Please bully me into doing this. And feel free to share your thoughts on what the mainstream misses when talking about self-government. Read on for more details.
Write the book! Having been raised in anti-democratic countries (the former eastern bloc), I am astonished at today's apparent willingness to disparage democracy. It's hard for me to get past my amazement/disbelief. Do people not understand the cost of 'getting things done', of authoritarianism? The squelching of autonomy. The silencing. The fear. The rule of law is not a quaint nice to have. It is imperative to a good life. The trouble is -- we've normalized corruption. We laud leaders like Mulroney, whose record is very mixed btw. Our collective amnesia brushes over the price of the rush to privatize everything. We are encouraged to think short term "Axe the Tax". Have we become so cynical that we can't see past the corporatization of our political lives? I get it. I feel it. Money - scarcity vs abudance - more of us falling into scarcity....its disabling. But, tuning back the clock on democracy is not a healthy response. Indeed, we need to double down on our insistence that people be looked after, that the well-being of our planet be taken seriously, that corporate power be limited -- we need leaders who fight for social cohestion (Wab Kinew?) not those who stoke the sense of futility and anger that our quasi-capitalist system has left us with. Young people are going to be very disillusioned if they vote right. They'll become increasingly disenfranchised, left alone on their islands to fend for themselves with families trying to pick up the pieces. Write the book. The only antidote to cynicism is knowledge.
I would love to read a book that challenges the mainstream media's tendency to treat electoral politics as the best or only mechanism for change. I'd also love to see you delve into the ways that people's desire to work for genuine change is often crassly manipulated and/or neutralized by the political parties themselves. ("Sign this petition so that our political party can send you regular updates reporting on the fact that we're LISTENING and may, in fact, POSSIBLY TAKE ACTION on something you care about during the next election cycle. Or not. But, in the meantime, please donate!") I say this as a long-time political party member/donor/volunteer who is now practically allergic to electoral politics.
And as for encouraging you to write that book: count me in as a member of the group who will be making endless inquiries about your progress. I'm ready to pre-order the book now.
Democracy is a lot more than the unfettered right of corporations and businesses to earn excessive profits. It is a lot more that the simple right to vote. Last week many Canadians sang the praises of Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, some of it deserved much of it not. Many spoke of the Free Trade Agreement, and how it benefitted Canada. It may have benefitted the corporate elite but it certainly did not benefit the front line worker. It for all intents and purposes destroyed the manufacturing sector and had none of the protections of the Auto Pact which preceded it. If memory serves, the top CEOs in Canada earned 50 times what the average worker earned at that time. The last report for 2023, indicates that disparity is now 247 times. So we can see who benefitted from Free Trade. It wasn't the average citizen. I think your book should include a section on the decline in the percentage of people who do not vote both provincially and federally, and because of that decline, we as a nation have steadily been losing many of our freedoms. We have a Conservative leader in the person of Pierre Poilievre who has criticized just about everything the current federal administration has done and offered virtually nothing by way of an alternative. He avoids the press, In short he is asking Canadians to sign a blank cheque. Regrettably many will do so.
I commend your commitment to exploring our democracy and ways to improve it.
However, I am old enough to wonder:
When exactly was our democracy better, and in what ways?
When did Canadians vote primarily on the basis of complex policy, rather than partisan spin?
When did our media cover the full range of ideological perspectives, esp the left?
When did citizens take the time to learn about issues and make decisions based on more than self-interest or short-term gain?
I grew up in a time and place where the elder Trudeau was detested more than his son is currently; where Reform dissenters literally took over PC and NDP seats; when Canada was split apart over files such as energy, constitutional reform and Quebec, privatization, free trade, GST, etc.
The House of Commons has been a raucous place in recent decades, and that's how it should be!
I agree that Poilievre and Smith are extreme versions of partisan dumbing-down and manipulation, but how many of our politicians have ever respected the intelligence of voters?
Democracy takes sustained effort, and I welcome your thoughtful contribution to that work.
But despair is misplaced and unnecessary.
It's up to the left to make its case against the rising right, in compelling language that people can understand and easily relate to. This challenge is tough, for sure.
But it's not the first time progressives need to step up to the plate.
