I’m very grateful to live in a democracy , but its clear that democracy is struggling to deliver for everyone, everywhere, right now. Could that be because it has an appropriate scale? There is something about our culture in the Globalized North that we tip our hats to hierarchies of power, and expect the most power to lie at the top and the least at the bottom.
In Ontario right now, we have a democratic deficit as Premier Ford decides to go his own way by introducing bills that clearly circumvent the democratic process. In June of 2021 the Ford Government used the “Notwithstanding clause” to passed Bill 307 the Protecting Elections and Defending Democracy Act, which “severely limits third parties’ advertising and activity with a massive expansion of the pre-election period, restricting all political or issue-based advertising for 12 months before an election.” In November 2022 the Government introduced the Better Municipal Governance Act which allows Mayors of Toronto and Ottawa to adopt or amend bylaws with only 1/3 majority vote. And more recently, the Ford Government has backtracked on a Greenbelt pledge with a plan to allow housing on 7,400 acres, and in another affront to democracy, has overruled the cities of Hamilton and Ottawa, ordering each municipality to alter their official plans to mandate sprawl development of thousands of hectares of once protected land. Its not just at the Provincial level however, the Federal Government is still in the dock over the use of the Emergencies Act to quell the “Freedom Convoy” in 2021
An inverted power hierarchy when it comes to governance is a focus for anyone interested in different types of democracy and particularly localism. The idea of democracy nested in local communities is also a very resilient structure, because even if the higher levels of governance break, democratic processes can still continue at the lower levels. The principle of subsidiarity, which comes from the works of Thomas Aquinas and is rooted in Catholic Social teaching holds that “social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution.”
This week on my journey to Waterloo to teach I listened to another fascinating DoomerOptimism Podcast, this one on Anarchy with Daniel Baryon and Glen Ganaway I was surprised to learn some of the principles which are very in keeping with my interest in more distributed, local and participatory governance. Also of interest was the idea of prefigurative politics, which is an approach that recognises the impossibility of tearing down existing structures but instead seeks to develop “within the ongoing political practice of a movement […] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal”. This is very much in keeping with waking the adjacent possible in the now and theories of change involving resilience theory (as Jason Snyder points out in the episode) and social ecological transition.
On my way back I was listening to the CBC news and was heartened to hear the news that Louis Bull Tribe in Alberta had signed an agreement with Ottawa to administer its own Child Welfare, and other First Nations will follow suit. If ever there was an argument for subsidiarity and localism, its the case to return indigenous self-governance.
Last night I attended the Town of Caledon Farmer’s Round Table which was basically a consultation exercise for the Official Plan. As a relatively new Canadian/Ontarian, I’m just becoming aware of the tensions between the various levels of Governance. In the round table last night I picked up on a desire for Caledon to be more autonomous from the region of Peel in which its nested. However Caledon being a primarily rural and lower density municipality relies on the tax dollars of more urban areas of Peel for regional funding for the development of infrastructure. It seems there is a lot of uncoupling to be done for local democracy to thrive in southern Ontario-I wonder whether it is already far too complex. Yet complex structures are inevitably more fragile, and it seem both prudent and necessary to increase the resilience of communities by strengthening local democracy.
James T Jones 