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Dutch and Canadian Citizens
Assemblies
Gaining Momentum and Making Innovations
By
Jim
Snider
Major citizens assembly news
continues to come out of the Netherlands
and Ontario. The Netherlands Citizens Assembly only has one more
meeting
left on its agenda and will issue a report to the minister of
government
reform in early December. As the Netherlands Citizens Assembly has
approached its last lap, Dutch language press coverage of its
activities
appears to have increased.
Ontario Developments
The Ontario Citizens Assembly continues to roar ahead as well, with
lots of local press coverage and some important milestones being
reached. In fact, legislation was recently introduced to allow for a
referendum question on next year's ballot(www.ontla.on.ca/documents/Bills/38_Parliament/session2/b155.pdf)
to be held on October 4, 2007. The most controversial feature of this
legislation is that it requires a 60% majority for the legislation to
pass…the same as in British Columbia, where 58.4% voted in favor of
the referendum This had many in Ontario arguing for a 50% threshold.
The Ontario Citizens Assembly has announced that it will hold 37
public
consultations around Ontario during its next phase. It has set up an
excellent website at
www.citizenassembly.gov.on.ca to facilitate extensive public
facilitation. An especially impressive overview
document on this website is Citizens Talking to Citizens.
George Thomson, Chair of the Ontario Citizens Assembly, described his
public engagement philosophy in a late September op ed that ran in
multiple local newspapers: Assembly members know that the process will
only be truly successful if their fellow citizens are learning with
them and if the assembly learns from them. It isn't enough to
wait for the assembly's report before focusing on an issue that takes
some time to learn and understand.
The Ontario Youth Citizens Assembly
One striking innovation in Ontario is the introduction of a high
school
students citizens assembly to run parallel to the official, adult
citizens
assembly. The high school student citizens assembly is being run out
of the
same office as the adult citizens assembly and has been allocated a
budget
of $200,000.
The student citizens assembly has two components. First, it will
produce
instructional materials so individual high school classes can run
their own
assemblies. Second, a province wide youth citizen assembly will be
constituted of 103 students, the same size as the adult citizens
assembly. Unlike the adult citizens assembly, though, students must
submit their names to be part of the citizens assembly lottery pool.
The recommendations of the student citizens assembly will be formally
submitted to the adult citizens assembly.
In some peoples’ judgment, the student citizens assembly idea is a
brilliant marketing and civic participation strategy. It brings the
public into the debate in a very meaningful way while creating many
additional opportunities for press coverage of the adult citizens assembly.
Other Canadian Citizen Assembly News
Other provinces in Canada, notably Alberta and Prince Edward Island,
continue to evince interest in having their own citizens assembly
modeled
after British Columbia's and Ontario's.
The prime minister of British Columbia, aware of the popularity of
what his own province has begun, proposed a new citizens assembly in
BC to discuss health care policy. A mayoral candidate in the town of
Kitchener Waterloo, Ontario wants to convene a citizens assembly to
deal with government waste. Others want to create a citizens
assembly with completely overlapping jurisdiction to an elected
legislature.
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