I teach university and think you should write a book about how young people are not as sure about democracy as they have seen so many of its flaws. I often hear things like....We need someone to take charge and get things done. All we do is talk all the time and things don't get any better. We need someone in charge. I have been worrying about democracy for years because of what I hear in classroom discussions. You should check out the Jarislowsky Chair program (trust and democracy) if you aren't familiar with it. We have one of their new Chairs at my uni.
I believe democracy must be saved, but apparently there are many who don’t think this or don’t care. I think the people who need to be convinced that democracy is essential are our youth - those not voting yet, gen z, gen alpha. The problem is these citizens may not read a book no matter how great it is. So write the book, but think about how to get the ideas and info into the minds of our future leaders. It is them who will save our asses. Or not.
A couple of articles, recently, crystallised a point for me, about "Democracy depends on shared truths; fascism on shared lies" that we've been repeating a lot.
Thompson notes that most political lies are by implication, misdirection, exaggeration - a flat-out, checkable untruth is very rare, and most of them were when the liar was caught by surprise, and basically made a mistake, lying.
On the other hand, there was the Guardian article about Alex Jones, lying flat-out from the jump, and then, doubling down on it when challenged.
Politicians were all Trudeau-lies (his flat-out was that the SNC Lavalin thing couldn't have happened, no way), where, when caught at it, you don't double-down, you double-talk: you say you didn't mean it that way, or that it's out-of-context, or that you were honestly misinformed yourself: you pull back from the lie.
Mr. Trump, of course, doubles and triples down like Alex Jones, basically a New Thing Under The Sun in major politics - and it *worked* for him, shaking the journalistic foundations of the Earth; their big gun was just taken away from journalists, leaving them basically powerless on Trump.
The Canadian problem is whether Mr. Poilievre will double-down or double-talk when confronted with, ahem, "inoperative statements". So far, he's basically managed to dodge being questioned, (about, say, flat-wrong statements in his housing video) with Canadaland pointing out that going direct-to-video means you don't have to take interviews.
We hate Trudeau's (and Harper's, and everybody else's) "double talk" when caught lying. But we'll really, really, really hate it if Poilievre is allowed to conclude he can double-down, like Trump and Jones. Smith, of course, has played much closer footsie with the double-down line than Poilievre, so far, because she has a more-compliant population in Alberta.
The most important thing about 2025 isn't whether Poilievre wins, it's how. If he gets away with lying *and doubling down* on it as a campaign tactic, Canada steps into new territory.
But I’m not sure there’s more to say than what’s in The End of Politicians, by Brett Hennig. It’s a great book if you (or anyone else) haven’t read it.
Although maybe you could do more on the nuts and bolts of how a sortition appointed legislature could actually work.
Putting a short piece (or better, series of pieces) in the Globe is something else you could do to raise the profile of this idea whose time has come. I often wonder if the reason it’s not been covered in the media is that elections are such an important source of fodder for news …
Other authors to check out for anyone else who’s interested are Helene Landemore and Josiah Ober.
Another angle is the consideration of how we have an unspoken class constitution in Canada. In our society, we have a owning class that owns most of the economy. They delegate administration to a professional managerial class (PMC) and then we have the working class. The basic deal in Canada is that everyone can vote but realistically only the PMC and owning class can actually hold political power. The PMCs hold most of the power in governance and use it to check the power of the owning class. This system is then held together with a welfare state that secures a floor for everyone else to keep the system stable.
I don't think many people have seriously considered that the vast majority of people can't actually run for office. I've managed a few campaigns. You need to mobilize a lot of money fast. While we have a donation cap of $1,600 that's still a lot of money to most people. Easily half of Canadians couldn't afford. And most campaigns are $50-100k. So it helps if you're family and friends can all chip in near the top end. If you want to run, you probably want to take the time off. So unless you have a lot of community backing to run you need $1,600 that you can drop without sweating too much, family that can do the same and the ability to take 4-6 weeks off work. How many people can actually do that?
So on paper this system is democratic. But in practice, power can only actually be wielded by people with the class position to meaningfully contest an election. It's more of a popular aristocracy where disputes between factions of these classes are decided by popular appeals. Better than unpopular aristocracies and dictatorships but not a shining example of democracy.
