Power to the People! (Part II)

 

Estragon: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what you think.

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 

Part II: Four Ways to Change the Local World

 

Proposal #1: A CBRM Citizens’ Assembly on COVID-19 & Post-Pandemic Recovery

“Watershed periods in history,” Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1992, “may not be very comfortable for those who live in them, but they do, as a rule, at least stimulate deeper reflection and self-awareness.” Surely the watershed of the pandemic lockdowns—a more than ‘uncomfortable’ period for billions, suspending the most basic, routine rhythms of human life (and death)—should spark such reflection, foster new awareness about what, and who, matters most in society.

Such responses can and should take the orthodox form of independent national—and, in Canada, also provincial—public inquiries into government (mis)handling of the crisis. And in the wake of such a global trauma, we clearly need an independent inquiry, commissioned by the United Nations, into the patent inadequacies and inequities of the global response.

But my focus here is on, well, here—CBRM—and my proposal is for the municipality to convene a Citizens’ Assembly, a diversely representative mini-public of 50 people (including youth) meeting openly to hear public and expert testimony of pandemic experiences and lockdown impacts that, from the harrowing to the inspiring, might otherwise remain unregistered. Such an Assembly—mandated to issue a report and make policy recommendations for submission to Council—would, in sessions spaced over 3-6 months, assess what went well and wrong; consider what structures and services may have helped prevent or alleviate some of the worst suffering; and ask what reforms and actions could most effectively help not just Council but the community anticipate and prepare for future pandemics or comparable socio-economic convulsions, and help heal the worst harms of COVID’s seismic shock to many systems.

Oddly, given the 21st century momentum behind deliberative democracy, there have so far been only a smattering of locally-focused pandemic and post-pandemic Citizens’ Assemblies. This may reflect the toll the lockdowns took, and the overload of pressures now faced by almost all citizens and levels of government. There may also be an understandable but dangerous desire to ‘move on,’ leave the surreal nightmare behind, though its consequences are being felt everywhere, and will be for years. Indeed, it would be intolerably ironic if the epic scale of the crisis—so cruelly exposing the need for citizen input to address social, economic and health inequalities— served to stem the tide of citizen participation, or what the OECD in 2020 reasonably assumed was “the start of a period of transformation to adapt the architecture of representative democracy.”

In April 2022, the Poor People’s Campaign in the US produced a ‘Poor People’s Pandemic Report,’ “mapping the intersections of poverty, race and COVID-19,” confirming that “crises do not unfold independent of the conditions from which they arise” and chronicling the intergenerationally scarring extent to which both the virus and lockdowns “exacerbated preexisting social and economic disparities that have long festered.” The US is one of the most unequal nations on Earth, but there were ‘poor people’s pandemics’ everywhere, including here, and their lessons need to be learned.

Among the handful of ‘COVID Assemblies’ to date, Augsburg in Germany convened a ‘Citizens’ Advisory Council’ with participants, aged 14 and up, “selected by sortition” (civic lottery) “according to criteria such as gender, level of education, and migration background.” A Citizens’ Forum in the German state of Baden-Württemberg tackled issues including “the psychosocial consequences” of lockdowns, and ways to strengthen “neighbourhood assistance and culture”: the 50-person group included, according to Gisela Erler, State Councillor for Citizen Participation, “craftsmen, nurses, and others who rarely get involved,” between elections, in the political process.

Similar Forums in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony guided government responses to the pandemic, recommending, in the case of Thuringia, against continued school closures (after November 2021) and in the case of Saxony “better pay for skilled workers in the care and health sector.” In France, Grenoble established a ‘Citizens’ Liaison Committee’, “half men and half women,” with one third of the 120 participants younger than 25; and in Nantes, a March 2021 report by an 80-person Citizens’ Assembly contained detailed proposals to foster “more solidarity” and “new forms of living together.”

