“The sun’s energy warms the world. But when you focus it through a magnifying glass it can start a fire.” Alan Pariser (double check)

 

In a healthy democracy, regular citizens would be well informed about various political issues and the competing policy ideas on offer. They would also have the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the conversation. These are not easy to achieve. In general, people are busy, have other interests, and don’t inherently seem to crave political participation. It is also not easy to create a way for citizens to have a meaningful role in the conversation unless they are willing to invest a lot of time. Perfection in this area is ideal, but unachievable. But improvement is, nevertheless, possible.

 

A democracy in which more people are well informed about issues and contribute to the conversation is better than one in which fewer do these things. Similarly, a democracy in which those who are already well informed become even more informed and those who already participate can do so more meaningfully, even if the total number of people involved remains the same, is better than one in which there is no increased investment. Even better is one in which both the numbers of people participating is increased and the level of involvement of those participating is greater.

 

Such improvement is possible. It can be done by making it less demanding to become a part of the conversation. That is, we can do more as a society to facilitate (which literally means to make easier) participation in political discussion. What would this look like? First, let’s look at a different aspect of society, business, to see the potential benefits of applying this approach to politics.

 

Imagine living in a rural or suburban area with a cluster of big box stores, such as Walmart, Home Depot and Canadian Tire. These stores make it easy and convenient to shop and purchase a lot of products. First, they have huge free parking lots that mean you never have to wait to get a spot, nor pay for parking. Upon entering the store you can get a large shopping cart to make it easy to load up with purchases. There are many tills open to help you check out, including self-serve options, express lanes and, at some Walmarts, joint-line systems so that you don’t get stuck in a line with a slow till. We have made it very easy to shop. Larger carts have been attributed to increasing sales by 40%. The shopping cart itself was invented in the late 1930s and didn’t feature the nesting design for compact storage until 1946. According to an article in Priceonomics (How a basket on wheels revolutionized grocery shopping, Feb 18, 2016), shopping carts are the second most numerous “vehicles” in the world, after automobiles. The modest shopping cart makes it easier to participate in grocery shopping. How much work have we done to make it easier to participate in politics? What is the equivalent of the shopping cart, the large, free parking lot or the express check-out lane in politics?

 

We should be working as hard to make it easier for people to engage meaningfully in their democracy as business owners work to make it easier for their customers to buy from them. Here is one way we might do that: focus our political conversations on one issue at a time. Have a yearly schedule for policy debates. Make next year the year we agree as a society to focus our efforts on debating education policy. The year after that we can focus our efforts on health policy. Then economic policy. And so on. It is hard for a citizen to keep up on all the various areas that governments are involved in. Make it easier to engage by inviting them to focus on only one policy area at a time. By having one area to focus on in any given year, it means people’s limited time and attention can be put to better use. And those already interested can delve deeper into the issue. The idea may not be the game-changer that the shopping cart was for retailers, but it has many advantages over our present scattershot system. Of course, it will also have drawbacks. Before turning to these pros and cons, however, let’s look at why this idea might make sense.

 

While the idea isn’t inspired by garage sales, they provide a useful analogy. We ought to have “public policy garage sales,” in a sense. We need to take the phenomenon of garage sales and apply its principles to public policy debates. Garage sales are not coordinated by the government or any business. Somehow, we have simply come to a state in which most people know that garage sales largely take place starting on Saturday mornings. Once the weather is nice enough, there will be a large number of garage sales on any Saturday morning. This creates value for both sellers and buyers. Buyers can make good use of their time by attending numerous sales in a single morning. While any one sale may not have anything of interest to them, they are likely to find something at one of the garage sales, at least. The more garage sales that they can attend in a brief period of time, the greater their chances of finding items of value to them. It is the grouping of all the sales in a similar period of time that makes “garage saling” worthwhile. Just imagine, in contrast, if there was only one garage sale per Saturday. Other single garage sales occurred on Friday evening or Sunday afternoon, such that if you wanted to attend numerous garage sales, you would have to go out multiple days to attend them all. This would significantly reduce the the value of attending garage sales, as it would make it more time-consuming or “expensive” to get to them all. The ease with which you can attend many garage sales at once is what makes them worthwhile. Similarly for sellers. By hosting their sale on the same day as other sellers, it means they have a larger pool of potential buyers. It would be risky to try to have your sale when no one else is. Even though there is more competition when having it on the same morning as everyone else, the increased traffic is worth it.