The other effect of this is that a lot of emphasis is put on the ballot itself. But unless you're in the owning or PM class, then you're probably not wielding much political power through the ballot. Power in the lower classes comes from institutions like unions that can create meaningful challenges to the hegemony of parliament and corporations. As those institutions weaken, so does the actual democracy in our constitutional balance. I think this phenomenon is also starting to change the balance of power in the PM class itself. Good managers become less important when workers are less powerful altogether. Why even bother engaging with PMC liberals to design a compromise between workers and owners when the owners don't think the workers actually have any leverage?
I'd love to see more written about workplace democracy in Canada. I think it would be useful to look at co-ops and other systems that exist here as well as just trying to get the idea out there.
I consistently hear stories to the effect of 'something big is happening in the company (layoffs, big change, etc), my manager doesn't know anything, his manager doesn't either, but her boss knows something but is speaking in vague generalities. We all kind of accept that upper management is an opaque institution that's not responsible to workers. I know people who have gone off to work at small firms where they try to overcome this culture, but if they are successful firms they eventually replicate the same corporate structure.
It's clearly not because an individual CEO is bad. It's the inherent incentive of a system where there is no accountability mechanism for leaders by the people they lead. For a country that likes to talk a big game on democracy, we spend very little time living in one. I work in an oligarchy control by capital markets. I've never voted for my landlord. It's great to have a democratic government, but if democracy is so great why isn't it the norm in our society?
The pandemic was a practical exercise in Rawls' veil of ignorance for structuring society. We failed. My concern is that this might actually have been a deathblow to any sincere political framework for our institutions and the growing problems we're seeing now are just lagging indicators.
In fact, the convoy and crybully tactics of the reactionary right could be spectacular ethics nerd comedy about misconstruing the liberty and difference principles.
How can institutions emerging from this square the circle of justifying their relevance while evidence abounds about how they under performed in crisis and set the stage to further erode their authority? Has democratic self-government entered a zombie stage where institutions are too fragile to effect more than the symbolic concerns you mention? Will our city-state successors look at us a century from now and pinpoint this era as when broad civic rule became untenable?
omg, David, I think I'm asking you to write a Rawlsian sci-fi retrospective!
Hey David, having just read a few books on this topic ("Reclaiming populism," "Democracy may not exist but we'll miss it when it's gone"), my feeling is that the policy pieces are very well covered already, so I'm personally not too interested in reading another book about "someone should do X" (e.g. "we need better education," "we need PR/STV/AV," etc). Maybe just a chapter pointing the reader to the books with ideas you find compelling would be enough here.
But I'd *love* to read a book with these three ingredients:
* Part I: Which institutions are driving "good" democracies in other countries? I don't just mean political parties, but also think tanks, trade unions, etc. It sounds like you're already thinking along these lines. But I don't want to know about the projects themselves, I want to know about the social organizations that made them happen, because...
* Part II: What are the specific, equivalent institutions in Canada (e.g. Unifor, Canada 2020, CCPA, etc), and why aren't they working as well here? I'd love to see concrete stories here, e.g. do they not see the same problems as you do? Can they not agree on what to do? Is it as simple as "they're being outspent" or do they have other capacity gaps?
* Part III: What can *your readers* do to improve this? Which institutions should we join? What skills are needed? What other resources?
This is the gap I find in other books - not "what should someone do," but any kind of plan as to how to make it happen. And I *think* that individual citizens (like myself) are completely lacking in the information needed to build that plan. Maybe you, as a journalist, would be able to figure out more in a year than I could in a decade.
David...write it. I am writing a book on the financial services industry and how it takes advantage of Canadians. It does include references to our illustrious government and I was going to put a call to action in the book for someone to do the same thing I am but focused on the government. I believe you will be a better candidate for this exercise. Canadians need to be informed and empowered to take action to take back their money and in your case, our democracy.
Great idea! I'm looking forward to your next book. How democratic of you to invite ideas & input from your readership! Leadership in action.
Being curious is a strong basis to explore from. Our world is global especially economic and political influence. A systems thinking approach helps to connect-the-dots and note that action in one place/issue has impact on a number of other places/issues. It seems CHANGE is a significant factor. Most folks fear change, yet it continues to happen. Usually slowly (like Yikes! where did those pounds come from ?). However, the pandemic stopped the world in essence and created huge change in everyone's life and all systems - economic, political, social, healthcare, research, education etc., etc.