In January 2020, Bristol City Council in the UK approved a pilot citizen assembly on municipal responses to the climate emergency. As Deputy Mayor Asher Craig reflected, “we could not have known what 2020 had in store,” but in March, rather than pausing the experiment, “recognizing that the pandemic had shifted the goalposts in practically all aspects of our work, the City Council began to rethink how we could use deliberative democracy to engage our citizens in the city’s recovery plan.” The result was a June 2021 report retaining a strong focus on climate justice while addressing the question: ‘How Do We Recover from COVID-19 and Create a Better Future For All in Bristol?’ The top two recommendations were “reducing inequality—greatest action needs to be taken for those with greatest need,” and “affordable housing, inclusive housing policies and no homelessness.” The “spirit of hearing all our communities’ voices,” to quote Councilor Paula O’Rourke:

…has underpinned Bristol’s first Citizens’ Assembly. The time and energy members dedicated demonstrates citizens’ enthusiasm and appetite to be a part of shaping progress in Bristol. Outcomes will be monitored and shared as we work to embed deliberative democracy techniques in our citizen engagement work.

I believe a similar ‘appetite’ for change exists here: a desire among citizens to do their fair share of policy-making, and be granted a fair share of power.

 

Proposal #2: A Nova Scotia Citizens’ Assembly on Equalization

The outcome of a CBRM Citizens’ Assembly on the pandemic should not be a request for Mayor and Council to please perform political, social or economic miracles. But it should engage with the issue of how much power, influence, resources and money CBRM actually has, compared to how much (of all those things) it needs. Central to such consideration is the vexed question of the formula the province of Nova Scotia applies in distributing the equalization funding ($2.8 billion in 2023-24) it receives from the federal government: a sum so large only because poverty and deprivation, particularly in the CBRM, run so deep. A case has long been made be that equalization has not only not equalized socio-economic relations within the province, or between Nova Scotia and wealthier provinces, but has actually been misused to exacerbate socio-economic disparities, especially between Halifax, the center of the Nova Scotian universe, and many neglected peripheries.

Our poverty, in short, is subsidizing their development: this is the basic, stark claim of Nova Scotians for Equalization Fairness and other campaigners, marginalized voices I believe deserve their day in the ‘court’ of deliberative democracy: 100 Nova Scotians, again weighted to constitute a representative cross-section of society, assembled by the provincial government to examine the current equalization formula and recommend changes (or none) to the House of Assembly. All sides of the issue would be freely, fully, and fairly aired, with any radically new formula perhaps put to a referendum; and who knows, rather than perennially, bitterly dividing us, maybe the subject of equalization, thus collectively deliberated, can help bring us closer together?

 

Proposal #3: Social Planning for CBU Expansion: A Citizens’ Assembly to Learn Lessons and Chart a Cooperative Course

My third proposal is that CBRM, the provincial government, and Cape Breton University unite to convene a Citizens’ Assembly to explore what went so horribly wrong with something that should have gone so well: expanding and internationalizing the CBU student body. As is now horrendously clear—and nationally notorious—for the socio-economic and cultural potential of expansion to be realized, careful planning and coordination between CBU, the province, CBRM and, crucially, civil society, was required. Yet none of CBU management’s plans were subject to outside review, and no adequate provision was made to ensure either adequate living or learning space for those the University was ‘welcoming’—or, as many have understandably come to feel, fleecing.

The result? Vast profits for CBU—translated not into tuition reductions but bloated salaries and bonuses for senior management (and the hiring of ever more recruiters and marketers); heartrending suffering and multiple indignities for many students; rampant rent-gouging, slum landlordism, and sometimes sadistic evictions, in an already off-the-charts dysfunctional housing market; and anguish for a CBRM Mayor and Council utterly ill-equipped to deal with the utterly predictable consequences of a ‘gold rush’ boom overwhelming local infrastructure, resources and services.

Of course, a separate conversation is urgently needed within CBU, where a rigidly hierarchical power structure—quite typical, alas, of the modern, neoliberal University— has under President David Dingwall’s leadership sent the institution into an overdrive with no brakes—at least, none that were applied by the Board of Governors or Senate. To my knowledge, the management’s masterplan was not submitted to either the faculty, staff or student unions for review, approval, or amendment; or presented to the general student body in any public consultation process prior to ‘lift off.’ And since ‘lift off’ so spectacularly, explosively malfunctioned I can see no evidence of a change of heart, mind or direction—let alone power structure. Indeed, there remains the conspicuous, ominous absence of a cap on enrollment (called for by the Student Union), suggesting student numbers may thus be set—unless the ‘boom’ goes ‘bust’—to soar yet further.