 

We need the same approach for public policy debates. We need to apply garage sale principles. For those selling policy ideas, such as political parties, think tanks, academics, authors and regular citizens, among others, it makes sense for them to pitch their ideas at the same time. They need to have a public policy garage sale. By pitching their ideas in the same year, it makes it easier for people interested in those ideas, including media organizations, to consider or cover them. It is easier, for example, to understand a counter-position on an issue if you have recently been exposed to the original proposal. For example, you’ll be better prepared to understand an article arguing that a carbon tax policy is better than a cap and trade policy if you have recently been exposed to a presentation on cap and trade programs. You’ll be better prepared to determine the impact a party’s proposed carbon tax rate might have on the economy and emissions reductions if you have recently been exposed to reports about the experiences of other countries with varying carbon tax rates. Being exposed more frequently to the same issue helps reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to process additional material on that issue, as you have the background knowledge necessary to put the new material in context. It is like the difference between binge-watching a whole season of House of Cards episodes on a single night as compared to watching only one episode per month over the course of a year. Grouping episodes or ideas closer together in time makes it easier to follow them (interesting to note that a liberal education is essentially a manifestation of this idea of grouping ideas, the core texts, instead of a smorgasbord approach).

 

Just as everybody knows that garage sales happen on Saturday mornings, we need to establish that education policy debates happen, for example, in the threes, i.e. 2023, 2033, 2043. Health debates happen in the fours, i.e. 2024, 2034, 2044. And so on for other policy areas. We need a schedule for public policy debates. Reducing the effort that people have to go to in order to visit your garage sale is good for business. Reducing the effort that people have to go to in order to access policy ideas is good for democracy. There are many benefits from public policy garage sales, as well as some potential drawbacks. Let’s turn to these now, starting with the benefits.

 

The potential benefits are significant, diverse and much-needed. They range from improving the quality and quantity of public debate to increasing the capacity of citizens to engage meaningfully in politics to putting pressure on politicians and parties to take the high road in their conduct and policies.

 

First, and most importantly, it lowers the barriers to entry for citizens to take part in the public debate, whether that is offering a policy idea of one’s own or just becoming informed of others’ ideas. By focusing on only one policy area in a given year, it makes it seem less intimidating to get involved. You don’t have to have knowledge of everything government does. You don’t have to have an opinion on every topic. You can focus your limited time on the issue at hand. Knowing that many other people are also in your position, with respect to knowledge, at the start of the policy year may help lower the psychological barrier to entry. If everybody else is just starting out, it makes it easier to start yourself. In some cases, this will draw new people into the political debate that normally never take part. In other cases, it will draw existing people deeper into the debate, incenting them to read more, work on their own policy ideas and talk to others about those ideas.

 

But perhaps the barriers will be lowered most of all by the participation of various organizations, from news organizations and political parties to think tanks and universities. News organizations and talk shows are much more likely to feature stories on the issue in its year, meaning you will become better informed than you normally would about the issue simply by watching television or reading newspapers or magazines. Think tanks will be more likely to offer policy papers on the year’s issue, which can either be read directly or, again, will likely be covered by news organizations. Universities may reach out to the public by offering public lectures and community discussions on the policy issue at hand, bringing their expertise and current research to the people and making accessing information on the issue easier. Letters to the editor and opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines are more likely to be on the year’s topic, meaning increased exposure for anyone who reads these media. People may be more likely to see material shared on facebook and other social media, from clips of presentations on the year’s topic to notices of community meetings about the issue. Perhaps people will even share photographs or artwork that contributes to the conversation and political comedy show writers will incorporate material to reflect the debate. And, of course, it will likely be easier to find books on the year’s topic and reviews of them in newspapers and magazines. The authors are more likely to be seen in television interviews and on panel shows.

 

Barriers, then, are not only lowered for obtaining information, but also for contributing it. Book publishers will be more likely to publish works in an issue year if they feel they will have a bigger audience, helping individuals get their ideas out. Think tanks will have an easier time getting their messages out. And average citizens will find their letters to the editor receive more meaningful attention. They may even find, if politicians and parties are wise, that they get a better reception when writing a letter to a minister or attend an event hosted by a politician or party to get public input. If nothing else, the odds that a number of people will write a minister on the same topic in a single year will provide the minister with a more meaningful snapshot of what the people are thinking, perhaps leading to them taking the input into account in making future decisions about policy.

