Month: November 2020

Emma Bugg on how Evidence for Democracy is working to ensure we have a national democratic culture that recognizes the importance of science.

Tell us about Evidence for Democracy (E4D). How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

Evidence for Democracy is the leading non-partisan, not-for-profit organization promoting the transparent use of evidence in government decision-making in Canada. Here at E4D we believe that when decisions are based on the best available evidence, we all benefit. Through an original research program, a suite of training and educational resources, and issue-based public engagement campaigns, we hold the government to account and work to bridge the gap between government decision-makers and the best available evidence. 

E4D was founded during the Harper era when the federal government was slashing funding for science and muzzling government scientists. At the time, scientists in Canada started organizing and engaging in public advocacy like we hadn’t seen before in this country. It became clear that sustained work around support for science and evidence-based decision-making were needed in Canada and E4D was formed. While we have come a long way since those early years, and much has changed in the landscape of decision-making here in Canada, there is still much work to do to ensure we have a robust, well-informed decision-making process, and a national culture that recognizes the importance of science to our well-being.

While there are certainly other organizations in Canada working on issues around science policy, including a number of great student-led groups such as the Toronto Science Policy Network and Science and Policy Exchange, E4D is unique in its approach to advancing the use of evidence in government decision-making in Canada.

We are all navigating the global pandemic in different ways. What’s a key insight from how  E4D is responding to the crisis? 

We have been really lucky throughout this pandemic in that we were able to make the transition to remote work early on and relatively seamlessly. We have now been working from home since the middle of March and have been able to push forward both on our projects that were already underway when the pandemic hit, as well as on new work contributing to the COVID-19 response. In that work, our priority has been to make evidence-based information on COVID-19 accessible for our community. We have done this in a number of ways including through a living blog post of evidence-based resources on COVID-19 which we update on an ongoing basis, as well as two panel events: one looking at the role of the science community in the COVID-19 response in Canada, and another looking at Canada’s data needs for the ongoing response and eventual recovery. 

This crisis has been such a relevant example of the importance of evidence-based decision-making, and the public has both witnessed and experienced the effects of a variety of approaches to responding to the pandemic in real time. We have learned a lot about both the public’s value for science, and the difficulty in communicating science and the reasoning behind challenging decision-making to the public in the midst of such a dynamic crisis. 

Now, we are even more deeply rooted in our mission of ensuring that Canada has strong mechanisms in place to protect evidence-based decision-making throughout the policy process to protect the well-being of all both now, as we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, and into the future, to prepare us for the ongoing fight against the climate crisis, and all other challenges to come.

Over the past few months we have seen groups seize this moment of uncertainty to advance racial and economic justice in their communities. How is this affecting your work? 

Like for so many others, the movement that is taking place right now has called us to recommit ourselves to the ongoing work of learning antiracist thinking and behaviour. For me, this has meant self-education, reflecting on and learning from the past, and more conscious thinking about how to understand the intersections of what I’m learning with our work as an organization. 

As an organization, moving forward on this work means bringing this learning process into our day-to-day. Thinking more about who our community is, how we serve and interact with them, and thinking about which voices we are highlighting as expertise. 

In particular, we learned a lot from our panelists at this recent event about the critical data gaps that exist around race in relation to COVID-19 and the significant impact that has on how government decisions are serving, or not serving, different communities. This has also reinvigorated our determination that, as we tackle key challenges such as COVID-19 and the climate crisis, a just transition must be central to our approach. There is no recovery without rethinking and rebuilding the systems that are racist by design. 

What’s one big challenge you see Canada’s democracy facing? How are you working on this challenge, what solutions do you propose?

One of the major challenges we are concerned with here at E4D is misinformation. Misinformation is a major and growing threat around the world, and it presents critical challenges for our democracy. A functioning democracy requires that citizens have a shared reality based on agreed upon facts to form the basis of discussion on issues we all care about. When misinformation becomes prevalent, that shared foundation can crack. 

To respond to this challenge, we created the Truth Pledge. The Truth Pledge is a personal commitment to push back against misinformation to help slow its spread, and reduce its impact on public discourse and decision-making. Signers of the Truth Pledge receive our Truth Toolkit (which is also available for free on our website), which outlines tangible tools and steps we can all take to combat misinformation. In addition to the pledge and toolkit, we have hosted a number of webinars outlining steps we can all take to combat misinformation, and why it’s so important that we do so. 