People did not necessarily adjust well. People are busy with day-to-day life and really don't have time to think deeply. Therefore, technology is having huge influence on economics (monopolies), communications (the entire landscape has changed.) The 'paperboy' middle-man now has control of consumers through monopolies and algorithms. The environment/weather is changing; demographics are changing; business models are changing (housing has become a commodity through REITs and short-term-rentals). What has been slow to change is organizational structures - public & private. Hierarchies and years of convoluted policies.
I'm in the building industry which has had decades of and continues to have a significant productivity flat-line. Resistance to change. The current political sound-bites from the opposition try to lure the population with going back to an imagined past time. Change is scary! Can Canadians change political trajectory and get back to real democracy? Can Canadians sort between politics and policy?
Please take this on. (I don't mean to be a bully.)
David, I hope you'll put something in your book about the importance of ditching the first-past-the-post system and moving to a proportional voting system. FPTP amplifies regional differences and encourages polarization and acrimonious parliaments. Polarization is getting worse fast, and we can't hope to see improvement as long as we have this wretched antiquated system. Not when attacking the sitting government can reward PP with a massive, unearned majority of seats in Parliament.
Yes, economic democracy is crucial now. The financialization of essential services, including human and animal health services, utilities, water, homes, you name it, by private equity (PE) backed companies which are set up to bear minimal if any risk and accountability, flies in the face of an equitable social contract.This article, https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/private-equity-pets-veterinarian/ on veterinary services spells out clearly the situation when a private equity company has control. It certainly has rung true for me in my experience with how veterinarian service has changed and this change is not just the sharp rise in charges. Look also at the examples of the deplorable conditions encountered in long term care homes during the pandemic and still, where residents and their families are bearing the pain of PE's heartless business model used to squeeze out more profit. The majority of us don't seem aware of the dramatic rise of private equity backed companies although we feel the pain of their ever increasing charges and the degradation of services they control. This situation is worse than feudalism.
Write the book! Having been raised in anti-democratic countries (the former eastern bloc), I am astonished at today's apparent willingness to disparage democracy. It's hard for me to get past my amazement/disbelief. Do people not understand the cost of 'getting things done', of authoritarianism? The squelching of autonomy. The silencing. The fear. The rule of law is not a quaint nice to have. It is imperative to a good life. The trouble is -- we've normalized corruption. We laud leaders like Mulroney, whose record is very mixed btw. Our collective amnesia brushes over the price of the rush to privatize everything. We are encouraged to think short term "Axe the Tax". Have we become so cynical that we can't see past the corporatization of our political lives? I get it. I feel it. Money - scarcity vs abudance - more of us falling into scarcity....its disabling. But, tuning back the clock on democracy is not a healthy response. Indeed, we need to double down on our insistence that people be looked after, that the well-being of our planet be taken seriously, that corporate power be limited -- we need leaders who fight for social cohestion (Wab Kinew?) not those who stoke the sense of futility and anger that our quasi-capitalist system has left us with. Young people are going to be very disillusioned if they vote right. They'll become increasingly disenfranchised, left alone on their islands to fend for themselves with families trying to pick up the pieces. Write the book. The only antidote to cynicism is knowledge.
I would love to read a book that challenges the mainstream media's tendency to treat electoral politics as the best or only mechanism for change. I'd also love to see you delve into the ways that people's desire to work for genuine change is often crassly manipulated and/or neutralized by the political parties themselves. ("Sign this petition so that our political party can send you regular updates reporting on the fact that we're LISTENING and may, in fact, POSSIBLY TAKE ACTION on something you care about during the next election cycle. Or not. But, in the meantime, please donate!") I say this as a long-time political party member/donor/volunteer who is now practically allergic to electoral politics.
And as for encouraging you to write that book: count me in as a member of the group who will be making endless inquiries about your progress. I'm ready to pre-order the book now.
