history?

00:16:16.700 Any thoughts?

00:16:17.860 Well, you know, I think it's one of the proudest traditions

00:16:20.640 we have in Canada.

00:16:22.920 You know, we may not have had a rebellion or a revolution,

00:16:29.640 but we did achieve responsible government

00:16:32.480 and say what you might about Atlantic Canada, but it's the good people of Nova Scotia,

00:16:37.380 who in 1848 achieved responsible government in the first elections in this country. And the

00:16:43.640 other British colonies would then follow in pre-confederal times. But, you know, we have

00:16:49.220 spent the better part of three or 400 years building the current architecture of representative

00:16:56.620 democracy and basically everybody understands they get a vote and that vote is going to go

00:17:04.040 towards somebody who will speak for them in the legislature make decisions on their behalf

00:17:08.740 but there's something that the system of representative democracy doesn't do as well

00:17:14.820 as you know one of canada's great political theorists charles taylor uh describes to us he

00:17:22.500 says, recognition, recognition is as important. It's one thing to be seen. It's another thing

00:17:32.400 to feel heard. And too many people don't feel heard by our politics as usual right now. They

00:17:38.920 don't feel recognized. They don't feel like they have standing and voice and agency. And the way

00:17:45.960 that we've designed our democracy, I think, is something that every Canadian in every corner of

00:17:50.400 country should be proud of but it's an inheritance that we build on top of it's like every other

00:17:57.120 piece of software in our lives yet you have to upgrade it yeah and that upgrade ought to be one

00:18:03.760 that gives people more voice and more occasion not just to have their say and get their way

00:18:11.600 but to actually treat democracy as a way that we learn together and we care for one another

00:18:17.680 that it's not a winner-take-all game and pushing the people we don't like to the corner.

00:18:22.880 The idea of a more participatory democracy is one where you just keep building a bigger tent.

00:18:29.380 And far too many people feel excluded right now.

00:18:32.760 And that, again, I think we have to put some real responsibility on our political leaders and political parties

00:18:39.420 for not making a bigger tent that gives people real opportunities to learn and to grow and to care for each other.

00:18:45.500 I would be thrilled if the entire country moved to participatory democracy, but I don't think we should impose it upon them.

00:18:53.380 But, you know, it's one of the best parts about this country, the fact that we have these 10 provinces and three territories where we can have lots of different experiments underway in how to do things differently and better.

00:19:08.580 And, you know, one of the things that I think is a bit mystifying and certainly disappointing is our parochialism and our refusal to learn lessons from each other.

00:19:21.520 We are more likely to go down to Washington or over to London to get good ideas than we are to look to the province next door or to the region across the way.

00:19:32.260 You know, Canada can be trying and learning within itself faster and more effectively than just about any other country in the world. 0.85

00:19:42.700 But we have to stop with the parochialism.

00:19:45.300 We have to recognize and respect each other and realize that, yes, we're going to do things differently.

00:19:50.720 And some of us are going to do them better.

00:19:52.940 And those are the things worth borrowing and building from.

00:19:57.260 It's interesting you say that, Peter, because one of the things we're going to talk about guilds here in a moment.

00:20:01.480 But one of the things we talk about is that one of the guilds and the federal government should be looking at best practices and should be measuring the activities of all the different provinces and then talk about what had the best results, what was the best practices of all the different ones.

00:20:20.600 And I very much agree with you.

00:20:22.320 The great thing about having a federation is that you give different parts of the country the opportunity to sort of try things out, see what happens.

00:20:32.080 And everybody can watch.

00:20:33.860 And as long as we measure it, then there's definitive answers that we can then follow.

00:20:38.300 And what a great way to always be improving.

00:20:42.120 Yeah, and sorry, Peter, but I just want to ask you one more thing before we let you go.

00:20:48.060 And you've already said a lot about this.

00:20:50.140 So I just was wondering, like, you have such a beautiful vision and such an inspiring way of looking at the possibilities inside of participatory democracy.