We are now in the middle of a new research project to better understand the existing body of knowledge on misinformation, develop new training tools to aid the scientific community in combatting misinformation, and looking at policy solutions for combating misinformation on a larger scale. Stay tuned for more on that in the new year! 

Could you share an idea or initiative related to increasing civic engagement or democratic participation that inspires you? This could be related to your work or something you see happening in the sector. 

A major part of our work is providing training to scientists and others who are passionate about science and its importance to strong decision-making. Our past trainings include “Science Policy 101”, “Science Communication 101”, “How to write a briefing note”, and more, and our toolkits include “Connecting with your political representatives” and “Federal Budget Toolkit”. All of those resources and more are available for free on our website. For me, one of the most inspiring parts of this work is hearing stories from folks we have supported about the great work they’ve done in their communities to engage with their elected representatives and their peers, to get science on the agenda. 

Ultimately, what we want to see is a science community that is empowered with the skills and tools required to connect with elected representatives, really closing that gap between decision-makers and relevant expertise. This is why these stories are so rewarding. You can find two great examples of this on our blog here and here. 

Tell us about how E4D is making its work more inclusive and building engagement with different communities. Any tips or lessons to share with others in the sector about decreasing barriers to participation? 

First, we feel strongly about offering our training resources and toolkits for free. While we do offer opportunities for customized training at a price, the webinars and toolkits in our main suite of training resources will always remain free. Everyone should be able to engage with their elected officials, and it is our mission to build the skills required to do that effectively in the scientific community. 

One of the things I am working on right now is making our events and online resources more accessible. So far, this work is happening mostly internally, and we’ve been really lucky to have the support of a number of volunteers with valuable expertise who have offered their time and skills to help us work on this. This has become a higher priority for us recently in particular due to the shift to conducting all of our work virtually. We want to make sure all those who are interested are able to engage with our work. We are also very open to feedback on this so we welcome conversations from anyone who wants to reach out (emma@evidencefordemocracy.ca) and share insight on how we can improve that accessibility.

For people looking to engage with you, how can they get involved? Who can they contact?

There are lots of different ways to support this work of strengthening the landscape of evidence-based decision-making in Canada. For more info on any of these, please reach out to me at emma@evidencefordemocracy.ca!

1. Donate. We are largely a donor supported organization and donations of any size go a long way to support our work. The best way to provide financial support is through a recurring monthly donation. These gifts offer us sustainability and allow us to plan ahead! You can donate here.
2. Participate in our campaigns. We often run public engagement campaigns on issues such as science integrity, research funding, and climate. You can take part by writing a letter to your representative, Tweeting, and more. Find all of our current campaigns here.
3. Volunteer. As a small organization, we greatly appreciate the support of our community of volunteers. If you’re interested in offering your time and skills to our work, you can sign up to volunteer here.
4. Join our Network of Experts. E4D’s Network of Experts is a community of scientists, health experts, engineers, researchers, economists, and other scientific specialists that help educate the public and connect decision-makers with the expertise they need to make informed decisions based on the best available evidence. For more information and to join the network, visit our website.
5. Follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter. To stay up to date on everything we are working on, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and sign up for our newsletter.

 

Evidence for Democracy is the leading non-partisan, not-for-profit organization promoting the transparent use of evidence in government decision-making in Canada. Through an original research program, a suite of training and educational resources, and issue-based public engagement campaigns, we hold the government to account and work to bridge the gap between government decision-makers and the best available evidence. Our vision is to see strong public policies, built on the best available evidence, for the health and prosperity of all; a thriving democracy where citizens are informed and engaged, and all levels of government are both transparent and accountable; and a national culture that values science and evidence and the important role they play in our society.

This is an unprecedented moment for democracy in Canada so we created Sector Spotlight to learn about how leading practitioners are responding to it. Have ideas for our next Sector Spotlight? Get in touch!

Veronika Bylicki on how we can reimagine traditional power structures by bridging the gap between younger folks and institutions.

