Control in Crisis: Coronavirus & the Need for Canadian Political Engagement

COVID-19 is reminding Canadians that governments matter. A lot.

A deadly virus is highlighting the importance of public healthcare. An economic crisis is highlighting the importance of government financial assistance. Uncertainty is highlighting the importance of centralized coordination. 

Faced with pandemic, poverty, and panic, Canadians are turning to their governments en masse. Website traffic gives a sense of the surge:

So far, Canada’s governments are delivering. Hospitals are mobilized. Social distancing guidelines are clear. The COVID Emergency Response Benefit and Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy are creating a safety net for people and business as money stops flowing. 

The response has by no means been perfect. Early failure to act decisively will cost lives and prolong recovery. Compliance with social distancing got off to a shaky start. Hospitals face serious PPE shortages. Still, most Canadians seem to understand that managing a pandemic is hard and appreciate the actions being taken, with polls suggesting that relationships with all levels of government have improved dramatically through the crisis so far. 

And so the narrative of the past month is this: Crisis strikes. Canadians turn to their governments. Governments rise to the occasion. Their importance is reaffirmed in the hearts of an appreciative populous.

While this story is happy, it highlights the urgency of a worrying trend. 

Asked about local governments, 66% of Canadians don’t feel they can influence direction or decision making. Federally, a leap in support for electoral reform suggests similar frustration with inadequate representation. In 2016, less than half the country felt this way - today 2/3rds do. In fact, the majority of Canadians in every province and political party now support electoral reform. 

COVID-19 has left no doubt about the critical importance of our governments, but if we can’t influence our governments, that importance is terrifying. Increasingly, Canadians don’t feel they have control over what their governments are doing.

Increasingly, they’re right.

Canadians are losing control

Not because it is being taken from them, but because they are giving it up. 

Governments in Canada are representative democracies, meaning that decisions are made by elected representatives rather than citizens directly. As such, Canadians need to vote for, engage with, and influence elected representatives to control what their governments do. With few exceptions, these types of civic engagement are on the decline. 

Voter turnout has been dropping since the 1960’s, with the hint of a turnaround in the 2015 federal election muted by a drop in 2019. 

While the rate of participation in groups and organizations has stayed flat at 65%, not all civic engagement is created equal. Participation in groups with low levels of political influence like sports teams and hobby clubs has grown or remained steady.

Whereas groups with medium and high levels of political influence - churches, service clubs, unions, community associations, and political parties - have, without exception, seen a drop. 

Canadians who used to play in a rec league and chair the Parent Teacher Association now just stick to the soccer field. 

Examining direct participation in political activities reveals another insight. Owing largely to the internet, Canadians are doing more to get informed than ever before. The biggest change in the survey period was a 10 point increase in the percentage of Canadians who had sought out information on a political issue in the last 12 months. 

Unfortunately, being politically informed has not translated into taking political action. A slight uplift observed in petition signing and protest is more than offset by drops in product boycotting, contacting politicians and media, speaking at public meetings, and political party volunteering. 

Overall, the direction is clear - Canadians are participating in their democracies less and less, giving up political control by choosing to abstain from political processes. 

And ceding control has consequences. Especially in times of crisis. 

Control in crisis

In the 1950’s, two British economists described the Ratchet Effect, a model to explain government growth in times of crisis. It looks like this:

A crisis strikes. Justified by a need to act quickly and decisively, the government grows its size - spending more money, increasing the scope of its control, reducing checks and balances. These powers are used to address the crisis. The crisis ends. Some, but not all, of the powers are relinquished. 

The result is a permanent change in the government’s size. Two steps towards emergency power, but only one step back. 

The truth of this model is borne out by history. In Canada, Personal Income Tax was a temporary measure to fund the war effort. It is still in place today, generating half of federal government revenues. While taxation has merits that can be debated, some expansion is more black and white. This year, Trump’s public assassination of an Iranian military leader was done without Congress approval. Instead, it was justified under the broad authorization to use military force granted almost 2 decades ago in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. 

For the latest Ratchet Effect example, check the news. We’re in the heat of the COVID crisis’s expansion phase.

Public gatherings are banned across Canada. If you and I want to get within 2 metres of one another, we can be fined or sent to prison. New Jersey police are deploying drones around the city that blare orders to “stop gathering, disperse, and go home”. Taiwan is tracking its citizens via cell phone to enforce quarantine compliance. Canada has refused to rule out doing the same. One sentence captures the dilemma in all of these measures: 

The power governments demand to save our lives can often be used to control them. 

Authoritarian states emerge in times of crisis. Evidence points towards a few being spawned from Coronavirus already. We can do our best to limit expansion, but it’s hard to know where the line is and, during a crisis, things slip through the cracks.

What’s crystal clear is the need to make sure powers granted in an emergency are temporary. To do all we can to ensure the retrenchment phase of the Ratchet Effect, the post-crisis shrinking of government influence, is as complete as possible. 

That’s where civic participation comes in. 

