Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear before this committee. I'm really delighted and I'd like to express my strong support for the initiative to create a commission or a commissioner responsible for federal party debates.
I think the status quo is problematic in a number of important respects. The main concern that I would like to focus on is the lack of transparency, accountability, and public engagement in the organization of the debates. Although political debates are an important part of our democracy, the way we organize them isn't particularly democratic.
I think that the creation of a commission or a commissioner could provide an opportunity for more meaningful public engagement and deliberation in our election campaigns. Improvements could be made not only in the form and content of debates, but also in the process by which they are organized.
A commission or a commissioner could provide the opportunity to include a broader spectrum of voices from Canadian society, including first nations, youth, women, and minorities.
More importantly, in my view, it would create an opportunity to counteract the fragmentation in our public life, which I believe is beginning to tear at the fabric of our democracy. I think we're only beginning to see this fragmentation that's under way.
More and more, Canadians are getting their news content from social media platforms that divide us into smaller and smaller publics rather than binding us together into one. Political debates are one of the relatively few moments when the whole public can come together and engage in a common activity.
I believe it's important to do everything we can to encourage a flourishing public life, and for that, we need more opportunities to have dialogue, deliberation, and the engagement of the public in our politics.
This is one of the reasons that in recent years at UBC my colleagues and I at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions have created a school for politicians. We organize what's called the Summer Institute for Future Legislators. It's a program that's designed to foster the kinds of skills and knowledge that we need to be good citizens or to be good statespersons.
One of the things that our participants learn to do is how to debate. They engage in question period, but they also participate in caucus meetings. They organize committee meetings and they meet with and hear from witnesses. They craft legislation. They debate it at first and second readings.
One of the things that's really fascinating about watching the participants in this program is how quickly they're gripped by the spirit of teamwork and partisanship. At the same time, when they come into the activity, as I think most people do when they enter public life, it's in a spirit of interest in public service, a desire to find and to serve the public good. We watch them struggle to balance these competing goals. That's what politics is really all about. That's what citizenship is about.
I think that we need opportunities for people to learn and to cultivate these skills. Unfortunately, there are too few opportunities for citizens to acquire these skills, the knowledge that they need to deliberate, to compromise, to balance goods and to make collective decisions. These aren't things that you learn from a textbook. You don't learn them by studying political science. You learn them by doing.
I think debates provide a marvellous opportunity to cultivate citizenship, but to serve that purpose, debates should not be monopolized by the media and political parties. I don't mean to suggest for a minute that political parties and the media are not crucial; what they bring to the table is central to what debates are all about and they have a critical role to play in their organization.
I'm suggesting that should be balanced against the involvement of civil society to ensure the debates don't simply create an entertaining spectacle and don't simply serve partisan interests, but that they also promote active, engaged, and informed citizenship. I think we can imagine a number of ways in which debates could be organized so that their form and content better serve the public interest than our current system does.
Very briefly, let me suggest a few of the ideas that I think might serve this purpose. In the first place, I think a commission or commissioner might well have an advisory body that would reflect Canada's diversity. A commission or commissioner could be empowered to place the organization of the debates in the hands of an independent body that would include, in addition to representatives of parties and the media, citizens, civil society groups, and universities. I believe that universities have a potentially important role to play, given that they exist across our country and have deep connections with civil society. I would suggest that the organization of debates should probably not be placed in the hands of Elections Canada, because I think it's important that it stands above the fray.
The organization of debates should involve open and transparent public engagement to ensure that decisions such as who participates, what kinds of questions are asked, the format, and other matters, reflect the broadest public interest. I also agree with some of the things that have been said by previous speakers, that in the spirit of our Westminster system, debates among party leaders should be complemented by debates in ridings across the country, as well as debates on specific topics involving parliamentarians who are not necessarily party leaders. These debates could be easily taped and stored on a publicly available website for all to watch.
Finally, and perhaps most ambitiously, the public should be encouraged to participate in debates, holding their own local face-to-face meetings in smaller groups or medium-sized assemblies. This could be done by introducing what political scientists Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin have called a deliberation day, a national holiday held a couple of weeks before the election itself, in which all citizens would be encouraged to take time out to meet with their neighbours, organize activities, and debate for themselves the great issues that the country faces during an election.
Many of these ideas have been articulated in other contexts. There has been some very good work done by my colleague Taylor Owen, and Rudyard Griffiths, on this a number of years back, and I think it would be worthwhile to build on that work.
Needless to say, an ambitious agenda to democratize debates would take some time to develop, but I think that creating an independent commission or commissioner would be an excellent first step.
Thank you very much.