Tell us about CityHive. How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

CityHive is a Metro Vancouver-based non-profit organization on a mission to transform the way that young people are engaged in civic processes: in city planning, decision-making processes and urban sustainability issues. As a youth-led and youth-run organization, we harness the energy, experiences, and perspectives of youth to create projects and solutions to make our cities more sustainable, equitable and resilient. We work with civic institutions to transform the way that they engage youth to be more meaningful and inclusive. Our programming areas include building and creating experiential knowledge-to-action civic education programs and Urban Innovation Labs, as well as working with municipal governments and other organizations or institutions looking to design or carry out youth engagement. What makes us unique is that we are youth-founded and youth-led and simultaneously have strong relationships with various institutions, which helps us act as a bridge between youth and their civic institutions and work towards filling the gap of youth participation.

We are all navigating the global pandemic in different ways. What’s a key insight from how CityHive is responding to the crisis? 

When the pandemic first hit us in mid-March, we were in the middle of many different projects and processes (from programs in full swing, to hiring processes underway). While some of those got postponed and paused for the first few weeks and months of COVID-19, others were adapted. Our team has been incredible at being adaptive, and truthfully, I think we owe much of our impact as an organization to our ability to be nimble and responsive to what feels most emergent in the world. We transitioned our Envirolab cohort online mid-program. We developed and delivered two online-only City Shapers cohorts through May-July that focused on resilience and what youth wanted the new normal in cities to look like. We co-created a weekly event series on the pressing conversations surrounding this pandemic (Distant, Not Disengaged). We’ve conducted hiring processes, youth engagement workshops, consultation meetings, and more — all in the virtual setting that the team was completely unfamiliar with only months ago. As a team, it created space for us to have deeper check ins and conversations with each other, our participants and partners.  

Over the past few months we have seen groups seize this moment of uncertainty to advance racial and economic justice in their communities. How does this relate to your work?

First off, it’s important to remind ourselves that this movement is not new: Black and Indigenous activists and organizations have been organizing and working for decades to dismantle racist systems that give rise to state violence and to rebuild just systems and institutions. 

CityHive recognizes and is unpacking how it has benefited from white supremacy and perpetuated racial injustices through its existence, both internally and externally. Our initiatives and learnings in anti-racism work to date have often come at the expense of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) youth members and staff. We acknowledge the deep history of racism that exists in spheres directly related to our vision and mission, including the spheres of “city-building”, public engagement and sustainability movements. We also acknowledge the historical and present role of civic institutions, the non-profit sector and governance systems in perpetuating racism and anti-Blackness. 

In acknowledging our complicity, we recognize our responsibility. As an organization whose theory of change exists on the premises of: reimagining our traditional power structures by bridging younger folks and institutions; enhancing representation in decision-making processes; making civic processes more accessible and safe; being responsive to the needs of youth; and building the capacity of young folks to engage in civic processes, our work cannot be done without anti-racism as our guiding principle. Raising critical questions on equity related to city-building is an important part of our work, especially because we are often in spaces where we are one of few youth-led organizations represented. 

We have several immediate and long-term actions that we are taking as an organization to ensure that we are explicitly centering anti-racist principles in our work. From our board, to our staff planning programming, to each of us on our personal learning journeys, we’re taking steps to ensure that we continue to learn and grow and create better, safer programs, workplaces, and systems. This plan and these commitments will continue to evolve as we deepen our equity-centred learning and action, as well as our unlearning of organizational structures that reinforce systems of oppression.

We made a full commitment and are holding ourselves accountable to our community, which you can read in full here.

What’s one big challenge you see Canada’s democracy facing? How are you working on this challenge, what solutions do you propose?

With youth at the centre of both our organization and our mandate, the engagement of youth and young adults in our democratic systems is a constant concern. Young folks are one of the most likely demographics to attend protests and sign petitions but the least likely to vote or show up at consultation meetings and town halls. Millennials and Gen Zs are highly invested in activist and social issues, but failing to connect with the traditional forms of engagement within our democracy. There are countless well-researched reasons for this disconnect. Young folks are often in periods of transition and less tied to place. Youth are rarely represented in decision making and the politicians themselves are hard to relate to. Without a strong civic education curriculum, young folks are often more confused about how the systems work. 

