Home About Us Reports Research Paper 2002 Renewing Canadian Democracy Page 2

About Us

Reports

Research Paper

Citizen Engagement in Voting System Reform:
a plan for 21st century democratic renewal in Canada

“Renewing Canadian Democracy: Citizen Engagement in Voting System Reform” is a multi-phase partnership between Fair Vote Canada and the Law Commission of Canada to: 1) determine how Canadian citizens can become actively engaged in a civic process to learn about voting system reform, and 2) identify plain language educational materials for citizen engagement.

This program includes three projects. The first project was production and circulation of a paper “Renewing Canadian Democracy: Citizen Engagement in Voting System Reform - Lessons from Around the World” written by Dennis Pilon, an electoral reform expert from York University. The second project involved the convening of a Targeted Constituencies Forum on April 25-26, 2002. The forum brought together representatives from non-governmental organizations, academics, electoral reform experts and activists to discuss approaches to citizen engagement and deliberation on electoral reform. The proceedings of the forum were published in July 2002.

This paper is the third project, which builds on the information and input from the first two projects. The paper focuses on a proposed process for engaging Canadians in a learning, deliberation and decision-making process for voting system reform.