FEATURE 2
When Parliamentarians were at loggerheads a few months ago over the right of MPs as citizens’ representatives to see crucial government documents, they turned to a Kingstonian, Speaker Peter Milliken, for resolution. Centuries ago, British House of Commons speakers could place their lives at risk for defending democracy against royalty, but in this case there was widespread acceptance of Milliken’s judicious ruling. The incident was a reminder of how precarious democracy can sometimes be and the special role many Kingstonians play in furthering it. Democracy can be a murky concept, bound up in the sacredness of the ballot and legislative assemblies; the complications of direct and indirect forms of representation; and the competing concerns different slices of the public might express on an issue, each side arguing it is serving democracy. I There can be many tricky balances in ensuring the rights of citizens are supreme. In some countries where democracy is well advanced, there are still daily calls for improvement, while in other countries democracy is nascent. I Democracy is a constant struggle. Here are four Kingstonians who have played a noteworthy role in that struggle recently, at home and abroad.
Queen’s University political scientist George Perlin identified the source of the federal Progressive Conservative Party’s dysfunction in his classic 1980 book, The Tory Syndrome, about the perennial, undisciplined squabbles that kept the party from power for many decades. He combined with journalist Patrick Martin and pollster Allan Gregg for the 1983 work, Contenders, on how Brian Mulroney captured the leadership of that party. He collaborated for many years on books about Canadian political parties and process.
So it stumped many of his colleagues and friends when in the late 1990s he suddenly started to devote himself to an obscure project on democracy in the Ukraine. They didn’t quite know what he was doing — or why. It seemed unworthy of him, a wasteful diversion.
These days, back as head of the university’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, which he founded back in the ’90s, he calls the Ukrainian effort “a life’s work.” And it is. He has worked, as an advisor, with teams of Ukrainians to take a country with no experience with democracy — a country where the existing scholarship revolved around Marxist-Leninism — and spawned courses at the university and highschool level and in the training institutes of the security forces that explain liberal democratic values. He argues it’s not out of step with his previous work, which in one way or another revolved around political democracy.
It started when he was invited to lecture in the Ukraine on public opinion and made a courtesy call to Vasil Kremen, head of cultural policy in the presidential administration. At the time, Perlin says, all he knew about the Ukraine was that it was a vast space you had to get across when playing the board game Risk. But Kremen talked to him about the obstacles the country faced because citizens had no knowledge of what to expect from democracy.
Thanks to the eagerness of a project officer at the Canadian International Development Agency, Perlin quickly got funding for what was to be a three-year program that brought to Queen’s four different groups of 12 Ukrainians who could read English. The assignment for each set was to learn enough about democracy so members could draft a curriculum for a university course on the subject. Those groups later gathered together under Perlin’s guidance in Kiev, to meld their thinking into the eventual curriculum.
“Did I know what I was getting into? Nope,” he says. “But I knew enough that the worst thing would be for us to go over there with a preplanned curriculum. It had to be done by local people — not just that they are ‘owners,’ as it is said in the development literature, but that they had to author it, write it.”
Universities were the logical starting point, as their graduates would soon be assuming leadership positions in society. It was also important to build a capacity for scholarship on democracy, which might then filter through other institutions. Perlin helped the Ukrainians, as they looked at the international literature and how to apply it to the Ukrainian context, framed a course and then sought approval for it to be taught at different universities. “At no point did we say, ’This is how you do it in a democracy.’ Even in lectures, we talked on issues — say responsible government — and said, ‘Here are the principles, here is what we learned, and here are the strengths and weaknesses of various institutions,’ ” he says.
In 2002, after four years, with the program taking root, he figured his work was essentially over when he again met with Kremen, now minister of education, who cautioned him, “We have only made a start.” That led to a second phase, in which a program on teaching methods for democracy was developed for teacher-training institutions, a distance learning program on democracy for civil servants and a course developed for the final year of high school. As well, the Ministry of Internal Affairs wanted a program for the institutions that train police, border guards and internal security. And finally, since the Ukraine started to develop its own democratic institutions, the university course has been revised to include that experience.
Funding was more difficult to obtain this time in Canada, and the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine and the entrenched battle following within the political leadership delayed the program.
But the following spring, Perlin received a copy of the textbook for the high-school course, and much of the second phase has been completed.
At about the time that book arrived, Canadian newspapers were running stories of eggs, smoke bombs and punches being thrown in Ukraine’s Parliament as the chamber approved an agreement allowing the Russian Navy to extend its stay in a Ukrainian port until 2042. But Perlin says that doesn’t mean his work is being ignored: “You have to separate elite-level politicians from what is going on in the society as a whole. There is factionalism continuing at the elite level, but you have a population engaging in elections. The foundation has been laid for a democratic political culture, and all the elites recognize that.”