Our work exists to bring together decision-makers and young folks to break down those barriers and make plain how the systems of power, especially in local governance, work. Relationship-building, in particular between decision makers and youth, is embedded across everything that we do so that we are actively experimenting with and creating spaces for trust-building. There are so many incredible youth-centered organizations across the country doing this democratic mobilization at various levels of government. While our focus remains local and municipal, groups like Apathy is Boring, Future Majority, Gen Squeeze, among others are activating and educating young people on their power within our structures and systems.

Could you share an idea or initiative related to increasing civic engagement or democratic participation that inspires you? This could be related to your work or something you see happening in the sector. 

Civic education is one of the most exciting projects that we’re currently working on. BC schools do not teach civics. While students may learn about the provincial and federal levels of government, civics is not a mandatory part of our curriculum — in fact the same is true for all the other Canadian provinces except Ontario. BC’s curriculum (alongside all provincial Canadian curriculums except Ontario) does not include a course or unit on civic education, let alone integrate it throughout schooling. How can we expect young folks to be inspired and engaged in civic life, if they’ve never been taught to. While provincial and federal levels of government are taught, municipal governance and decision-making (arguably the easiest to affect) are left out.

In tandem with our civic education cohorts for those ages 18-30, we at CityHive are currently working in partnership with Urbanarium and other local organizations to develop a civic education program for children and teens. We are very excited for the possibilities that this opportunity presents to engage more young folks with the ideas and creative opportunities of city-building.

Tell us about how CityHive is making its work more inclusive and building engagement with different communities. Any tips or lessons to share with others in the sector about decreasing barriers to participation? 

The core of what CityHive does is decreasing barriers to participation for young people; and in doing so, we hope to model what decreasing barriers and increasing pathways to engagement looks like for all. Making engagement truly inclusive and making sure all communities – especially those that have been traditionally excluded and marginalized – is a constant process, and one that we are constantly learning to do better. 

The biggest tip or lesson (which we are also still in a process of enacting) is to consider who you centre in program design or in your work. When we centre the experiences of folks who face the greatest barriers to participation at every stage of a program — from ideation and design to implementation and facilitation — we’re able to run programs that are inherently more inclusive. When we centre the experiences of those who already have access to opportunities to engage and who tend to be more engaged in traditional ways, we end up perpetuating the same systems and processes that exclude other communities in the process. Also, quite tangibly, CityHive only exists because of the partnership and relationships we hold — we are able to reach a much wider range of youth through working with partner organizations that serve different communities of youth.

Are there specific asks that CityHive has for the broader sector — things you need help with, problems you’re trying to solve or wishes you have?

Our first and more nebulous ask, is to consider how in your work, you can model the outcome you’re hoping for through the process you undergo. How, in every engagement process, program project, can you model meaningful inclusion, centre equity, build trust and relationships? That’s something that we aim to do in our work — make sure that through every engagement opportunity, youth have the opportunity to build their own capacity, build relationships with each other and decision makers, and slowly through the process shift the needle on what youth participation looks like.

Our second ask: it will take a collective effort to shift the ageism and lack of youth participation in decision making. We’re always looking for partners, experts, thought leaders and others, who are interested in exploring how we can bring civic education into classrooms and for young people. If you’re wanting to support civic education for youth under 30 or looking to engage youth meaningfully in your work, please get in touch!

For people looking to engage with you, how can they get involved? Who can they contact?

Follow us on social media @CityHiveVan on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, subscribe to our newsletter, or email info@cityhive.ca. We’d love to hear from you!

 

CityHive’s mission is to transform the way young people shape their cities and the civic processes that engage them. We envision cities where youth are actively involved in civic planning, shaping, and decision-making. A youth-engaged city is a resilient, sustainable, and livable city—not only for young people, but for all current and future generations.

 

This is an unprecedented moment for democracy in Canada so we created Sector Spotlight to learn about how leading practitioners are responding to it. Have ideas for our next Sector Spotlight? Get in touch!

John Richardson on how we can meaningfully participate in the shaping of big policy decisions in spite of our current pandemic reality.

