Menu

Engagement washing

June 8, 2026 By Democracy No Comments

Eroding democracy happens with a slow and persistent trickle of cynicism and mistrust of citizens by their governments. In this review of Democracy’s Second Act: Why Politics Needs the Public by Peter MacLeod and Richard Johnson, Kyle Wyatt reflects:

Democracy is not an idea, not a value, not a right; it’s a practice.” For far too long, citizens have been discouraged from that practice by duly elected governments on the left and the right?—?and by the civil servants and professional consultants in their employ. “Say as little as possible, as late as possible, in the most positive way possible,” they write of a general modus operandi that shapes Queen’s Park as much as it does Ottawa, Washington, London, and most other Western capitals. “It’s a defensive posture?—?useful for political survival, but corrosive to democratic understanding.”

Inevitably, MacLeod and Johnson argue, such corrosion will “slowly poison the democratic well,” leading to widespread cynicism, strongmen, and extremists?—?and to events like the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Populism, resentment, authoritarian nostalgia: These are not fringe forces. They flourish wherever people feel ignored, humiliated, or locked out.”

Every year I teach a course at SFU in Vancouver in the certificate program in Dialogue and Civic Engagement. Amongst the most assertive points I make is that inauthentic consultation and engagement is a betray of the promise of democracy, especially if you are working for government but also if you work in the corporate sector.

We are reaching the point where there is very little imagination in this field. The cult of efficiency and the brute impatience of powerful interests has deprived a generation of public engagement specialists from the knowledge and experience required to do this work right. What happens in its stead is performative consultation – engagement washing, I sometimes call it – and in my course I am certainly not afraid of pointing the fingers squarely at those that work at the frontlines of consultation. If you are actively engaged in this form of performative consultation you bear some personal and collective blame for why citizens are feeling disengaged and unrepresented at every level in Canadian governance.

The solutions are beyond us at the moment because the power that dictates what happens and what standards are applied to it are now writing legislation that essentially eliminates the requirements to meaningfully work with communities or interested groups in the pursuit of public policy initiatives. We are at a final chapter for this practice as neo-liberalism has pushed such engagement to the market. Unless you own a tangible interest in a project you really aren’t a stakeholder.

Perhaps what we need now are community investment coops that buy shares of major projects in order to influence them. Many First Nations are already doing this. It’s a cynical response to the problem but at this point it’s the most influential vector for engagement.

I’ll still teach the ideal because I hope people can find avenues of practice to develop these skills during this era while the public square is being auctioned off. But, inspiring examples aside, I’m not hopeful that the kind of meaningful engagement we built in the 1980s and 1990s will be sustained for much longer.