00:21:02.100 And so what I'm wondering is, in an ideal world, is there anything else you'd like to say about where you see this all going?

00:21:11.440 You know, I think we all have a tendency to look at our legislatures and parliament.

00:21:16.500 we see these old stone buildings and we think they've been around forever. And the way we do

00:21:22.420 things is the only way to do them. I think when we look outside our country right now,

00:21:30.040 we can see that it's not as friendly a world as any of us might hope for, and that we are being

00:21:37.440 challenged in some pretty profound ways. And Canada has no excuses not to be the world's

00:21:43.640 most successful, high ambition, most caring and effective country in the world. We have

00:21:49.560 all of the resources that we need. I think when the prime minister calls for a strong country,

00:21:55.460 we also need to remember it's our democracy that makes us strong. But right now that democracy is

00:22:00.580 not performing the way we need it to. And it's going to require creativity and innovation just

00:22:05.880 like every other sector. And that's going to mean bringing new voices with new ideas

00:22:11.240 into the mix. So Canada can look to its proud legacy of citizens' assemblies, but they're being

00:22:18.260 done better already by other countries than here at home. In Ontario, in a few weeks' time,

00:22:25.040 two municipalities are going to give their voters two ballots. This is a wonderful idea

00:22:30.500 we've cooked up. It connects voting and volunteerism. So why not at the same time as you

00:22:36.340 vote for your mayor and council, you also indicate whether you would be willing to volunteer to join

00:22:41.780 a committee, respond in an emergency, help out with Little League. Let's get some of that local

00:22:47.960 civic energy connected. There are so many things that we can do beyond increasing the partisanship

00:22:57.280 in our society that can make democracy more effective and ultimately deliver more public

00:23:04.120 value for all of the people of this great society. Well, at a moment in Alberta where I feel that

00:23:12.080 things are particularly polarized with all of the discussion about separation, I'm really grateful

00:23:17.480 that you spent some time with us today, Peter, because I'm feeling more inspired about the

00:23:22.400 potential for our province and our country than I have in a while. Thank you so much.

00:23:27.620 Thank you, Peter. What inspires me about what you said is that it's actually happening.

00:23:31.100 This is not some far-off dream, which, frankly, I kind of get into sometimes.

00:23:35.740 This is actually happening.

00:23:37.100 So, Peter, thank you very much for joining us.

00:23:39.180 It's been inspirational.

00:23:41.300 My pleasure.

00:23:42.220 Thanks for having me.

00:23:43.620 Thank you.

00:23:44.160 Thanks, Peter.

00:23:45.460 Okay, so Peter gave us so many great ideas and possibilities.

00:23:50.400 My mind's spinning a little bit.

00:23:51.820 Absolutely.

00:23:52.620 Randy, what do you think the first steps are to making something like this a part of our governance?

00:23:56.960 Well, I think it's critical that Alberta lead the charge to incorporate this into our national ethos and our national way of thinking.

00:24:07.340 And the first step is, in my view, is to create what I would call a charter of rights and responsibilities.

00:24:14.880 And so that covers both what your rights are, but also what your responsibilities are to other citizens and to our own governance.

00:24:22.540 So Peter mentioned that idea of asking people what they'd like to volunteer for.

00:24:27.860 I mean, that's marvelous.

00:24:28.900 But, you know, we're going to be talking about some volunteer guilds and how people can volunteer to that, how they can be active, how they can advance our political structures and our politicians and advance the country.

00:24:45.540 So it starts off with the Charter of Rights and Responsibilities,

00:24:51.760 and that needs to put the sovereignty right on the individual

00:24:54.980 and say that the individual is the be-all and end-all.

00:24:59.600 Then the individuals, collectively,

00:25:02.500 they give rights and responsibilities to the government process.

00:25:06.260 So that's to the government itself at each of the levels,

00:25:09.940 each of the three levels, and then the bureaucracy.

