What is meaningful participation?

• Representational government (earn more seats based on percentage of votes received)

• Actively participating in government by contacting MLA/MP

We have one system of voting that requires you to act but what if you had an alternative?

• Would need to consider the issue of having multiple systems.

Do large groups like Greenpeace, for example, get more attention from elected officials?

• How large does the group have to be to get the attention of elected officials?

•      Even with large advocacy groups they are not being effective so what can we do to influence this?

·Maybe reduce the scale of constituency?

·Consider that maybe due to the existing system people do not feel their vote counts hence the apathy.

·Issue relates to people’s values and what they think is important.

Do we need to re-examine the election process?

·Look at the process of ‘first past the post’ election process.

·Do we have a have a ‘fair’ election process?

·What could be different?

·Maybe change representation based on votes.

·However, would have to consider the possible ‘slow’ down of the system.

Think about barriers to participation

• ·Time
•        Travel
• Shift work
• ·Etc…

Technology may help to address some of these barriers.