Tell us about Ethelo. How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

Ethelo provides the world’s leading digital democracy platform, and is dedicated to connecting community members with informative, accessible, and fair public engagements which directly affect the decisions being made in their communities. 

The Ethelo platform goes above and beyond to ensure fairness and inclusion in our engagements using a few unique features and services:

• Education: Most important decisions come with a great deal of background information and constraints to consider, but community members rarely have the opportunity to review pertinent facts and see how they interact with their choices. The Ethelo platform overcomes this by walking participants through the decision, and simulating trade-offs, ensuring all solutions reached are actionable and realistic.
• Eliminating Polarization: Polarization is often the result of over-simplified problem solving. By taking complicated issues and isolating the millions of possible solutions, our platform is able to give participants the freedom to express the underlying root of their stance, and problem solve for scenarios which address everyone’s concerns. 
• Consensus Building: We ditch the winner v loser mentality of other voting methods, instead taking participant’s likes, and dislikes into account, and forefronting the solutions that are the most widely agreed upon.
• Citizens’ Panels: We conduct micro-targeted campaigns to ensure each unique community demographic is weighing in on the decisions that will affect them, especially those that have been traditionally under-represented.
• Demographic Weighting: In order to overcome skewed results, we are able to take the data sets that come out of our engagements, and re-weight them based on an individual community’s makeup, and the demographic input submitted by participants. In this way, we are able to get results as close to a representative sample as possible.

We are all navigating the global pandemic in different ways. What’s a key insight from how Ethelo is responding to the crisis? 

The pandemic has meant that in-person consultations are no longer possible, or are extremely limited. We are helping to ensure that while people move to remote and online life, they can still meaningfully participate in the shaping of big policy decisions, including budgeting, and climate action. We are also looking at the digital divide and how our engagement processes can ensure those without stable internet connectivity can still participate in these processes, even with the limitations of the pandemic.

Over the past few months we have seen groups seize this moment of uncertainty to advance racial and economic justice in their communities. How does this relate to your work?

We have put on two webinars designed to engage the country around frank discussions regarding police budget reallocation in response to the recent De-fund the Police movement (webinar recordings available here), which featured three city councillors of colour from across the country. We then created a demo model of how our platform could be used to host discussions about police budget reallocation. Longer-term, Ethelo is looking at how we can engage more deeply with communities who use our platform to micro-target under-represented communities using online communication and traditional relationship-building approaches. 

What’s one big challenge you see Canada’s democracy facing? How are you working on this challenge, what solutions do you propose?

As evidenced by declining voter turnout, worsening political unrest, and the general lack of progress when it comes to vital issues (climate change, racial injustice, healthcare crises, etc.) we need a better approach to civic engagement than what our present methods have to offer. Consider that over 88% of Canadians own mobile phones. And yet, despite the fact that the vast majority of us carry the internet with us everywhere we go, most of the influence we have over the decisions that affect us is still collected using physical paper ballots, and in-person events. 

eDemocracy, of which Ethelo is a part, seeks to combine the use of modern technology and communications methods with more traditional offline approaches in order to include a diverse pool of community members in democratic engagements. It is an electronically accessible democracy, but it can mean so much more. It can increase equity, help educate while engaging the public, and can empower citizens by providing easily-accessible methods to participate in civil society. 

In response to the climate crisis, many municipalities across North America have declared a climate emergency, but struggle with how to create a plan of action. Our carbon budgeting tool is specifically designed to provide them with an engagement process around climate that pulls in a representative sample of the population. It educates, helps the population come to an agreement, and provides decision-makers with a suite of policies that have the most public support.Transition Salt Spring (Salt Spring Island’s Climate Action Committee) used the Ethelo platform to build consensus around a new Climate Action Plan while engaging residents of diverse backgrounds, ages, interests and political views. In addition to educating the community on local climate action efforts, eDemocracy Solutions successfully attained a Citizens’ Panel, with over 10% of the island’s adult population participating. This engagement generated over 5,000 comments, and resulted in an agreed upon an Climate Action Plan with a projected 58% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030 – all amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tell us about how Ethelo is making its work more inclusive and building engagement with different communities. Any tips or lessons to share with others in the sector about decreasing barriers to participation? 