Yes, CBU management says it is aware of problems, while studiously ignoring/denying the fact it caused them; it is committed, in particular, to seeking solutions for the student housing crisis. Wonderful; but how the hell did student numbers rapidly double—from 3,000 in 2018 to nearly 7,000 (over 70% international)—with no plan to prevent overcrowding and homelessness: to prevent, for example, students having to sleep in cars, or commute to class from as far away as Halifax? Could the answer be that those tiny number of people driving the CBU ‘car’ also had—and still have—the power to give themselves the green light?

Even if a systemic democratization of decision-making occurred at CBU, the current overexpansion calamity suggests the need for much broader reforms, eliminating the University’s ability to act unilaterally on matters affecting the whole region without prior consultation or consent. A Citizens’ Assembly would be a fair, impartial way of exploring options for repairing at least some of the grave damage done, and managing expansion cooperatively (and competently) henceforth. People are sinking: we need a Sea Change in social planning.

 

Proposal #4: The Case for A CBRM ‘Community Peace, Well-Being and Inclusivity Council’

CBRM has long been committed to alleviating to the maximum extent possible the unacceptably high levels of poverty, deprivation, violence and abuse in its communities. In order to decisively change the grim reality, however, I suggest it is necessary to fully include and structurally empower—in the form of a CBRM ‘Community Peace, Well-Being, and Inclusivity Council’—groups and minorities traditionally consigned, simultaneously, to the margins of ‘democracy’ and the front lines of the struggle for social justice.

Potential delegates (adults and youth) on such a Council would include ethnic minorities; members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community; persons with physical and psychosocial disabilities; the unhoused, badly housed, and insecurely housed; people struggling with a frighteningly wide range of addictions; those released from incarceration; those experiencing inappropriate, prejudiced and abusive policing, or otherwise struggling for fair treatment in an often unjust justice system; immigrants and refugees, who face so many obstacles (including racism); women and children experiencing endemic violence and abuse; those dealing with the worst impacts, socio-economic and environmental, of climate breakdown; and members of Mi’kmaw communities confronting the legacies, prejudices and ongoing practices of colonialism.

Such a ‘Peace, Well-Being and Inclusivity Council,’ whose delegates would be appointed by the participating groups, could meet as often as CBRM Council itself, and be empowered to discharge both a reactive and proactive function: reviewing and suggesting amendments to (or withdrawal of) all relevant legislation and decisions from CBRM Council; and formulating and proposing legislation, programs and reforms of its own for submission to CBRM Council.

 

Conclusion: Time to End the Waiting Game

As many people know from painful experience, sometimes the most obvious things in life, and especially in dysfunctional relationships, can be the hardest to grasp—or admit. Precisely such a relationship now exists between governments and citizens in nominally ‘representative democracies’ in much of the world: systems, albeit far superior to dictatorship and autocracy, failing abjectly to build the kind of caring, green and peaceful societies most people would choose— and all people deserve—to call home.

The democratic socialist Tony Benn wrote in 1979 (the year the anti-democratic capitalist Margaret Thatcher became UK prime minister) that “the story of British democracy is the conversion of privileges into rights.” Benn argued that that story must not be allowed to end with parliaments and councils, by now the old ‘normal’ we’re expected dutifully to celebrate as the apex of political civilization. He anticipated, instead, the ‘next chapter,’ the progressive conversion of representative into participatory democracy, based on the premise that the exercise of political power—the collective capacity to shift the shape of society—is a right not a privilege.

Traditional political theatre has become absurd: it’s high time to stop ‘waiting for Godot.’

 

 

Sean Howard is adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University and member of Peace Quest Cape Breton and the Canadian Pugwash Group. He may be reached here.