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...