Does our society care enough about democracy to sustain it?

Consider the following.

Voter turn out in the last Provincial election only 25 to 30 percent (depending on your riding) of the population seemed to care. Sustained democracy demands greater participation than this.

Alberta elected so few opposition MLA’s that they don’t even qualify for the government funding necessary to operate meaningful opposition. In a sense Albertans have elected a dictatorship in that governance is not happening without adequate dialog.

With the advent of the Internet news is free, which is in turn is eliminating our traditional watch dog the Media. The Media is finding it more difficult to pay professional journalists act as our objective third party.

The Media that is thriving seems more like entertainment, focused not on the more difficult issues facing society but of the frivolous games of daily life. This is not bad in itself but we are missing a balance.

It seems that our society, having a sufficient enough standard of living, is being lulled into blind compliance not caring who or how we are governed as long as I have my piece of the pie. If my history serves me right bad things seemed to follow times similar to these.

So to answer the question do we care enough to sustain democracy and considering the above the answer would have to be no! In my opinion if society continues on this path we are in danger of losing democracy as our system of government.

It’s also my opinion that this is not acceptable. Changes need to be made. But there are glimpses of hope

A group of young tech savvy Canadians are holding a conference on Saturday October 17th up at the UofA. Called Changecamp it is trying to answer the question “How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?”

Here is a summary from their site explaining what they are about: “ChangeCamp addresses the demand for a renewed relationship among citizens and government. We seek to create connections, knowledge, tools and policies that drive transparency, civic engagement and democratic empowerment.”

Please visit their Changecamp website website to get further information and even register to participate.

As far as what we can do here in good old Spruce Grove, well I think we can start by attempting to improve voter turn out at the next election. I have started a topic called Voter Turn Out in the general section of our local-yokels forums so add your ideas as to how we can do this.