Indeed, the fact the elite is struggling with political accommodation and compromise, he says, makes it more important that the citizenry be taught about the elements of a democratic political culture. But we have to appreciate the change Ukrainians must make will take an extended period of time, perhaps generations. At the same time, he notes that we have no equivalent course in high school to what the Ukrainians have developed, and many of our youth lack a proper tutelage in civics.
“The assumption is it’s part of our socialization — we breathe the oxygen of democracy. But we need to look at it in the context of declining trust in elites and institutions, declining turnout in elections — in particular amongst young people — in Canada and other Western democracies. If we are going to get young people engaged, we need to introduce at least one course in democratic citizenship in high schools,” he says.
After his sojourn in the Ukraine, George Perlin is back, focusing again on Canada.
When the blue-ribbon task force appointed by Kingston Mayor Harvey Rosen issued its report in April 2004 proposing the city build a large entertainment centre on Anglin Bay, the Memorial Centre and grounds surrounding it seemed doomed. Momentum had built for a replacement for the aged arena, and in a final cruel indignity, the task force’s financial blueprint called for $5 million of the then-projected $29.6-million cost for the new entertainment locale to be raised by selling the Memorial Centre lands for development.
Then Mikaela Hughes wrote a letter to The Whig-Standard.
Hughes, who had grown up near City Park, was now living near the Memorial Centre, and she had the sense that this area of the city known as Williamsville was terribly deficient in green space. She was also a dog walker. Dog walking is a common pastime, but not generally treated with respect. However, she notes, it often brings people together, creating community as residents chat while taking care of their dogs. And in the wake of the task force report, the community of dog walkers at the Memorial Centre were aggrieved by the imminent loss of their treasured space.
A meeting was held, which Hughes happened to miss. But she, an architect, began to research the amount of green space in the city and then used a spreadsheet to calculate how much was in each district. Even she was surprised by her findings: Williamsville, with 14.4 square metres of recreational space per person, had fewer parks and less recreational and cultural space per capita than any other district in the city. It had 36 per cent less recreational space per person than neighbouring Kingscourt-Strathcona, the next lowest on the list, and both were far behind other lush areas. Worse, green space would fall to about 5.8 square metres of recreational space per person when the housing development was in place.
Her letter presented those facts and, as it turned out, appeared the same day as one by lawyer Jana Mills also opposing the selling of the Memorial Centre. With those letters, and all that dog walking, a movement was born.
Hughes had faith in the power of ideas, of rational facts, in a democracy. She had grown up as part of the anti-apartheid movement, since her parents had emigrated from South Africa, and had attended some peace marches. Now, for the first time, she was taking a prominent role, fighting city hall by trying to get city councillors to listen to a group of citizens whom many of those civic leaders seemed not inclined to listen to.
“Municipal politics seem closer to home. When you get to the federal and provincial level, there is so much bureaucracy. But at the local level, you should be able to make a difference,” she insists.
But sometimes that isn’t as clear in reality as in theory, and this was one of those times. The concerns she and residents of the area were raising seemed a sideshow to the big decision: Where downtown to place the new venue? Usually a district’s representative automatically supports local residents when their viewpoint is clear; in this instance, their views were vocal and united, but district Councillor Ed Smith was a fervent supporter of a new entertainment venue, chairing its steering committee and telling residents they should wait for the process to continue. She and the other residents were fighting for a democratic hearing.
They called a public meeting, and organized a petition, which they believe drew more names than any other petition ever presented to city council. But they sensed that wasn’t enough: Proponents of the new entertainment venue seemed desperate for the $5 million the Memorial Centre lands represented. Perhaps even more importantly, they sensed the general public beyond Williamsville didn’t understand the full value of the Memorial Centre since contact was often limited for other citizens whizzing by in cars past what seemed a derelict space. Kingston seemed ready to give up on the Memorial Centre. “It looked bleak. Everyone considered it a done deal,” says Hughes.
Her group held a visioning session at which they imagined how the Memorial Centre might be revitalized if the City had the will. Many ideas came forth, designed to return the Memorial Centre to its original purpose as a dynamic, thriving community health and recreation centre that would include a memorial about the sacrifices of Kingstonians who fought in the two World Wars and the Korean War.
That was followed by a design “charrette,” in which specific plans were framed for the land, ideas that we can all see taking shape these days, as the Memorial Centre grounds gain new life with walkways, trees and open entrances for the public. The visioning and charrette changed the tone of the debate, in Hughes’ estimation: “It was a turning point as people could see something positive instead of all the negative. People could see the loss of potential for the land, what might be.”