 

In addition to lowering the barriers to debate, focusing on one issue per year will also increase the quality of the debate in many ways. Over the course of the year, the people will have become exposed to ideas repeatedly. This will be much more likely to lead to a base of knowledge which people share on the issue, facilitating deeper discussion of issues as authors and debaters can assume some greater common knowledge than you would normally have.

 

More ideas will also be put forward than normal. This is good in itself, as you are likely to find more good ideas and unique solutions with more voices contributing. This is especially true if you have people contributing from areas outside of the field. New people come at things with a fresh perspective and can often see things in a new light. Many groundbreaking discoveries in math and science, for instance, are made by those fresh to the field, unencumbered by the assumptions of those who have been around longer. There is an excellent TED talk about a plumber who had heart problems. He sought to understand the problem and offered a solution from his plumbing expertise, recognizing that arteries and veins aren’t that different from pipes and hoses. He did up a prototype, worked with doctors and researchers and, in the end, created a new surgical technique that is now saving lives for heart patients. This is an extreme example of cross-fertilization, but a good example that the mixing of ideas often results in innovative results. Bringing more people into the debate is likely to result in more of this cross-fertilization.

 

The debate is also enriched because people will be more open to changing their opinions. There is a certain inertia to changing our ideas. It takes work to think things through and change our minds. We generally aren’t willing to invest that time, especially if challenges to our current perspective come in fits and starts. But if discussion of an issue is focused in one year and we are aware that many options may be on the table, we are more likely to consider new ideas and suspend our criticism while this is happening, especially if the ideas are being presented by groups or individuals that we are not used to hearing those ideas from. For example, we may be biased against a particular think tank or political party and so not consider their ideas as openly as we should. If those same ideas, however, are presented by other voices, such as university professors or fellow citizens unaffiliated with the party we don’t support, we may be more willing to have a second look at them.

 

This openness to considering new ideas will be supported by the variety of voices in the debate. Our media and social worlds are increasingly fragmented. We have access to newscasts and newspapers that reflect our particular political persuasions. Online communities, as well as offline ones, too often just talk to one another. Libertarians associate with other libertarians, read free-market oriented publications and books by Hayek and Von Mises. Environmentalists do the same, only with publications and books by Naomi Klein and David Suzuki. An open public debate will mean people are much more likely to hear voices from outside of their normal circle. Combined with more open minds, people may come to appreciate, or at least better understand, other positions.

 

In fact, organizations, newspapers or magazines may even create lists of “recommended” readings based on their own or their readers’ suggestions. These curated lists could include material from all sorts of different perspectives – sort of a “best of” the various perspectives, which could help encourage people to read things they normally wouldn’t as well as help them save time by reading less material, for those who don’t have time to read more widely.

 

Finally, the debate need not be limited to a particular level of government. While some issues may be predominantly and justifiably limited to one jurisdiction, such as national defence at the federal level, other issues, such as transportation or infrastructure policy, may cut across jurisdictions. This may lead to a much more fulsome and healthy discussion than society is normally able to have on these issues. Instead of each level of government addressing the issue on its own agenda, a year of debate focused on an area of shared or shareable jurisdiction could lead to suggestions for better coordination by governments or proposals for a shifting of responsibility or taxation powers from one jurisdiction to another. This could particularly help cities have conversations with the provinces and federal government that are often politically convenient to avoid.

 

A third benefit that having a policy schedule will lead to is increasing the capacity and level of education of the citizenry. Lowering the barriers to entry will mean more people will be engaged. This will lead to more people reading and people reading more, from newspapers and magazines to books (this is also good for the publishing industry). For those citizens who become particularly interested in a topic one year, it is likely that a portion of them will remain engaged with the issue even after the year has passed. That is, there will be greater civic engagement. These people may join or start organizations, write books, join political parties, or be a more active poster of political information on social media for their issue of choice. Some may even find that they enjoy discussing policy ideas and trying to persuade the public to implement their vision. The practice they receive in debating at community meetings or arguing in the newspaper may lead them to consider and be more prepared for a run for politics, increasing the quantity and, hopefully, the quality, of political candidates.

 

And last, but not least, by engaging more fully in a policy debate, citizens may come to realize that solving problems in health care, public education and social policy is much harder than they imagined. They may come to understand that there is no perfect solution and that politicians genuinely are trying to fix things. That is, increasing public debate in society may temper people’s passions, creating pragmatists out of ideologues and inoculating the voters against populists and demagogues who promise quick and easy fixes to complex problems. It makes citizens better voters, for politicians will not be as able to make false promises in election campaigns.

