There is a major rise in far-right authoritarianism worldwide, and Canada is no exception. In Canada, this has recently taken the form of far-right anti-LGBTQ demonstrations—over 100 were held across the country in September of 2023, and 3 Conservative Premiers have passed new laws or policies restricting the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ people. Municipalities can and should act to protect their residents from authoritarian leaders. We’ve often seen municipalities lead progressive change, and municipal council resolutions can be effectively used to challenge conservative rhetoric.
This rise in authoritarianism is only possible because liberal democracy has increasingly failed to deliver what the majority of the population needs. The best way to challenge authoritarianism is through more and better democracy. With an election on the horizon for the Halifax Regional Municipality, now is a key time to assert the value of democracy over authoritarianism—and implement an ambitious program to deepen that democracy in our cities and neighborhoods.
There are many ways to work towards ensuring our communities are more robust democracies—from strengthening mechanisms for accountability, transparency, and information disclosure to more participatory governance for service users, to sharing decision-making powers, to public ownership.
Establish Democratic Assemblies: Municipalities could establish citizen assemblies or mini-publics. Fundamental differences exist between these more democratic forms of participation and public hearings where participants self-select. These more deliberative models aim to ensure that they are a more representative group, for example, if this is about renters, including a percentage that better includes them. These models often also include a learning phase, in which “participants can read balanced briefing materials and hear from and question expert and stakeholder witnesses.
Energy Democracy: There has been a 20 per cent increase worldwide in municipally owned energy companies, addressing emissions while reducing fees. While it may not be possible for municipalities to take on Nova Scotia Power, could municipalities not create new public energy companies that invest in energy efficiency projects and generate local solar and wind energy?
Participatory Budgeting: Participatory budgeting entails a power shift in which residents are provided with more budgetary information and are also given opportunities to consult and respond to priorities, perhaps through a survey or by presenting to Councils.
In 2013, HRM Councillor Waye Mason started using participatory budgeting for his district’s Capital Fund. The process allows non-profit organizations to pitch projects for funding for which residents in the district vote. The voting allows everyone in the district to participate—regardless of age or immigration/migrant status, for example—which engages those not allowed to vote in regular elections and have a say in their community.
Participatory budgeting could be incorporated into the larger municipal budget process for HRM, and it and other municipalities should “empower and support community members to design and convene participatory budgeting processes on their own terms.”
Strengthening Elections: Municipalities across Nova Scotia should be looking for opportunities to expand democratic functions within their municipal powers and advocating for them at the provincial and federal levels. An important example is ensuring permanent residents can vote in municipal elections. Funding should be invested towards strategies to increase engagement among youth in municipal elections (lowering the voting age to 16 is one example), as well as racialized minorities, persons with disabilities, and all those who have been under-represented in municipal elections.
Using an Intersectional Lens: Even decisions many would assume would be gender or otherwise neutral can negatively affect a particular group. As one town in Sweden learned, applying this lens to snow-clearing decisions reveals how such decisions can disproportionately impact women.
Nova Scotians spend 221 million hours providing unpaid care each year, and the vast majority of these caregivers are women. More women are likely walking on side streets to get to schools or child care centres. Snow-clearing decisions that do not prioritize clearing sidewalks can more obviously negatively affect women and persons with disabilities (more women have disabilities than men), those less likely to own a car and lower-income residents (women have higher poverty rates and are less likely to own cars), and new immigrants/migrants.
Using a gender intersectional lens must be accompanied by a commitment to change the status quo by implementing policies, programs, and decisions seeking to achieve equitable outcomes. To democratize decision-making, employing this lens must work towards explicitly including those who have not been the dominant or default decision-makers historically.
Communities need the capacity to engage and shape public policy to ensure meaningful, inclusive, and effective participation. We all could benefit from new ideas, more diverse voices, and different ways of thinking that make municipal policies and services more inclusive and evidence-based. To open more democratic spaces and ensure more people have a say in policy design, those who face barriers to participating must be supported in meaningful and concrete ways.
Recommendations:
Ensure that any planning, design or implementation reflects the intersectional diversity of a municipality’s individual, household and community service users' needs and priorities and meaningfully involves workers and service providers
Use a multiplicity of data that considers different identities and roles, including gender, disability, race, immigration status, and Indigeneity, when analyzing options and designing policies, programs, services and engagement.
Enhance the transparency and responsiveness of municipal budgets by instituting meaningfully participatory forms of resident involvement that are not merely hierarchical consultations
Provide more accessible information, with sufficient time to allow for participatory decision-making (especially during municipal budgeting processes) to ensure municipal decision-making needs are open and transparent
Adopt participatory budgeting for a significant enough portion of the budget
End contracting out of services because it moves power to for-profit operators and away from the public interest
Strengthen election finance rules to ensure there is no unfair advantage based on income or wealth status;
Allow permanent residents to vote in municipal elections and lower the voting age to 16.