00:25:12.720 and the point is is that all of those entities the mechanisms of state are in service to the

00:25:20.420 people and they understand it and the people can change it as as things don't work out they can

00:25:25.480 change it through peter's process uh and that they're the people are in control absolute most

00:25:30.540 important part so you're talking about something like the principle of duty absolutely yes that is

00:25:37.360 like a idea in and of itself that we have a duty to one another. I know there's a new book out,

00:25:43.860 Anti-Civilization, from a pundit from Quebec, actually, Etienne Beauregard, and he's talking

00:25:51.500 about this idea, and he's Gen Z, and he's talking about the need for us to express ourselves in

00:25:56.600 responsible duty to one another. Say more about your version of that. Well, that's a responsibility.

00:26:02.380 so when we talk about charter rights and responsibilities uh included in that is the

00:26:08.280 responsibility the duty that we have to each other you know and that is to you know view your life and

00:26:15.960 on a principled based process to help out each other to you know in calgary to open you know

00:26:21.840 open the door for the person that's you know behind you keep a hold hold it open and and so

00:26:27.260 this is about being who we are anyway this is just incorporating it into our foundation structure

00:26:35.200 so that everybody knows everybody remembers and everybody participates i mean but that's sort of

00:26:40.800 the the always the issue with this with you know getting into how a government might incorporate a

00:26:46.040 sense of duty in the citizenry and you know and your example is a perfect one because we wouldn't

00:26:51.340 necessarily want a law saying that you have to open the door for the person behind you because

00:26:55.940 then there would have to be people enforcing the law. And I don't, it sort of takes away from the

00:27:01.780 whole gesture. So what, how do we do that? How do we create something like this and have it not run

00:27:07.560 totally amok? Well, it's about the foundations. So in a regular constitution, what it does,

00:27:14.060 and take the American constitution and the Canadian constitution is the same,

00:27:17.300 it defines the relationship between the government and the individual. And as I said,

00:27:21.380 In the United States, the individual surrenders the sovereignty to the state and then the state in turn is obliged to protect certain individual rights.

00:27:33.620 And so in our constitutional structure, I want to propose that instead of creating a nation state, we specifically define the nation as a trust so that Canada will be a trust for the people of the country

00:27:49.360 and that the crown will hold all of the assets

00:27:54.080 and take all of its actions in trust for the people.

00:27:58.020 And so to humanize it, rather than having this, you know,

00:28:01.180 organic entity that nobody really knows what it is

00:28:03.860 and it's kind of hidden and mysterious

00:28:05.360 and, you know, it's the deep state that Americans talk about,

00:28:09.520 we can do this a different way and lean on our history

00:28:12.440 and ask the king to be the, you know, the crown,

00:28:16.100 to be the representative of the people.

00:28:18.000 And through his appointee or his representative in Canada, the Governor-General, that he maintains, he or she, maintains that sovereignty at the individual level and maintains our participation in our democracy.

00:28:34.760 And so creating Canada as a trust rather than a nation state, I think, is a fundamental step.

00:28:41.660 really interesting and again inspiring to think of whole new ways that things could be structured

00:28:47.960 and that they could happen here in our country so many possibilities and one of the possibilities

00:28:53.760 that you've already spoken about is the possibility of citizens guilds so randy can you i know there's

00:28:59.720 a few and there's probably a ton of detail in all this but just for today can you quickly go over

00:29:03.640 the idea of guilds and and what guilds you would suggest well i mean the idea is that it's very

00:29:10.900 simple, that this is a formula for how people get engaged. So just as what, as Peter was talking

00:29:16.380 about, that the one city asks for what would you like to do? Great idea. You know, people can line

00:29:22.280 up and put down, these are the ones that I'm interested in. And what I'm thinking is that

00:29:27.220 there should be some sort of advantage for them, like, you know, a tax write-off or something like

00:29:32.440 that to create an incentive. But it will also kind of form social groups. So if you're part of a

00:29:39.340 guild you know these are the people that you get to know you work together you know it's above and

00:29:44.320 beyond it's fulfilling your duty to the community and and it actually forms a little bit of a social

00:29:48.840 group for people so um i'm i'm proposing 10 and i'll just read them off quickly uh so i'll bear

00:29:55.220 me well bear with me while i'm reading them uh so number one is an electoral guild uh and that

00:30:01.180 would you know keep in reviewing our electoral processes working with the parties to make sure

00:30:08.600 There's not, you know, interference from outside of Canada.