 

There are many other benefits that could arise from a policy schedule. A logical extension of a policy schedule is to have organized policy discussions in each community. In communities with a university or college, perhaps the university could facilitate regular discussions and exchanges between citizens, academics and anyone else wishing to participate in discussion. Over the course of the year, the discussions could lead towards trying to arrive at some consensus on a policy or several policies that the community could then share with their political representatives. Perhaps there would be no consensus, which would be valuable information for politicians in itself.

 

In communities without universities or colleges, or just instead of using colleges and universities, a group could form in each community responsible for hosting non-partisan community discussions on a regular basis. In an ideal world, as part of or in addition to these community discussions, every community or region could organize a citizens assembly near the end of the policy year to see if they can arrive at some political consensus on a policy or recommendation. Or perhaps a province-wide or national assembly could form with the aim of drafting recommendations or a policy for the appropriate level or levels of government. This type of body could be the culmination of the policy schedule after a number of years, rather than starting in the first year that the schedule is initiated.

 

Regardless of what final impact creating a policy schedule may have on the political process, its ongoing impact of increasing and improving the public debate will be a victory for democracy. Citizens will be more engaged, politicians held better in check and private entities and organizations part of a broader, more inclusive debate.

 

Of course, every proposal has its pros and cons. While there are many potential benefits of adopting a policy schedule, there are also some risks to consider.

 

The most serious potential risk is that organized groups might try or, rather, might succeed (for surely some will try) at unduly shaping the conversation in their interests. For example, it is not a stretch to imagine that business interests through think tanks or other means and activist organizations will try to have an outsized voice in the debate. By knowing that, for instance, environmental or resource issues, such as oil sands development, will be up for debate in a given year, these organizations can prepare well in advance and be ready to flood the debate with their perspective and even, perhaps, organize people to be ready to speak at community meetings and write letters to papers sympathetic to their views. Perhaps their competing voices will drown each other out, but there is a risk that their voices will simply drown out the voices of regular folks who don’t have a vested interest. It would certainly be useful for people to be prepared to address this challenge if it manifests.

 

A less serious drawback may be that politicians delay making necessary legislative or policy changes when needed because the issue is coming up for debate soon and they don’t want to act until the public has had a chance to weigh in. While it is nice that politicians are interested in public input, it may also become a convenient excuse for governments wishing to pass the buck on important policy issues. For example, a government that isn’t keen on introducing a carbon tax may be able to stall on climate legislation if environmental policy is on the table in three years. “It would be premature of us to act on this now without having the input of the public,” they will say to hide their aversion to climate policy behind democratic sentiment. Now, politicians already have many ways of stalling things they don’t want to deal with, so perhaps this won’t be a big deal, but it does give politicians another opportunity to pass the buck.

 

In a similar vein, considerable focus on single policy issue may simply make it harder for governments to get work done in other important areas. If the public is thoroughly engaged (don’t laugh) in discussion on health policy, it may be tough for a government to create the kind of public discourse it needs to get support for a new educational policy. Or, it may mean that their educational policy doesn’t get the kind of scrutiny it should get from the public who is distracted by their engaging health debate. While it would be nice to think people will be this engaged in the yearly policy debate, this is probably an imaginary concern.

 

Another more serious concern about a yearly schedule is that it might create “silo” thinking and solutions, which is already a problem with how governments divide their responsibilities into departments or ministries. A debate schedule that reflects these break-downs could lead to similar failings or challenges. For example, imagine it is the year of education policy. You come up with a great plan, but there is a kink in the plan. You realize that there is a large problem with children coming to school from families who don’t or can’t provide meals and proper clothing for their kids. Is this an education issue or a social policy issue? If social assistance rates or policy needs to change in order to solve an education issue, where does the money come from? Now you have an economic or financial policy issue. Should personal taxes be raised to cover the increased social assistance funding, or should the PST be increased? If you can only address one policy issue at a time, it may limit comprehensive solutions. Alternatively, it may be too hard to just discuss one policy issue at a time, leading to a public debate that becomes so broad that the point of the schedule breaks down.

