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The People's Verdict
Adding Informed Citizen Voices to Public Decision-Making
By Claudia Chwalisz Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2017 Policy Network
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78660-436-1
CHAPTER 1
BETTER TOGETHER
Learning from best practice in Canada and Australia
While they are thousands of miles apart, Canada and Australia share much in common when it comes to reinventing public consultation. In both countries, and completely separate of one another, the democratic innovation has largely been led by an independent company or organisation that has specialised predominantly in long-form deliberative processes. In Canada, they are often called citizens' reference panels. In Australia, the preferred term is citizens' juries. But beyond the semantic divergence, the methodology and the principles behind them are the same. Since 2010, there are close to 50 cases – roughly evenly split between the countries – to examine. It is mainly for these reasons that they were chosen as points of comparison and of reference for the UK.
Of course, despite the parallels, no two countries are identical and there are some differences worth noting. Canada and Australia are markedly more federal, with much greater power devolved to both provincial/state and city levels. It means that there is already a greater appreciation and understanding of shared public decisions. Equally, it indicates that important choices, such as big infrastructure investments, long-term energy generation questions and billion-dollar budgets also get decided at a level of government which is one step closer to the citizen. The UK remains one of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's most centralised countries. The devolution which has taken place has been sporadic and irregularly distributed, notably with the Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly and the London mayoralty each having differing powers, as well as more rights than those given to the English regions and cities. However, this need not be seen solely as a negative, as the 'northern powerhouse' and new 'city deals' currently on the agenda present a unique opportunity for establishing democratic institutions for public decision-making at these new levels of governance from the outset.
In this section, five in-depth case studies will be discussed from each country – long-form deliberative processes that have taken place at various levels of governance, on a wide range of topics, and to varying levels of success when it comes to the aim of creating effective and legitimate policies with public support. In doing so, the design characteristics and key factors that define a rigorous and transparent public consultation can be emphasised.
It is also worth highlighting at this point a number of features which are common to most cases featured in this study:
• Random selection process: often around 10,000 random invitations to participate are sent by post, with a 5–12% response rate, meaning around 500 to 1,200 people respond. Among respondents, a random sample is chosen, stratifying for age, gender and usually one or two other criteria such as housing tenure or geography, both of which tend to be correlated with other socio-economic indicators such as income level and education.
• Trustee role: participants are not asked to think about issues from their own personal point of view, but more broadly as citizens of a wider community.
• Time: participants have the opportunity to learn and to meet with one another for two to three months, coming together in person between four to six times. The process is broken down into separate learning, understanding, deliberating and proposing stages.
• Authority: the public authority commissioning the long-form deliberative process agrees to publicly and directly respond to (not necessarily accept) all of the recommendations.
• Publicity: it is a public process. Early on, there is a commitment to promote the long-form deliberation in the press before any recommendations are made. It helps to engage the wider community and to build trust in the jury or panel members, and thus also the outcome.
CASE STUDIES: KEY FIGURES
The following tables provide an overview of the key characteristics of long-form deliberative processes in Canada and Australia, the level of governance at which they have taken place, and a summary of the types of issues for which they have been used.
CANADA
The Canadian examples discussed in detail are as follows. All of the other cases are listed and briefly described in the appendix. The following examples were chosen for in-depth discussion as they have taken place at various levels of governance and are all on different topics, illustrating the breadth of possibilities that these processes can be used for, while at the same time highlighting the unifying characteristics between them.
1. Residents' Panel on the Ontario Condominium Act 2012 1.
The Residents' Panel on the Ontario Condominium Act remains one of the best examples of citizen engagement in policymaking which directly influenced legislative change. While not solely responsible, the voices of condominium owners and dwellers played a key part in the government's public consultation process alongside open submissions from the wider public and stakeholder meetings.
The Canadian province of Ontario is at the heart of North America's condominium boom. Around 1.3 million – 10% of Ontario's 13.6 million population – live in condominiums. But the legislation governing condo living was outdated, passed in 1998 and last updated in 2001. Moreover, privately owned apartments have increasingly become the first choice of new buyers and retirees.
