New Evaluation of Canada Assembly Shows Successes and Room for Improvement
FIDE - North America advances a democratic culture that is inclusive, responsive, deliberative and holds government accountable in between elections. Committed to a democratic process through narrative change, systems change and impactful citizens’ assemblies, FIDE – North America strengthens the deliberative community, advocates and raises awareness, provides technical guidance and builds capacity, develops independent case studies and best practices through a rigorous learning series. We hope you find this newsletter useful and informative. —Ansel Herz
In this newsletter, we’re excited to share the findings from the newest entry in our FIDE - North America Learning Series: an in-depth evaluation of the 2024 Victoria-Saanich citizens’ assembly (CA) on amalgamation.
The 90-page evaluation used qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the CA in the Victoria-Saanich region of British Columbia.
FIDE - North America produces these evaluations to build a common dataset on assemblies that can be used to make comparisons, identify patterns, and refine best practices.
This CA took place from September 2024 to April 2025 over eight sessions. Its mandate, from the two neighboring municipal governments of Victoria and Saanich, was to answer the question of whether they should amalgamate into one municipality.
To delve into the evaluation’s conclusions, we spoke to Miles Brackenbury, a FIDE - North America Lead Evaluation Fellow who is currently completing a Master's in Political Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
We also spoke to Pim Trommelen, FIDE - North America’s Learning Series Research Coordinator. An advisory board of political scientist Jane Mansbridge, Nick Vlahos of the National Civic League, researcher John Gastil, Yukon scholar Sarah McPhee-Knowles, and University of Birmingham scholar Nicole Curato advised on the report’s production.
Why Evaluate?
At FIDE - North America, we believe it is critical to rigorously evaluate the process and outcomes of citizens’ assemblies.
“We believe this is important because citizens assemblies are on the rise,” said Trommelen. “They are becoming a more popular way to get input from the public. But there are no good instruments to really measure what success means in a CA. Most assemblies are left to determine for themselves what went well or didn't.”
To complete the evaluation, Brackenbury conducted a baseline survey of the members at the beginning of the assembly, an endline survey at the conclusion, as well as interviews with members, implementors, and elected officials. He observed every session, he said, which “opened a new door in terms of understanding what was going on on the ground.”
Key Findings
Citizens’ assembly members want government to be responsive: 90% of members said the government should provide “written explanations as to why it accepts/rejects proposals”
Assembly chair and concierge services were highly effective in improving clarity and reducing turnover
80% of members felt the CA represented their community, but there are concerns about over-representation highly-educated members
81% of members wanted to hear more debate between experts during the learning phase of the assembly
45% of member survey respondents said their opinion changed significantly; 33 percent of respondents began the process with a position on amalgamation while 50 percent did not
Members want to see more public education campaigns about the assembly’s work
98% consensus was reached on final recommendations. Notably, a consensus was first reached during the discussion phase
Trust in citizens’ ability to discuss issues across differences increased by 12% after participating in the Assembly.
How did the assembly work?
Victoria and Saanich are two separate municipalities spanning within 2,300 square km (900 square miles) of Vancouver Island in British Columbia and serving about 460,000 people. A 2018 binding referendum garnered majority citizen support for the creation of a citizens’ assembly to explore amalgamating the two governments.
10,000 invitation letters were mailed to residents. 305 accepted the invitation, and out of those, 48 members were randomly selected. After eight sessions of deliberation, the assembly recommended amalgamation.
Strong process
Reflecting on the highlights of his research process, Brackenbury said “the deliberative process, buy-in, and reviews from the assembly members themselves were quite remarkable… People really sang the praise of the process and felt this is how decisions should be done.”
At a time when so many decisions are made unilaterally, it’s a stark contrast to what we see in the existing political system. People felt the process had strong integrity, which can’t always be said in other political arenas, Brackenbury found.
This is a huge credit to the Canadian nonprofit MassLBP, which operated the assembly. “We learned that having a good implementing team is crucial,” said Trommelen. “All the interviews and data suggests that MassLBP did a great job.”
Brackenbury found the experience “refreshing” and described the way people came together in the assembly’s final days to share how much it meant to them on an emotional level.
Questions on education and political leanings
Notably, one assembly member identified as “right-leaning” and dissented from the final consensus. Still, this assembly member said they felt their views had been heard, and came away impressed with the assembly process itself.
The endline survey showed that 58 percent of assembly members considered themselves left-leaning, 10.5 percent right-leaning, 21 percent centrist, and 10.5 percent unsure/other. The report notes that these results correspond with 2025 federal election data from the region. In other words, Victoria/Saanich itself is a left-learning area.
One area where the assembly’s makeup did not correspond with demographic data was educational level. Most assembly members were college educated, including many with graduate degrees, and the highly-educated were overrepresented compared with the wider population. Brackenbury speculates that it’s harder to reach people who work in the trades who are paid by the hour, given that members are required to commit entire days to the deliberations.
Education was not one of the demographic factors in the sortition (stratified random selection) process used to select the assembly members.
