Engage Canada: We're Still Not in the Picture

The Conservative Government has spent millions to convince us that they're working in our interests.  In truth they've hung the middle class out to dry while helping out the country's wealthiest.  Over the next 3 months, we have the chance to change the conversation.

Dear Canadian middle class:

The Conservatives are shafting you.  Get mad!  Tweet a prepared message to your network letting everyone know how bad and truthy they are!

This non-partisan, independent project aimed squarely at Canada's middle class may call itself Engage Canada, but so far it's making no attempt to actually engage Canadians.  Instead, we have a familiar barrage of attacks, prompts and self-promotions.

Where's the engagement?  Where are the channels to solicit ideas from Canadians?  To empower Canadians to fact-check for themselves?

There are so many great examples Engage Canada could copy, if engagement is their goal.  Look at what Ontario did with Budget Talks, encouraging Canadians to come forward with their own policy ideas.  Look at Ontario's Open Data Directive - a shared doc on Google Drive that literally anyone can comment on (essentially, co-writing a government directive that will be sent to every Ministry and agency).

With the push towards Open Data, data visualization and so on, there are powerful platforms available to help Canadians make sense of facts ranging from traffic patterns to foreign investment. Heck, people are making decent money creating government data-based tools like Map Your Property or iamsick.ca.  

Private sector partners (especially looking at you, Cisco, Microsoft and Socrata) are pushing for open data and tech in schools and communities that would help empower even the most marginalized residents to get some real skin in the nation-building game.  Civic engagement groups like Rexdale Lab are working hard to find innovative solutions that bridge the gap between community and policy.

Look at truly non-partisan efforts like Shape My City, trying to build communities of cross-pollinated engagement online that lead to real-world activity or Neptis Geoweb providing platforms for people to map out real-world health, traffic, employment, etc. patterns and the policy that impacts them.

An initiative really meant to engage Canadians would be inspirational, aspirational, and encouraging - not narrowly focused on making one party look bad.

Truly engaging Canada isn't about them, Engage Canada, nor is it about you - that's how traditional partisan wedge-politicking operates and it's why so many Canadians have lost faith in government as an institution.

So long as Engage Canada looks at the people as a passive audience to be cherry-picked from for support instead of a community to be actively brought into the nation-building process, we're still not in the picture.

UGC, folks.  Learn to love it.  It's the non-partisan independent projects that do who will win in the long term.

Leadership, Aggregates and the Open Community

Perhaps an unsurprising partnership, given the presence of so many progressive innovators sitting ont he San Andreas Fault, but this idea of sharing and networked platforms forming part of the responsive infrastricture in times of crisis is a model that could be replicated in every other major city - given the right leadership.

Toronto sorely needs a project we can get behind, collectively.  This would make a great one.

Bread and Circuses: Democracy at a Distance

We celebrate elections as wondrous exercises in democratic consultation, but the reality is that they are increasingly hollow exercises in which the words and pictures are neither aligned nor illuminating.

Campaign road shows are just for show.

Do campaigns matter?  Absolutely they do.  A well-funded campaign has the ability to puncture the data fog and place tailored, appealing messages in the inboxes of voters.  It can equally place tailored, opposition-undermining ads in front of massive audiences.

The in-person stuff is often designed just to fuel this sort of big-picture outreach.  A whistle-stop is no longer meant for the audience present, but the audience available through media.

Election campaigns are complex exercises that can demonstrate the discipline and fighting capability of a given Party's ground forces.  But that's largely what elections have become - the domestic equivalent to military exercises on the borders of the Ukraine.

We know that politics is a blood sport; like any engaged sport, it can be a lot of fun.  You get your elbows up, you feel the exhilaration of a race to the finish line, you have the chance to play, test yourself against opponents and invariably, get free food, booze and exposure to important people.  

Play your cards right, you can also get useful references for work - or maybe a job itself.

It's no wonder political strategists are so adamant that elections are crucial to democracy and bully those who suggest there may be more to democratic engagement than campaigns and a vote every four years.  They love the competition and make money doing so - elections are good for them.

But elections aren't supposed to be exercises in message superiority, job-hunt opportunities or profitable ventures.  They're not meant to be opportunities to beat down people you have grudges against, either.  

That is, however, what happens when we allow our democracy to turn into a blood sport.  It becomes bread and circuses, gladiatorial combat fought by aggressive War Roomers seeking to appeal to the lesser angels of the voting audience.

Lost in this process is healthy debate, an exploration of the issues and actual civic engagement.

If we're content to watch our democracy roll out from the cheap seats, I guess that's our choice - but this is a movie we've seen before.  We should know by now the ending sucks.