To update the Condominium Act, the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services developed a four-track engagement process: the residents' panel run by MASS LBP; complementary information sessions and town hall meetings; stakeholder roundtables; and public submissions. During the first stage, the public brought issues to the table through each of these four streams. The second stage involved a panel of experts reviewing and fleshing out the findings. The final stage involved a follow-up meeting with members of the residents' panel to review the solutions report; an opportunity both to demonstrate that their ideas had been taken on board, and to allow for last comments and advice. Although the town hall meetings and public submissions were important, the residents' panel and the technical stakeholder group had the most important impact on the outcome.
The role of the residents' panel in this four-tier engagement process was particularly important, as it allowed condominium owners and dwellers to develop and promote a collective voice rather than offering simply individual points of view. According to the former deputy minister of government and consumer services, Giles Gherson:
"The residents' panel was necessary to ensure that condo residents could develop a structured and sophisticated viewpoint on the several different elements of the review – some quite technical – so that their voice would carry equal weight and contribute on an equal footing with more experienced, established stakeholder groups that were part of the public engagement table. That's why we convened the residents' panel as a separate exercise. With the culmination of their report, we invited members to join the public engagement table where they could represent and advocate for the residents' panel consensus".
Initially, there was some scepticism from the premier's office about the panel; it was concerned that any condominium act reform process might lead to a set of costly regulatory measures that would need to be paid for by condo owners, but for which the government would be held responsible. Eventually, with backing from the sector, developers and residents for the outcomes of the public engagement process, the government supported the idea of modest fees to pay for a new body to oversee the implementation of the reforms.
As with the Toronto planning review panel, the 36 panellists were chosen by a two-stage random selection process called a civic lottery. Ten thousand official letters from Gherson invited people to represent the condominium community's views as part of the residents' panel. Invitations were randomly sent to condominium residences across the province and were transferable to anyone over the age of 18 who lived in the same condo corporation. Each region of Ontario received a number of invitations proportionate to its population. Condominium developers and managers, elected political representatives and employees of the government ministry were ineligible to participate.
Over 500 people responded, either volunteering to be part of the panel or asking to remain informed about the process. The final 36 participants were chosen randomly from this pool, stratifying for gender, age, geographical distribution, type of condominium residence and whether the individual rented or owned the apartment. The final panel consisted mainly of residents who owned their condominium, with six renters and six landlords also selected. Panellists were not paid, but all of their expenses were covered.
Meeting three times over two months in October and November 2012, the panel learned about the legislation, identified trade-offs and priorities and proposed directions and options for amending and improving the Condominium Act.
At their first meeting, the panellists were welcomed by the minister of consumer services. "At first", recalls Phil Simeon, the residents' panel manager, "the participants were not entirely sure why they were there. They were expecting an old school consultation, wondering if their voice really mattered". The MASS LBP team explained the process and the learning phase began. Participants received an overview of condos in their province, heard presentations, and asked questions of a range of experts, people working within the ministry and stakeholders from organisations such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Ontario Home Builders' Association. Working with a facilitator, they also established the values which they wanted to guide their discussions for modernising the legislation.
After a two-week break, the group reconvened. During that time, they had been asked to do some background reading. Additionally, they were to speak with at least five friends, family members or neighbours about the discussions and presentations from the first meeting and elicit feedback about the priorities for change. In all, the 36 panellists collectively consulted 314 other condo residents during that time, almost double the number they were asked to speak to. The start of their second meeting concluded the 'learning phase' with two additional 'conversations' with guest experts.
The next stage then commenced, as panellists worked in small groups to write out on small cards all of the concerns that they had become aware of. These were then sorted into six categories: consumer protection for buyers; condominium manager qualifications; condominium governance; financial management; dispute resolution; and an 'other' category. Choosing the issue area they were most interested in, panellists split into six groups to flesh them out. By the end of the day, they were able to organise all of the cards into concrete issues and begin to draft their section of recommendations for the panel report.
During another two-week break, they were provided with a version of all of the panel's collective work, which had been typed up by the MASS LBP team. The panellists examined the draft, revising certain sections, noting anything missing or ambiguities to deliberate on further before reconvening for a third full day to draft their final report.