On November 24, we are launching a new eDemocracy Network of everyday people who are passionate about spreading equitable and fair online approaches to civic engagement, and who are looking to participate in the decisions that impact their communities. We are using our platform to consult with a wide spectrum of these stakeholders which will ensure the Network is relevant, useful and diverse. 

We offer Citizens’ Panels to municipal partners who use our engagement technology, where we work with communities to identify groups that have been traditionally under-represented, and then employ a variety of strategies to ensure their voices are being heard. This brings those engaging in community decisions as close to a representative sample as possible. We have also created an Ultimate Guide to Equitable, Effective Public Engagement, and a blog which offers resources on how to reach beyond the usual suspects. This includes identifying who is your representative sample, who will be most impacted by the decisions being made, who has lost faith in consultations, who will need to be reengaged, micro-targeting your communications to these groups, and not forgetting about traditional outreach when using a digital approach. In addition to municipalities, we have relationships with and work with a number of Indigenous groups. 

For people looking to engage with you, how can they get involved? Who can they contact?

We need your voice in designing our eDemocracy Network. To join,  To join, visit https://ethelo.org/ and click on “Join eDemocracy Network”. You’ll help us collaborate in forming an active community around online democracy and get an opportunity to try out the Ethelo platform. 

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Are you a part of a group, municipality, business or organization who wants to run an engagement? Reach out to us for a consult at: https://ethelo.com/contact/

 

Ethelo was created to improve group decision-making using democratic principles. It harnesses the reach and computational power of the internet to aggregate the intelligence of groups in a fair and broadly supported way.

 

This is an unprecedented moment for democracy in Canada so we created Sector Spotlight to learn about how leading practitioners are responding to it. Have ideas for our next Sector Spotlight? Get in touch!

The DemocracyXChange Festival featured virtual workshops, events and creative sessions from 17 community partners across Canada. Participants were able to further engage, activate and deepen learnings from the DemocracyXChange Summit. Catch up on a selection of the events hosted by the following organizations:

Massey College
Promoting Democracy Abroad

Canadian Interfaith Conversation
Faith as a Vehicle for Dialogue: A View From the Community 

Participedia
Crowdsourcing Global Knowledge About Democratic Innovations – An Introduction

Feedback Frames
Participatory Democracy in Action

Samara
Whipped Book Launch: Alex Marland in Conversation with Megan Leslie

Mosaic Institute
Mosaic in Dialogue: Constitutional Democracy Under Stress

Fair Vote Canada
The Way Forward for Electoral Reform in Canada: Why a National Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform? 

Ethelo
Holy Climate Action, Batman! Building Consensus Through eDemocracy in Gotham City

SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
Beyond Inclusion: Equity in Democratic Engagement

Democratic Engagement Exchange
One Year Later: Reflections on the One Year Anniversary of the Canadian Election

OJEN (Ontario Justice Education Network)
Teaching Law as a System with the Access To Justice Game

Our thanks to the nearly 700 local changemakers who attended DemocracyXChange from October 13th to 15th. This group came together to share ideas and insights about how we can strengthen democracy in the recovery from the pandemic. Summit recordings will be available soon.

For now – check out our highlight reel and clippings:

Hope for our democracy, if we’re willing to fight for it
Toronto Star | Karim Bardeesy, Ana Serrano and Chris Cowperthwaite

No ‘magic bullet’ to solve toxic social-media content, LeBlanc says
Globe and Mail | Canadian Press

If you’re powerless or homeless, COVID-19 has you in its sights
Toronto Star | Martin Regg Cohn 

Government shouldn’t regulate all content on social media platforms, can force transparency: Minister
The Logic | Murad Hemmadi

Government must face up to to harms from Big Tech
Toronto Star | Editorial Board

MPs look to bridge gap in faith
Catholic Register | Brian Dryden

Mixing faith and politics could be a good thing for Canada
Hamilton Spectator | John Milloy

MPs and religious groups explore connection between faith, democracy and dialogue
Canadian Baha’i News Service

 

DemocracyXChange is founded by the Ryerson Leadership Lab and Open Democracy Project and co-presented by Samara Centre for Democracy, Ryerson Faculty of Arts, Toronto Public Library, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University and OCAD University.