00:30:12.180 And then, and also I propose that they would look at the requirement to vote.

00:30:18.720 So, you know, 100% requirement, a duty of citizenship.

00:30:22.180 Now, part of that is we would have to have none of the above on the ballot.

00:30:26.040 But the Electoral Guild will be teaching people their responsibility

00:30:30.520 and helping them fulfill it.

00:30:32.120 That's one.

00:30:33.140 Second one is the Legal Guild.

00:30:35.520 um and so it uh looks at you know it all these things will will help us measure the things that

00:30:42.480 are important to us what's what's the saying we measure what we care about we care about what we

00:30:46.700 measure so they'll look at you know things like how are we doing on the legal front um how many

00:30:52.040 cases are settled by uh collaboration and and um uh and and you know consent outside of the political

00:30:59.200 outside of the judiciary and also get involved with actually nominating judges at various levels

00:31:05.500 Next one is a social guild that tracks our social goals

00:31:10.260 and watches which province does best.

00:31:14.060 The next one is our citizenship guild.

00:31:17.340 And I think I mentioned this in one of the other episodes. 0.99

00:31:20.160 When citizens come to Canada, sorry, new citizens come to Canada, 0.94

00:31:24.140 they need initiation, they need to understand our local ways 0.95

00:31:27.900 and stuff like that.

00:31:29.220 The citizenship guild would help them do that.

00:31:32.520 So it's actual people fulfilling that response.

00:31:35.020 on the ground um the uh digital security and uh um and a nation building guild so i i need

00:31:46.340 digital security is increasingly important and so i i'm proposing a guild to help politicians

00:31:51.700 on that front um government accountability uh if they run amok the the uh this guild can

00:31:58.800 haul politicians back in and say, you know, let's, let us help you do better.

00:32:04.180 Environmental and Social Responsibility Guild, Democratic Structure Guild, and, and the last one

00:32:11.920 is the Treaty Guild. My opinion is that we don't understand the importance of treaty

00:32:21.740 in our provinces and i would propose that this guild actually you know informs people what what

00:32:29.340 they are what our responsibility are related to that to that and um and i actually propose that

00:32:35.220 we actually have a treaty day um i'm thinking let's celebrate on on may long weekend let's

00:32:42.160 celebrate everybody that signed treaty including queen victoria because that that was momentous at

00:32:47.460 the time. So just anyway, those are the gills that I propose. Well, Randy, I always am equally

00:32:53.840 inspired by you and the depths to which you've considered all these different structures and

00:32:58.780 solutions to the problems that many of us just feel like are given and sort of the state of

00:33:03.580 affairs. So thank you for sharing that idea with us today. And I look forward to more of our

00:33:08.800 conversations as always. Thank you very much. How do we create a participatory democracy that works?

00:33:15.220 It goes like this. Start with making the nation a trust rather than a separate entity such as a

00:33:21.800 nation state like the United States that has its own existence separate from the people. Then place

00:33:28.000 sovereignty solely in the hands of the people. People have a principle-based duty and responsibility

00:33:33.360 to each other. Then the sovereign people assign responsibilities and authorities to first federal,

00:33:40.420 provincial and regional governments and then to the civil service the judiciary and all arms of

00:33:46.020 government all of this would be a permanent structure managed by what we propose to be

00:33:51.460 the elective representatives of the king that structure would manage and promote vigilance and

00:33:56.740 participation join us on nation of people next week when we take a look at the ongoing referendum

00:34:10.420 Should I stay or should I go now?

Western Standard - October 02, 2026

Can participatory democracy put power back in the hands of the people？

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