This last session began in small groups related to the six issues from the previous meeting. Each table had a large paper template to fill in, which gave the issue a title, premise and values statements, recommended concrete suggestions of what could be done and how it would be funded, and a desired outcome statement of what success might look like. Presentations from each group back to the rest of the residents' panel resulted in constructive feedback and revisions in the afternoon. Refining their sections, they eventually arrived at a version that was approved by all 36 members and bound into the Draft Report of the Residents' Panel to Review the Condominium Act. At the end of the day, each chapter was read aloud by someone from each issues group at a podium to Gherson.
Reflecting on the panel's contribution, Gherson said he was "very impressed by the quality of recommendations and the commitment of the participants. It was interesting to see what concerned them". A research report by Don Lenihan for the Public Policy Forum (2014) found that stakeholders were very respectful of the residents' panel recommendations, returning to the report "over and over again".
The residents' recommendations were fed into the considerations of a panel of experts who were asked by the ministry to develop a solutions report. Nearly one year later, the residents' panel was reconvened in September 2013 to review and comment on the solutions report before it was finalised. After assessing more than 100 recommendations that were part of the report, the panel's overall conclusion was that the proposals effectively responded to a large majority of their priorities and concerns. Gherson confirmed that "the citizens' reference panel was taken seriously. A large number of their recommendations made it into the condo act". The process was highly praised, inspiring other Ontario ministries to use public engagement as a key element of the policymaking process.
Metrolinx: Residents' Reference Panel on Regional Transportation Investment 2013 2.
Metrolinx is an agency of the government of Ontario which coordinates and integrates all modes of transport in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). They have worked twice with MASS LBP to organise citizens' reference panels to make important and difficult decisions about transport infrastructure. The Residents' Reference Panel on Regional Transportation Investment in 2013 was one part of a three-tier engagement strategy, alongside a 'conversation kit' distributed to the wider public and 16 roundtable meetings across the region.
Through a two-tier civic lottery, 10,000 people were randomly invited to participate. Letters were sent out across the GTHA, with each part receiving a number proportionate to its population. Among the 410 who responded, a stratified group of 36 panellists was chosen, representative of age, gender, and population distribution in the region based on 2011 data. There was no special selection according to ethnicity, income, educational attainment or other attributes, but this emerged proportionally due to the random selection element. As with all of MASS LBP's reference panels, the participants were not paid, but their expenses were covered.
The residents' reference panel met over the course of four Saturdays in February and March 2013. Its purpose was to learn about the existing transit systems in the GTHA, proposed additions, other transport systems around the world, the variety of funding options available for transit investment and the transport needs for the region. The panel's remit was "to propose recommendations to inform Metrolinx's strategy for raising funds to make long-term, sustainable investments in transit and transportation in the GTHA" (MASS LBP for Metrolinx, 2013).
Following the same process of learning, deliberation and recommendations, the panel's first day began with a welcome from the president and CEO of Metrolinx, followed by presentations involving eight different participants, including senior Metrolinx staff, independent experts and representatives from some of the region's transit authorities. During a question and answer period, policymakers, and transit operators answered questions about the economy and the population of the GTHA, about provincial and local transport policy decisions and the lessons to be learnt from other regions. Panellists then wrote down their "vision for transportation in the GTHA" – their ideal proposition – and discussed it in small groups. At the end of the day, they were given a conversation kit and asked to review it and speak with friends and family before the next meeting.
Reconvening one week later, the second deliberative meeting continued the learning phase. Metrolinx's president and CEO presented the group with the currently unfunded projects to be completed before 2031. The idea of cost-benefit analysis was also explained. In this context, small groups discussed once again their "vision for transportation in the GTHA" and whether it could be achieved. Later on in the day, they listened to Metrolinx staff on the work they had done to date to identify 26 potential revenue-raising methods – taxes and user fees – to fund its investment strategy, as well as presentations by various stakeholders, industry representatives and academics. The panel then discussed which principles should guide their deliberations about solutions and proposals, deciding that funding principles should be used to evaluate the various revenue-generating options available, and to combine these into funding scenarios that could raise adequate funds for their ideas. At the end of the second meeting ahead of the deliberating phase, the panellists were reminded that their task was not to develop a personal position, but rather a rationale for their views and to engage with others in order to find common ground. Their task ahead of the next meeting was to review a booklet of 26 different revenue-raising measures used in other jurisdictions.
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Excerpted from The People's Verdict by Claudia Chwalisz. Copyright © 2017 Policy Network. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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