There are two explanations for why government power does not return to pre-crisis levels after a crisis ends. First, is the challenge of removing the ‘hard residues’ of government expansion - administrative agencies, new laws, personal data collection and other crisis-spawned institutions that require effort and formal processes to dismantle.

Second, are the ‘soft residues’. The changes in the hearts and minds of citizens. People simply get used to expanded government power and are less likely to demand its reversal or oppose future power grabs.

In a representative democracy like Canada, civic participation is not just our only means of limiting unnecessary power expansion, but our only defense against the soft and hard residues that make that expansion permanent. Only a politically active populace stands to exert the influence required - that’s what makes our waning engagement so worrying. 

This is where you & I play a role. 

The upside to engagement

The dismal statistics on political engagement are not observations of some natural phenomenon. They are a measurement of what Canadians, like you and me, are and aren’t doing. 

As such, it’s on us to step up and do something. Fortunately, stepping up isn’t just about avoiding power grabs. Most engagement is about influencing a force for social change that dwarfs that of corporations and nonprofits. If you’ve ever expressed the desire to “make a difference” government engagement should be a priority. 

This doesn’t fit with today’s popular narrative around impact. We hear a lot more about the social impact activities of for-profit businesses than those of governments. The explanation is simple. Businesses pay for you to hear stories of corporate good as part of their marketing. Proportionally, Governments spend far less on promotion.

Don’t be fooled. Governments command immense resources. Comparing the top budget lines of the biggest governments, the biggest business, and the biggest nonprofit in Canada gives a sense of scale:

But top line doesn’t tell the whole story. The resources businesses can allocate are limited by a paradigm that values shareholder returns above all else - while progress is being made to change this in Canada, social causes still cannot jeopardize profitability. Nonprofits are famously resource constrained. And, while governments can prioritize social causes, their resources must be divided up to serve society’s many needs. 

Let’s refine the comparison with an apples-to-apples look at a cause all our listed groups support: access to post-secondary education.

The federal government provides Canada Student Grants. Ontario provides grants via OSAP. For Brookfield we’ll consider both corporate giving - donations to colleges & universities by the company’s charitable arm, Brookfield Partners Foundation - and private philanthropy - the Brookfield Peter F. Bronfman scholarships. The University of Toronto will be measured by the total value of the admission scholarships it awards. 

The results are staggering:

This is not to put down the good done by nonprofits or for-profit social impact initiatives, both of which play critical societal roles. It's just to highlight an often overlooked fact:

Government resources can make or break a cause. Ongoing civic engagement is what moves causes up the government’s priority list. It’s also what prevents the seizure of power during crises. 

Civic engagement is how you capture the upside of government power and prevent the downside. So, how do you do it?

How to achieve ends & influence people

Some people dedicate their lives to government. Most don’t.

So for the most of us, I propose three actions to manageably incorporate civic participation into your life. To exert the most political influence in a reasonable amount of time and effort. 

1. Choose what you care about

Caring about government does not require you to care about anything new - there are things you already care deeply about that governments have power over.

Commit to influencing one of them. 

Once you’ve picked your issue, make it actionable. Identify which level of government - federal, provincial, or municipal - has jurisdiction. Set up a Google Alert for (i) the name of the ministry or office responsible for that issue and (ii) the name of the elected official that manages it. Staying up to date and identifying key opportunities for influence is now effortless.  

2. Join a political party

It’s important to understand that becoming a member of a party does not create any obligation to vote for that party. Membership doesn’t even require an endorsement of party views. What membership does is grant you the power to influence which policies and which candidates will be put forward come election time.  

Feel that a leadership candidate for a party you dislike will be toxic for Canadian politics? Join the party and vote against them. Feel that none of the parties have a strong enough stance on your key issue? Join one and advocate for inclusion of a stronger stance in their platform.

Joining a party is not about showing what choice you will make on election day, it’s about influencing the choices available to you. 

3. Cast votes & send notes

If you want to influence decisions, influence decision makers. In a representative democracy, the decision makers are elected officials - MPs, MPPs, and city councillors. 

Voting is the direct mechanism by which you can influence who these decision makers are. When election day comes, show up and cast your ballot.

Written correspondence is a direct and efficient method for influencing government decision makers. Look up your representatives. When you see something you want changed or get an alert on your chosen issue, send them an email or letter. Templates and guides make writing easy and messaging powerful. To take it to the next level, share your letter with friends as an example and ask them to write their own. 

Just three things. They’re quick. They’re simple. They can make a world of difference.

In conclusion...

Governments are important. In times of crisis, the power they wield is often the difference between life and death. In times of peace, the power they wield shapes the social fabric of our society. As citizens, we have a responsibility to hold governments accountable. To be active participants of our democracy. To determine whether we will be the beneficiaries of government power - or the victims of it. 

Today, we are shirking that responsibility. We feel we’re losing control and we’re right.

Let’s step up.

Choose a cause that matters deeply to you and use government to advance it. Don’t just pick between options, influence which options are available to you. Vote when you have the chance. When you have something to say, say it to the people making decisions.

Together, we can take the small steps towards civic engagement and reverse the trend of decline.

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Thanks for reading.