The Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform: putting the public back in public policy.

• Author: Rose, Jonathan

On the morning of April 15, 2007 in a non-descript room at Queen's Park, a group of 103 citizens cast their final vote concluding a remarkable journey that began eight months earlier. In doing so, they would set into motion a province-wide referendum--the first since 1921--on the election of provincial politicians. The decision of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (OCA) will be put to all voters in the provincial election on October 10, 2007. The process that lead to its decision is an extraordinary one both in terms of citizen engagement as well as the capacity of ordinary citizens to reason on matters of complex public policy. This article will attempt to summarize the work of the OCA by examining its three phases and offer some tentative observations about its usefulness as a tool of public policy.

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While they arrived at their destination in April, it was November 18, 2004 when the OCA was launched by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. He announced plans to have a citizens' assembly examine the issue of electoral reform and promised to hold a binding referendum on the assembly's recommendation. From June to November 2005, an all-party Select Committee on Electoral Reform examined the options around electoral reform and recommended the terms of reference for a citizens' assembly including criteria for the assembly to assess electoral systems. These principles (1) would later form the basis of how assembly members understood and analyzed different electoral systems. The assembly was created on March 27, 2006 with the appointment of George Thomson as Chair.

The regulation that established the OCA (Ontario regulation 82/06) did provide some guidance as to the composition of the Assembly. Unlike the British Columbia citizens' assembly, the selection of OCA members would be done by the independent electoral office, in this case Elections Ontario. The regulation stated that there had to be one member from each electoral district and that the assembly had to be comprised of 52 females and 51 males. It also stated that one person had to be an identified aboriginal. Its list of those who could not serve was very clear. Members of the Ontario legislature, or Canadian parliament were unable to be Assembly members as were members of elected members of municipal governments. In an effort to ensure a reasonable level of neutrality, federal and provincially nominated candidates and officers of a constituency association were also prohibited from serving as members.

Members were chosen by Elections Ontario from May to July 2006. Over 120,000 initial letters were sent from Election Ontario's Register of Electors. The register had been recently updated to ensure that the list was as accurate as possible. Of those who received the letter 7,033 responded affirmatively to Elections Ontario's request asking if they would be willing to attend a meeting where a member from the electoral district would be chosen. In essence, they were consenting to be short-listed. From this pool 1,253 were invited to attend one of the twenty nine selection meetings held across the province where one member and two alternates from each electoral district were chosen by random draw. The alternates were to be used only if the members dropped out before the first meeting in September. Since no members dropped out during the entire eight month project no alternates were used. While this provided some good parameters for selecting members, one crucial element was missing. The regulation was silent on whether age would be filtered in addition to gender. There was a concern that if Elections Ontario did not control for age, the make-up of the Assembly might not reflect the age demographics of the province. Elections Ontario consented to control for age in its selection of the 1,253 potential members who were to attend the selection meetings and as the table below indicates the final random selection closely approximated the age demographic of the province.

In other ways, too, Assembly members were diverse. Collectively, they spoke over 28 languages, 66 of them were born in Ontario while 11 were from other provinces and 27 were from outside Canada. In terms of occupations, they were also a very diverse group as indicated in the Assembly's final report. (2)

Largely because of the organization of Elections Ontario, the selection of Assembly members was very smooth though there were some lessons to be learned in the selection phase. One of the most surprising things I observed was that many members of the public who attended the meetings and were not chosen were visibly upset, which i think speaks to the remarkable and unique nature of the project. It also was portentous in terms of signifying the commitment that members had throughout the eight months. Those who were chosen were committed at the outset. While the Assembly members were chosen at random, there were several factors that mitigated against the randomness of the selection. First, citizens were asked to reply to a request to examine electoral reform which may have given an initial pre-disposition toward reform. It seems plausible that those who received the letter who had no interest in changing the system would choose not to participate in the Assembly. Having said that, there were Assembly members who were initially opposed to reform and made their views known in the learning phase. Judging from the penultimate vote of the Assembly on April 14, 2007, 16 of the 103 members voted for the current system when asked "should Ontario keep its current electoral system or adopt the Assembly's Mixed Member Proportional system?" which suggests that at least 15% of Assembly members preferred the current system than the one the Assembly finally recommended.

The commitment of time to the Assembly by members was considerable. A second factor that may have affected the randomness of the process was the time commitment required by prospective members. One conclusion that might be drawn from table 1 is that the age cohort of the assembly in part reflects the time available to participate in such a project. For example, those 55-70 years old were over-represented in the Assembly because these were the group most likely to have the on average 30 to 40 hours a month to commit to the project. The same logic may explain why the cohort of 25-39 years old were under-represented. This is the group most likely to be in mid-career and with young children--arguably the group that has the most burdens placed on their time. One other problem with randomly choosing members through the Register of Electors is the inherent bias this has against those who are homeless or who may find themselves moving regularly and not having their residence information updated. These problems, while minor, must be considered in the selection of members if and when another citizens' assembly were to take place.

After the selection meetings between May 27 and July 5, members were called by the Chair to determine if any member had special needs, given a guide book that told them about the process of the Assembly and rules about expenses and travel etc. as well as given summer reading material the first evidence that they were eager to learn. That material ranged from basic information about our parliamentary and party system to more advanced information about electoral systems. Members were offered articles...