Eventually their calls were heard. On Nov. 22, 2005 — 18 months after the task force report seemed to seal the Memorial Grounds fate — city council voted unanimously to strike a committee to revitalize the grounds.
“It’s very tough to fight City Hall. I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of my time on it. I always wanted to come at it from a rational point of view, not an emotional point of view, and be inclusive of everyone with a stake in it,” she says. “In retrospect, I feel we made a difference.”
The hallmark of democracy is the casting of a ballot by a voter. The unspoken tautology is: Vote = Democracy. But anomalies in election results over the years have led to questions raised about whether the first-past-the-post electoral system in Canada is fair and, by implication, truly democratic.
How could the NDP’s Bob Rae gain a majority government in Ontario with only 37 per cent of the vote? Why do the federal Conservatives usually win every seat in Alberta during elections even though more than a third of the electorate votes against them? Why should Stephen Harper’s 37.6 per cent of the vote in the election translate into 143 seats, while the Green Party’s 6.8 per cent garners no seats?
Those concerns about democratic fairness led two provinces in recent years — British Columbia and Ontario — to hand the dilemma over to a unique, democratic body: a Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform that would devise an alternate voting system for the province that in turn would be put to a referendum of the citizenry if the assembly felt the option preferable to the existing approach.
Queen’s political scientist Jonathan Rose had a catbird’s seat in the Ontario process, serving as academic advisor to the assembly, chaired by Kingston native George Thomson. “It was a real test about citizen capacity,” says Rose. “Political scientists have argued for millennia if citizens are up to democracy. Is it too complex? Would hell break loose if they are given authority? No one has taken citizens for nine months and said whatever decision you make will be given to the government and put to voters in a binding referendum.”
It seems like a radical new idea, but Rose notes it traces back to the Athenian Boule, a council of citizens chosen randomly, like a jury, that could adjudicate important issues for one year, taking power away from entrenched interests. In the Ontario experiment, 20,000 letters were sent out randomly by Elections Ontario, explaining the process, and 1,000 individuals applied, knowing the challenge would be significant. They had to give up 12 weekends, and study 40 hours beyond that a month to get a handle on electoral mechanics around the world.
Informational meetings were held in clusters of electoral districts, and those individuals still interested could write their name and put it in a hat that was circulated, with one name per district chosen. “People would cry if they were not chosen. It stunned me. As a society, it’s not we ask too much of citizens but ask too little,” he observes.
Kingston’s representative was Buddhadeb Chakrabarty, owner of Café India on Princess Street, honoured that as an immigrant and now Canadian citizen he could take part. Rose recalls that Chakrabarty would usually work until 10 p.m. on Friday nights, then come to Toronto for the assembly’s meetings, returning so he could handle the dinner shift on Sunday evenings. And he wasn’t alone in his sacrifice, as many others tried to squeeze their study of electoral systems into their already busy lives, debating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives, before devising a system of Mixed Member Proportional Representation for Ontario, which combines voting in individual constituencies balanced by some proportional selection from party lists. “Their commitment was staggering. Nobody dropped out. Attendance was 93 per cent to 100 per cent at each session. I’d kill to have attendance rates like that at my classes at Queen’s,” says Rose.
Some members came in with a belief in one system or another, but they tended to be balanced off by others committed to another idea. Some maintained their positions and some changed. But Rose felt they helped the group, ensuring ideas would be more rigorously tested. And he says they were all “much more accommodating to different positions than you would see on the floor of the House of Commons.”
In the end, they set out values that mattered most to them: proportionality, simplicity and practicality, and voter choice. The latter point relates to the fact voters in Canada can’t disentangle their choice of party and choice of individual — when those clash — or rank all the candidates as in some systems so that if the first choice loses the voter can still help a second choice catapult to victory. “Someone said you have more choice when buying soap than voting,” he recalls.
At the end of the process, the assembly voted to recommend proportional representation over the current electoral system. But when put to a jury of all citizens in the last Ontario election, the decision, by a surprisingly large 63 per cent to 37 per cent measure, was to stick with the status quo. Rose feels that came in part because the referendum was an adjunct to an election, so it got little attention or thought from voters, and the political parties studiously avoided taking a position. He would have preferred to have seen “yes-and-no” committees, funded by Elections Ontario, able to educate the public.
“It wasn’t a failure, however,” he stresses. “It was a success as it showed people in an assembly can make a decision on a complex issue that has puzzled graduate political science students. As a democratic experiment, it worked,” he says.
He is now co-writing a book on such assemblies and is continuing his work in other areas that buttress democracy. An expert on political advertising, he has become an advisor to the Auditor General of Ontario, who can block government ads from being broadcast if they are deemed too partisan. And he is delving into the financing issue for federal political parties, worried that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s desire to end public financing for them will threaten democracy, as the Conservative Party is the only one currently that could mount a sustained election campaign based on its own fundraising. “Any good democratic system needs robust political parties,” he says. “Parties are private in the way they function but are a public good and get public financing around the world.”
