Countering the empathy deficit

The big issues of our time will only be solved by coming together in new ways

How do we know Canadians are disillusioned with political parties and elected leaders? People barely show up to vote anymore. We can find our way out of the current malaise by taking a page from our early democratic visionaries and, once again, pointing the way for the rest of Canada.

Last year Nova Scotia celebrated the 250th anniversary of one of its greatest innovations, the establishment of Canada’s first representative government. In year-long festivities that stretched across the country and over the Atlantic, the province took a deserved bow for long ago improving government-citizen relations.

With the laudable exceptions of expanding the right to vote to women, the Mi’kmaq, landowners, and others, however, there have been few groundbreaking democratic innovations since this trailblazing more than two centuries ago.

In the old days, the realization that everyone had a stake in each others’ future grew from knowing one another more personally than we do today. Much of our current understanding of the challenges others face comes through impersonal means: the media and the Internet.

U.S. President Obama speaks of an “empathy deficit” as one of the greatest challenges of our time—an inability to connect deeply with each others’ difficulties. This exists, in part, because we no longer personally hear each other’s stories or feel a deeper connection for each others’ difficulties.

The two principles of our pioneering forefathers were a belief that large groups of people are wiser than an elite few, and we are stronger when we support our common stake in each others’ future. Voting should not have been seen as an end game by itself, but rather as a means of pursuing loftier goals.

At one time—in church groups, political organizations, and civic groups—people from all social backgrounds came together to discuss their collective stake in their future. Through these groups they considered, in essence, what it meant to be their brothers’ keeper.

From these gatherings emerged important social innovations—a progressive tax system, public health, public education, and a social safety net. If these did not exist, would we today have the empathy needed to design them?

When I became the leader of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party in 2002, my first significant policy announcement proposed a realignment of the relationship between the Nova Scotia government and the citizens it served: citizen-centred democracy.

It sought to open the channels of communication between government and people between elections, to go beyond mere voting. It would bring together citizens to consider the choices facing government, through means now being tested in states around the world: citizen assemblies, citizen juries, town hall Cabinet meetings, and online chats with political leaders.

If the last six months have taught us anything, it is that world challenges are our challenges. The big issues of our time—poverty, justice, peace, the environment, and the economy—are not going to be solved by stale processes and dated “survival of the fittest” ideas. They will be resolved by our ability to come together in a collective way.

The potential for Atlantic Canadians to provide leadership is as strong today as it was 250 years ago. We have in this corner of the world a unique sense of decency, community, rootedness, and common purpose that can be an example for others.

What we need is to harness that potential. What we need is to connect to the principles that moved our ancestors to act. Let’s honour the legacy of democratic reformers. Let’s commit ourselves to pulling out of the quicksand of political cynicism, by finding reforms that reflect—in a modern context—that we are stronger and wiser when we work together.
 
Danny Graham, Q.C., is a special advisor to the law firm McInnes Cooper and a consultant to governments on strategic matters.