[CivicAccess-discuss] Scassa review of the OGP IRM report blogpost

[Russell McOrmond]

A few quick thoughts..

Giving ePetitions a voice in tandem with paper isn't a big change, other
than potentially as a way to engage younger demographics with this type of
method of mentioning an issue to government.   That is a great thing.

As someone who has coordinated petitions my experience has been that age is
a larger divider than gender when trying to leverageing  paper petitions as
a "toe in the door" to more active participation in an issue.   This is
always how petitions should be seen: toe in the door.  While a form-letter
has to be tabled, there has never been a requirement for a parliamentary
petition to actually be "responded" to in any meaningful way.   The
petitions I've coordinated had government replies that simply repeated the
policies we were petitioning against, without acknowledging an
understanding of the issues we were presenting.

While it is true it would be better for more participation in democracy,
lets not for a moment confuse a small change in how petitions can be
presented as having much of an impact one way or the other on that larger
issue.  I also don't think lack of participation is a failure of government
as much as it is a failure of citizenry, so don't think changes in
government processes around petitions/consultations/etc  will make much of
a difference.  Now, if we want to move away from parliamentary processes to
educational policy....

I know it isn't politically correct to say this, but I have never believed
in artificial external manipulation of demographics.   If a given issue
happens to be dominated by a gender (male or female -- and I've seen both),
or dominated by an age, or dominated by a racial background, I don't
consider it helpful to artificially "balance" things.  I believe it causes
the opposite to what people think it does: people who are otherwise not as
strongly motivated by an issue being given a larger podium than they would
otherwise gain causes harm to whatever the issue happens to be. Ensuring
equal opportunity for participation is not the same as artificially
mandating demographics.
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