There are more aspects to democracy than just a vote, and Rose considers himself lucky to be able to study, educate and be involved in the everlasting quest to improve Canadian democracy.
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts and to advance democracy and human rights in various countries. The Carter Institute he founded, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is well-known for prodding countries to hold elections and keeping a watchful eye on those elections to make sure they are fair.
One of the countries it has been working with has been Côte d’Ivoire — better known to most of us as The Ivory Coast — in Africa. And overseeing that effort is a 27-year-old Kingstonian, Jacqueline Segal.
She grew up in a household attuned to politics and democracy, with her father, Hugh, a longtime Progressive Conservative Party stalwart and these days an activist senator viewing himself as representing our area. But she was only briefly a member of that party — to support her father’s bid for the leadership — and says there were many heated debates on political issues in the household. Her undergraduate degree combined equity studies with political science, and after a stint in communications and PR, she headed to the American University in Paris, seeking a masters in global communications and political media.
A prime interest was whether e-voting could help attract more young people to vote, and how the Internet could be used to mobilize and engage youth. “It’s the total package — not just the casting of the vote — that would bring young people in. They would want information and debate that is attractive to them in an online digitized format,” she says, stressing that cell phones and other mobile devices, rather than desktop computers, may be the preferred mode.
A Google search one day turned up the Carter Institute, which had studied e-voting in Venezuela and the Philippines, so she applied for an internship. But on arrival she was shuffled instead into research for the Institute’s Democracy Project, focusing on Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. Voter identification and registration had been completed in early 2009 in Côte d’Ivoire, but production of that voters list had been delayed. In November, the list was published, allowing it to now be verified and challenged by the populace, a crucial step in a return to democracy in that country after a peace deal between the government and rebels in 2007.
The Institute decided to mobilize to monitor that process and posted a job for associate program co-ordinator for Ivory Coast, which Segal, who speaks French, won. She flew to the country, where she acts as a liaison between a six-person team in Côte d’Ivoire and headquarters at the Carter Institute, and briefs observers brought in from Africa and Europe on the political situation and proper monitoring techniques. The key issue is citizenship, which has changed with various leaders. Some presidents argued citizenship came with owning land, others insisted you had to work the land, and others declared you had to be a son or daughter of a man born in Côte d’Ivoire. The recent civil war was in many ways over nationality and who qualifies for citizenship — and which of the political rivals could deal best with the problem.
As she flew to the country, Segal wasn’t nervous, but excited — and, mostly, curious. “I wanted to compare it to my own notions of electoral processes and procedures at home. I was also excited as it meant there was a whole wave of young voters who would get the chance to register and participate in elections for the first time. Because the process has taken so long, there are people who qualify now to vote but were left off the voting list as they didn’t register at the time — they were too young,” she says.
In Canada, we take the voters list for granted, placing our faith in Elections Canada. But in a country emerging from civil war, the trust isn’t there. For transparency, lists had been stapled to trees, but there was nobody handy to explain procedures. Individuals left off the list have to file a claim, which has led to a greater administrative burden than expected. The resulting frustration grew into riots, which in turn prompted the suspension of Parliament and the dismantling of the Electoral Commission based on what she calls a loose claim of fraudulent activity by the head of the electoral commission. That only stoked further rioting.
The United Nations and the president of neighbouring Burkina Faso have held talks with the country’s leadership, and a new head of the Electoral Commission was appointed as well as a new cabinet. But the appeals process was halted, and when Segal visited Kingston this spring she was uncertain when — or how — it would resume. “There’s this very pregnant pause,” she said. “An election is complicated and made even more complex by the fact so many of the rights around voting and participation in political life are tied to nationality, which is the source of tension in that country. Elections require trust and the problem is there isn’t much trust in the people running the process right now.” At the same time, she stresses that sometimes delays are better than rushing through the electoral processes and ignoring people’s rights.
But the election is important, and she is doing her best to make sure it happens — and is fair. It’s not the point of an election for an election’s sake, but that the election holds the key to tackling matters like improved taxation of people in the north, attracting international investment to the country, fixing schools — and for the former student of equity, greater gender equality, enhanced opportunities for youth and better treatment for minorities. “It doesn’t end with an election. There has to be follow-through. Otherwise, what is the purpose of an election?” she asks.
Based in Atlanta, this Kingstonian is playing a role in bringing democracy to a small country in Africa. It’s an example of the many Kingstonians involved in defending or expanding democracy, and the wide scope and importance of their work.
