Democratic and electoral reform– presentation to legislative committee

Jul. 22, 2025

On July 17th, senior economist Alex Hemingway provided recommendations to the provincial legislature’s Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform. Following is Alex’s presentation to the committee.

Focusing my remarks on a single, concrete recommendation for strengthening democratic engagement in BC, we recommend the province make greater use of what are known in the research literature as “deliberative mini-publics.”

As one recent research review described it, a mini-public “creates a space within which a diverse body of citizens who would not otherwise interact is selected randomly to reason together about an issue of public concern.” These are democratic tools that revive a core practice of ancient Athenian democracy: selecting citizens by lottery to form bodies that deliberate on important policy issues. It’s also a practice that British Columbia was instrumental in adapting for modern use, most notably in the form of the 2004 Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

The BC Citizens’ Assembly brought together 160 randomly selected British Columbians from every riding who spent weekends over nearly a year learning, consulting the wider public and deliberating on whether and how BC should adopt a new electoral system. Their final recommendation of adopting the BC-STV system earned the support of nearly 58% of voters in a referendum and won a majority in 77 of 79 electoral districts, which is a significant achievement in consensus-building on a complex and contentious issue. Ultimately, the recommendation was not adopted and implemented because the government of the day had set a 60% super-majority threshold for the referendum.

The BC Citizens’ Assembly model set a global standard and it has since been studied, replicated and adapted for use around the world, as well as within Canada and in British Columbia at the local level. Besides citizens’ assemblies, other similar forms of deliberative mini-publics include citizens’ juries and deliberative polls, which can vary in number of participants, time spent deliberating and tasks assigned.

There are many benefits to the model of deliberative mini-publics found in the extensive research literature on these democratic practices and I’ll touch on a few of the key ones here. 

First, an important strength of mini-publics is the use of a lottery to select members ensures they are made up of a much more representative cross-section of the public than most consultation processes.

In a typical public consultation process, participants self-select into the process. For example, research shows that in local public hearing processes on proposed new housing projects, the voices of renters and young people are underrepresented while a relatively small number of vocal opponents of new housing often dominate the proceedings, providing policymakers with a skewed picture of the public’s views (which are often at odds with more representative opinion polls). Indeed, this is a contributing factor to policies in our cities that continue to severely restrict housing creation.

A mini-public is a powerful tool to ensure that public engagement processes hear from a more representative sampling of ordinary residents, reflecting a wide range of views and perspectives.

A second key benefit of the mini-public model is that citizens are given the time and resources to engage in good faith deliberation on important issues.

Participants are asked not just to advocate for their pre-existing views, but to listen to one another and to evidence from experts, to weigh trade-offs and to find common ground. Hearing directly from people with different perspectives and experiences builds mutual understanding and leads to more public-spirited recommendations.

An analysis I co-authored with professor Simon Pek of the University of Victoria, notes research that shows: “Mini-publics often help engender high-quality deliberation… This is the case even when participants tackle more complex topics. Researchers have highlighted how participants in mini-publics make high-quality decisions based less on their own personal priorities and more on those of the broader community.”

The final benefit I’ll touch on today is that mini-publics tend to earn a higher degree of public trust because they are bodies made up of ordinary citizens rather than members of the political class.

For example, research on the 2005 electoral reform referendum in BC found that “voters who knew about the Citizens’ Assembly and its deliberations were far more likely to vote in favour” of BC-STV. Another example comes from Oregon where citizen-initiated referenda are common, but before the vote is held a citizens’ jury deliberates and develops a recommendation on a given proposal and the recommendation and reasoning behind it is distributed to households. When asked by researchers, voters judged the citizens’ juries to be more credible than institutions like the state legislature. 

Mini-publics of varying forms have been conducted hundreds of times around the world and studied intensively, revealing the benefits discussed above.

Other prominent international examples include the Irish Citizens’ Assembly that helped resolve contentious social issues in that country and the Citizens Convention for Climate held in France. Closer to home, Burnaby recently held a Community Assembly to help shape its Official Community Plan and Victoria and Saanich held a citizens’ assembly to consider whether the municipalities should amalgamate. At a practical level, this means there is significant expertise ready to be tapped in BC and Canada to run effective mini-publics.

One area where a mini-public might prove particularly useful in BC would be on questions of electoral reform and public financing of political parties.

There is a strong case to take these quasi-constitutional policy questions out of the hands of politicians, who arguably shouldn’t be setting the rules of the game in which they compete.

Putting these issues to a citizen’ assembly could help earn broader public trust in our democracy. Another potential use would be a citizens’ assembly on fair tax reform, which could allow a representative group of everyday British Columbians to deliberate on how best to pay for our shared societal priorities, with access to experts who can help inform those deliberations. As a final example, the BC government could enable, encourage or even require cities to use mini-publics rather than unrepresentative public hearings in their public engagement processes on housing policy, which could help develop broadly supported plans for new housing that is urgently needed in our province.

In sum, we’d like to recommend that BC actively incorporate the mini-public model in its toolkit for democratic engagement and policy-making. Whenever public input is being gathered for policymaking, a mini-public should be seriously considered as an alternative to typical engagement processes that rely on self-selection, which tend to provide a skewed and static picture of the public’s views.

While they are not a panacea, mini-publics are a proven and practical model of democratic practice.

At a time when political and social trust feels increasingly precarious and polarization is a growing concern, bodies like mini-publics have significant potential to strengthen meaningful democratic engagement by convening a representative cross-section of the public, facilitating good faith and high-quality deliberation among citizens on important issues and earning the trust of the broader public.