Democracy is a lot more than the unfettered right of corporations and businesses to earn excessive profits. It is a lot more that the simple right to vote. Last week many Canadians sang the praises of Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, some of it deserved much of it not. Many spoke of the Free Trade Agreement, and how it benefitted Canada. It may have benefitted the corporate elite but it certainly did not benefit the front line worker. It for all intents and purposes destroyed the manufacturing sector and had none of the protections of the Auto Pact which preceded it. If memory serves, the top CEOs in Canada earned 50 times what the average worker earned at that time. The last report for 2023, indicates that disparity is now 247 times. So we can see who benefitted from Free Trade. It wasn't the average citizen. I think your book should include a section on the decline in the percentage of people who do not vote both provincially and federally, and because of that decline, we as a nation have steadily been losing many of our freedoms. We have a Conservative leader in the person of Pierre Poilievre who has criticized just about everything the current federal administration has done and offered virtually nothing by way of an alternative. He avoids the press, In short he is asking Canadians to sign a blank cheque. Regrettably many will do so.
I commend your commitment to exploring our democracy and ways to improve it.
However, I am old enough to wonder:
When exactly was our democracy better, and in what ways?
When did Canadians vote primarily on the basis of complex policy, rather than partisan spin?
When did our media cover the full range of ideological perspectives, esp the left?
When did citizens take the time to learn about issues and make decisions based on more than self-interest or short-term gain?
I grew up in a time and place where the elder Trudeau was detested more than his son is currently; where Reform dissenters literally took over PC and NDP seats; when Canada was split apart over files such as energy, constitutional reform and Quebec, privatization, free trade, GST, etc.
The House of Commons has been a raucous place in recent decades, and that's how it should be!
I agree that Poilievre and Smith are extreme versions of partisan dumbing-down and manipulation, but how many of our politicians have ever respected the intelligence of voters?
Democracy takes sustained effort, and I welcome your thoughtful contribution to that work.
But despair is misplaced and unnecessary.
It's up to the left to make its case against the rising right, in compelling language that people can understand and easily relate to. This challenge is tough, for sure.
But it's not the first time progressives need to step up to the plate.
We can do this again.
I teach university and think you should write a book about how young people are not as sure about democracy as they have seen so many of its flaws. I often hear things like....We need someone to take charge and get things done. All we do is talk all the time and things don't get any better. We need someone in charge. I have been worrying about democracy for years because of what I hear in classroom discussions. You should check out the Jarislowsky Chair program (trust and democracy) if you aren't familiar with it. We have one of their new Chairs at my uni.
I believe democracy must be saved, but apparently there are many who don’t think this or don’t care. I think the people who need to be convinced that democracy is essential are our youth - those not voting yet, gen z, gen alpha. The problem is these citizens may not read a book no matter how great it is. So write the book, but think about how to get the ideas and info into the minds of our future leaders. It is them who will save our asses. Or not.
It really is THE topic, right now.
A couple of articles, recently, crystallised a point for me, about "Democracy depends on shared truths; fascism on shared lies" that we've been repeating a lot.
The one article was Stuart Thompson, in the National Post, about how political leaders do lie, because it helps their careers: https://nationalpost.com/feature/truths-about-why-politicians-lie
Thompson notes that most political lies are by implication, misdirection, exaggeration - a flat-out, checkable untruth is very rare, and most of them were when the liar was caught by surprise, and basically made a mistake, lying.
On the other hand, there was the Guardian article about Alex Jones, lying flat-out from the jump, and then, doubling down on it when challenged.
Politicians were all Trudeau-lies (his flat-out was that the SNC Lavalin thing couldn't have happened, no way), where, when caught at it, you don't double-down, you double-talk: you say you didn't mean it that way, or that it's out-of-context, or that you were honestly misinformed yourself: you pull back from the lie.
Mr. Trump, of course, doubles and triples down like Alex Jones, basically a New Thing Under The Sun in major politics - and it *worked* for him, shaking the journalistic foundations of the Earth; their big gun was just taken away from journalists, leaving them basically powerless on Trump.
The Canadian problem is whether Mr. Poilievre will double-down or double-talk when confronted with, ahem, "inoperative statements". So far, he's basically managed to dodge being questioned, (about, say, flat-wrong statements in his housing video) with Canadaland pointing out that going direct-to-video means you don't have to take interviews.
We hate Trudeau's (and Harper's, and everybody else's) "double talk" when caught lying. But we'll really, really, really hate it if Poilievre is allowed to conclude he can double-down, like Trump and Jones. Smith, of course, has played much closer footsie with the double-down line than Poilievre, so far, because she has a more-compliant population in Alberta.
