Participatory Democracy and Twitter
I was up late last night (not unusual for me lately) watching something kind of amazing unfold. The Alberta Legislature was debating a new version of their human rights legislation that included two major changes:
- on one end of the spectrum, the addition of sexual orientation to protected status'. Technically, this was just a gesture, as sexual orientation has been a protected status in common law for years due to being read in by the courts.
- on the other end, they added the rights of parents to remove their children from classes with content relating to religion, sexuality, and sexual orientation. A right that, by my understanding, was already present in the school act.

Now, Alberta's legislature is a perpetual majority government by the Progressive Conservative party, and that party is capable of essentially controlling all legislation that passes through the house. They really wanted the latter and seemed to think the former would be a good olive branch to prevent argument.

But that's all politics as usual. Simple background information. What happened last night was that somehow, people on twitter were rallied to watch the debate unfold over the streaming video the Alberta government provides of legislature proceedings. If it had just been people on there bitching and moaning, it also wouldn't have been very special.

But last night, there weren't just average citizens participating. There were actually MLAs on twitter discussing and debating with the twitter users. Granted, most of the MLAs participating were backbenchers or otherwise not taking direct part in the debate on the floor, but they were there and they were talking to the very people they represent while making law.

I know that there are people concerned at adding distractions to people on the floor of governing bodies, but I honestly think this should be encouraged. I couldn't help but think I was seeing some element of the future here, where people are moved closer to their representatives in government and able to influence them more directly. And anyone who's ever watched CPAN knows there's plenty of zoning out, reading magazines (one MLA last night was reading a magazine while the MLA next to him was debating), chattering, etc. If their time is going to be wasted, I'd rather it be wasted on us.

I do think the MLAs could stand to learn some of the twitter conventions a bit better. If they'd used hash tags, it would have been easier to follow their discussions. Also, if more of the left side of the house (Libs and NDP) had been on that would have been nice too. I'm a little shocked to see the Conservatives on the forefront of this trend.

If you want to read the discussion on twitter about bill 44, you can go here.