“Sortition is a tricky balance to strike because if you control for too many variables then you lose the value of the random selection,” Brackenbury observed. “But two areas this case study highlights that would be useful for future research is whether an [political] attitudinal variable and education should be included.”
“It needs to be further studied,” he added, “if assemblies are going to be representative and have external validity.”
This is particularly important as awareness of citizens’ assemblies grows and wider public legitimacy is crucial to their success.
Post-assembly, now what?
Members of the CA expressed a desire to see more assemblies established on local issues such as cost of living and homelessness, whereas elected officials are more comfortable with this process being an ad-hoc one-off occurrence.
As we have seen in some other instances, there is a gray area after the assembly concludes which can potentially diminish trust in the process. There was a lengthy gap between the assembly’s meetings and takeup of the recommendations by the political system, and in that time, some turnover in the ranks of the municipal councils.
The new council of Saanich was skeptical about whether the mandate of the assembly was properly applied. This took the wind out of the sails of the assembly members, Brackenbury said. It demonstrates “the importance of good communication and highlighted to me that the mandate could have been more clear.”
The assembly’s recommendations will now go to public referendum in fall 2026. Assembly members had recommended the authorities run a public information campaign about amalgamation, but officials balked at that idea. In response to his inquiries, Brackenbury received some communication as to their reasons why, but assembly members did not receive that feedback — even though they wanted those answers in writing.
“A lot of members felt there could have been more connection with government throughout the process,” Brackenbury said. “There's a need to have distance, but at the same time there's a need to have accountability.”
Consensus reached without a vote
Brackenbury observed that the assembly did not first require a voting phase in order to reach a firm consensus on its recommendation. “That highlighted that we can rethink how we do democracy and helped me reimagine my perspective about what a democracy can look like and the power of a CA, where space is more deliberative and less adversarial.”
At the end of the day, Brackenbury tried throughout the 90-page evaluation to “do justice to what I saw, which was a strong sense of community… it’s a bit messy, but you could see how everyone felt empowered.”
The full report can be found hFind previous evaluations in FIDE’s Learning series here, and stay tuned for future evaluations of assemblies in Boulder, Colorado and the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly!
First Public/Trust Webinar – Victoria/Saanich Citizens’ Assembly
Please join FIDE - North America for our first installment of our new webinar series: FIDE - North America Forum. This session, we will hear directly from Miles Brackenbury and Pim Trommelen about the findings from their independent evaluation, challenges, and lessons learned from the Victoria Saanich Citizens’ Assembly on Amalgamation.
Date: Thursday, October 30th
In case you missed it… our new Citizens’ Assemblies video - share widely!
The Bertelsmann Foundation and FIDE - North America have partnered to create a 5-minute explainer on how Citizens’ Assemblies work. The animated video is meant as a fun introduction to the concept for American audiences.
Marjan and Cole are in Brussels this week for Democracy R&D.
FIDE is leading two workshops at this gathering of international peers to gather feedback on the Theory of Change for Citizens’ Assemblies and its Learning Series.
On October 14, at the pre-meeting events, Marjan will speak at an event about Permanent Citizens’ Assemblies. The event, at the Brussels Parliament, will feature representatives from three permanent Belgian assemblies (Osbelgien, Brussels Parliament, and the Brussels Climate Assembly) talking about what has worked, what hasn’t, and what lessons can be carried forward. This event, organized by FIDE, will feature our FIDE - Europe colleague Dr. Nabila Abbas.
During Democracy R&D Day 1, we’ll convene a workshop on the Theory of Change (TOC). In September, we published a draft Theory of Change - developed in consultation with 18 North American organizations this summer - alongside a presentation at NCOC.
In Brussels, we’re aiming to gather more detailed feedback from colleagues. We’ll also be presenting our theory of change in the Democracy R&D poster hall!
On Day 2, we’re asking colleagues for feedback on our Learning Series. We’ll look at our learning questions, discuss our methodology, how we structure cases, and discuss what questions we should be asking. Our goal is to improve our Learning Series as we look ahead to case studies for Boulder Valley Community Assembly and the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly (and more!).
The search is over – Introducing Laurel Peyton, our new Innovation Fellow!
Meet Laurel Peyton, FIDE – North America’s new Innovation Fellow! Laurel is a senior at American University where she is pursuing a degree in International Studies with a minor in Spanish.
Previously, Laurel has worked in local government in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and she is currently a Research Fellow in the Futures of Democracy, Tech, & Human Rights Lab at American University.
At FIDE, Laurel contributes to communications strategy, designing visual content and campaigns that amplify our organization’s work on citizens’ assemblies. Her work ensures that FIDE’s research and global partnerships are communicated clearly and creatively to our audiences across North America.
Join our network
North America is a big place! Are you active in the space of deliberative democracy, or interested in bringing citizens’ assemblies to your community? Contact us at north.america@fidemocracy.org to let us know about your work and your goals.
Interested in contributing to the future of democracy? Contact us if you’d like to join a team of volunteers who are helping support FIDE’s programs.
We hope to see you at an event, whether in-person or virtual! For more, follow us on LinkedIn or join us over at our new account on Bluesky.
Until next time,
The FIDE - North America Team