 

Continuing on this theme, it may be that a policy area is so large in and of itself that it is as if a yearly schedule does not exist. If the point is to have a focused discussion so that people feel that it is easier to enter the debate and people from various groups including the citizenry can have a good exchange of ideas, some topics may be too broad for the schedule to be effective. For example, if there is a topic on economic policy or financial policy, there are so many areas to cover that there may not be much overlap in the public debate. One group may be looking to introduce an HST. Another may be talking about running deficits to fund infrastructure projects to kick-start the economy. Another may be talking about tighter regulations on banks or credit card companies in order to help curb personal debt. Still another group may be talking about free trade agreements. Perhaps this means that the topic needs to be broken down into smaller topics, but that can become a problem in itself, leading to a proliferation in topics and narrow silo thinking again.  

 

There are many other problems that will likely reveal themselves, either when others consider this proposal or once it goes into practice. But I think that focusing the debate, while it may lead to new problems, solves enough other ones to be a net benefit. Increased and improved debate, even if others are better prepared for it and try to shape it, is good for public discourse and good for citizen development. Having a schedule that helps amplify the public voice creates greater opportunity for citizens to be heard, even if it also provides politicians with a greater opportunity to delay or hide other policy initiatives. Politicians and interest groups already have significant power. Even if implementing a schedule increases the power of these groups and politicians, it won’t increase it as much as it does the power of the citizenry. What the interests gain in absolute power, the citizens make up for with a closing of the gap in relative power.

 

Implementing this idea will have its challenges. While garage sales may have had natural reasons for coalescing on Saturday mornings, thanks to people having weekends off and many attending Church on Sunday mornings, there are no such natural reasons for discussing a particular policy in a given year. So how do we get to a policy schedule that we all agree on akin to Saturday morning garage sales? Ideally, perhaps, some enterprising citizens or organizations in society, such as universities or democracy think tanks, could create a citizens assembly to come up with the list of policy areas to discuss and the yearly order of discussion. Knowing that this may be a challenge to create in itself, here is a proposal for the meantime.

 

The list at the end of this chapter is the schedule for public policy debates until such time as a democratic body, such as a citizens assembly, representing Canadians, agrees to and makes widely available an alternative schedule. In order not to have multiple schedules across the country or within Provinces, it is best if this is done at a national level. However, again, recognizing that this may be asking too much to start, a single city or a single province may wish to lead the charge if nothing happens at the national level. It would be best, however, if these sub-national groups used the schedule set down here in the beginning. After a few years have passed and it is clear how much interest there is across Canada, those regions that are active could work together to create an assembly to come up with a new schedule, if desired.

 

For those who want to put this idea into practice but don’t see it happening quickly at the provincial or national level, it can be implemented at the local level. Talk to your local university or college, talk to community groups that might align with this idea, talk to your local MLAs or MPs and see if you can get everyone to agree to focus on the policy issue for that particular year. Write letters to the editor on the policy area yourself. Host presentations in the community on the issue with guest speakers. Ask your local politicians at all levels to come to a meeting to discuss their positions on the issue with the community. Ask your local newspapers to do articles on the issue. Share newspaper articles or think tank reports about the issue on your Facebook or Twitter feeds.

 

This is an idea that can be implemented without changing the constitution or even any laws. You don’t need to get elected on a mandate to implement this idea. It simply takes individuals willing to act on it. For those interested and motivated to see this idea become reality, it is not so much putting the idea into practice that will be the problem, as ensuring that we don’t end up with a patchwork of schedules across the country. This is why it is important to think of this as a two-stage process. First, stick with the schedule below and build support for the idea of a public policy schedule. Second, once there is sufficient support in various places, create a body to democratically change the policy list and schedule, if desired.

 

The following schedule is also housed on the book’s website: www. GoverningOurselves.com (not currently operational)

 

Draft Yearly Policy Schedule (not assigned to years yet)

 

1. Education
2. Health
3. Aboriginal Affairs
4. Defence and foreign affairs
   1. Veterans Affairs
   2. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
5. Transportation and infrastructure
6. Democratic Improvement and Overview/Comprehensive Solutions
   1. Constitution
   2. e.g. should society be more socialist, more free market oriented, can we address social problems by having good agriculture policy, etc.
   3. e.g. breaking down silo thinking
7. Natural resources and environment
   1. energy and mines
   2. forests, lands
   3. fisheries
   4. agriculture
8. Social Policy and Public Services
   1. Children and Families
   2. Welfare
   3. Citizen services
   4. Community, Sport and Culture
9. Financial and monetary policy, economic development
   1. deficits vs balanced budgets
   2. taxation, fees, revenues
   3. debt
   4. financial regulations/oversight
   5. small business, red tape reduction
   6. trade
   7. jobs, tourism, skills training, employment insurance
   8. labour relations
10. Justice and Public Safety