The most important thing about 2025 isn't whether Poilievre wins, it's how. If he gets away with lying *and doubling down* on it as a campaign tactic, Canada steps into new territory.
David,
I’ve said it before: SORTITION!
But I’m not sure there’s more to say than what’s in The End of Politicians, by Brett Hennig. It’s a great book if you (or anyone else) haven’t read it.
Although maybe you could do more on the nuts and bolts of how a sortition appointed legislature could actually work.
Putting a short piece (or better, series of pieces) in the Globe is something else you could do to raise the profile of this idea whose time has come. I often wonder if the reason it’s not been covered in the media is that elections are such an important source of fodder for news …
Other authors to check out for anyone else who’s interested are Helene Landemore and Josiah Ober.
Another angle is the consideration of how we have an unspoken class constitution in Canada. In our society, we have a owning class that owns most of the economy. They delegate administration to a professional managerial class (PMC) and then we have the working class. The basic deal in Canada is that everyone can vote but realistically only the PMC and owning class can actually hold political power. The PMCs hold most of the power in governance and use it to check the power of the owning class. This system is then held together with a welfare state that secures a floor for everyone else to keep the system stable.
I don't think many people have seriously considered that the vast majority of people can't actually run for office. I've managed a few campaigns. You need to mobilize a lot of money fast. While we have a donation cap of $1,600 that's still a lot of money to most people. Easily half of Canadians couldn't afford. And most campaigns are $50-100k. So it helps if you're family and friends can all chip in near the top end. If you want to run, you probably want to take the time off. So unless you have a lot of community backing to run you need $1,600 that you can drop without sweating too much, family that can do the same and the ability to take 4-6 weeks off work. How many people can actually do that?
So on paper this system is democratic. But in practice, power can only actually be wielded by people with the class position to meaningfully contest an election. It's more of a popular aristocracy where disputes between factions of these classes are decided by popular appeals. Better than unpopular aristocracies and dictatorships but not a shining example of democracy.
The other effect of this is that a lot of emphasis is put on the ballot itself. But unless you're in the owning or PM class, then you're probably not wielding much political power through the ballot. Power in the lower classes comes from institutions like unions that can create meaningful challenges to the hegemony of parliament and corporations. As those institutions weaken, so does the actual democracy in our constitutional balance. I think this phenomenon is also starting to change the balance of power in the PM class itself. Good managers become less important when workers are less powerful altogether. Why even bother engaging with PMC liberals to design a compromise between workers and owners when the owners don't think the workers actually have any leverage?
I'd love to see more written about workplace democracy in Canada. I think it would be useful to look at co-ops and other systems that exist here as well as just trying to get the idea out there.
I consistently hear stories to the effect of 'something big is happening in the company (layoffs, big change, etc), my manager doesn't know anything, his manager doesn't either, but her boss knows something but is speaking in vague generalities. We all kind of accept that upper management is an opaque institution that's not responsible to workers. I know people who have gone off to work at small firms where they try to overcome this culture, but if they are successful firms they eventually replicate the same corporate structure.
It's clearly not because an individual CEO is bad. It's the inherent incentive of a system where there is no accountability mechanism for leaders by the people they lead. For a country that likes to talk a big game on democracy, we spend very little time living in one. I work in an oligarchy control by capital markets. I've never voted for my landlord. It's great to have a democratic government, but if democracy is so great why isn't it the norm in our society?
The pandemic was a practical exercise in Rawls' veil of ignorance for structuring society. We failed. My concern is that this might actually have been a deathblow to any sincere political framework for our institutions and the growing problems we're seeing now are just lagging indicators.
In fact, the convoy and crybully tactics of the reactionary right could be spectacular ethics nerd comedy about misconstruing the liberty and difference principles.
How can institutions emerging from this square the circle of justifying their relevance while evidence abounds about how they under performed in crisis and set the stage to further erode their authority? Has democratic self-government entered a zombie stage where institutions are too fragile to effect more than the symbolic concerns you mention? Will our city-state successors look at us a century from now and pinpoint this era as when broad civic rule became untenable?
omg, David, I think I'm asking you to write a Rawlsian sci-fi retrospective!
Hey David, having just read a few books on this topic ("Reclaiming populism," "Democracy may not exist but we'll miss it when it's gone"), my feeling is that the policy pieces are very well covered already, so I'm personally not too interested in reading another book about "someone should do X" (e.g. "we need better education," "we need PR/STV/AV," etc). Maybe just a chapter pointing the reader to the books with ideas you find compelling would be enough here.
But I'd *love* to read a book with these three ingredients:
* Part I: Which institutions are driving "good" democracies in other countries? I don't just mean political parties, but also think tanks, trade unions, etc. It sounds like you're already thinking along these lines. But I don't want to know about the projects themselves, I want to know about the social organizations that made them happen, because...
* Part II: What are the specific, equivalent institutions in Canada (e.g. Unifor, Canada 2020, CCPA, etc), and why aren't they working as well here? I'd love to see concrete stories here, e.g. do they not see the same problems as you do? Can they not agree on what to do? Is it as simple as "they're being outspent" or do they have other capacity gaps?
* Part III: What can *your readers* do to improve this? Which institutions should we join? What skills are needed? What other resources?
This is the gap I find in other books - not "what should someone do," but any kind of plan as to how to make it happen. And I *think* that individual citizens (like myself) are completely lacking in the information needed to build that plan. Maybe you, as a journalist, would be able to figure out more in a year than I could in a decade.
Hope this helps!
David...write it. I am writing a book on the financial services industry and how it takes advantage of Canadians. It does include references to our illustrious government and I was going to put a call to action in the book for someone to do the same thing I am but focused on the government. I believe you will be a better candidate for this exercise. Canadians need to be informed and empowered to take action to take back their money and in your case, our democracy.
Great idea! I'm looking forward to your next book. How democratic of you to invite ideas & input from your readership! Leadership in action.
Being curious is a strong basis to explore from. Our world is global especially economic and political influence. A systems thinking approach helps to connect-the-dots and note that action in one place/issue has impact on a number of other places/issues. It seems CHANGE is a significant factor. Most folks fear change, yet it continues to happen. Usually slowly (like Yikes! where did those pounds come from ?). However, the pandemic stopped the world in essence and created huge change in everyone's life and all systems - economic, political, social, healthcare, research, education etc., etc.
People did not necessarily adjust well. People are busy with day-to-day life and really don't have time to think deeply. Therefore, technology is having huge influence on economics (monopolies), communications (the entire landscape has changed.) The 'paperboy' middle-man now has control of consumers through monopolies and algorithms. The environment/weather is changing; demographics are changing; business models are changing (housing has become a commodity through REITs and short-term-rentals). What has been slow to change is organizational structures - public & private. Hierarchies and years of convoluted policies.
I'm in the building industry which has had decades of and continues to have a significant productivity flat-line. Resistance to change. The current political sound-bites from the opposition try to lure the population with going back to an imagined past time. Change is scary! Can Canadians change political trajectory and get back to real democracy? Can Canadians sort between politics and policy?
Please take this on. (I don't mean to be a bully.)
David, I hope you'll put something in your book about the importance of ditching the first-past-the-post system and moving to a proportional voting system. FPTP amplifies regional differences and encourages polarization and acrimonious parliaments. Polarization is getting worse fast, and we can't hope to see improvement as long as we have this wretched antiquated system. Not when attacking the sitting government can reward PP with a massive, unearned majority of seats in Parliament.
And can I do your index again? :)
Yes, economic democracy is crucial now. The financialization of essential services, including human and animal health services, utilities, water, homes, you name it, by private equity (PE) backed companies which are set up to bear minimal if any risk and accountability, flies in the face of an equitable social contract.This article, https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/private-equity-pets-veterinarian/ on veterinary services spells out clearly the situation when a private equity company has control. It certainly has rung true for me in my experience with how veterinarian service has changed and this change is not just the sharp rise in charges. Look also at the examples of the deplorable conditions encountered in long term care homes during the pandemic and still, where residents and their families are bearing the pain of PE's heartless business model used to squeeze out more profit. The majority of us don't seem aware of the dramatic rise of private equity backed companies although we feel the pain of their ever increasing charges and the degradation of services they control. This situation is worse than feudalism.