Masters thesis — Dalhousie University, 2017. Full text: https://archive.org/details/gemmell-2017-federal-task-force-on-housing-and-urban-development-1968-1969
Public consultation doesn't fail in one way — the thesis gives a taxonomy (liberal, deliberative, radical, revolutionary) for diagnosing exactly which kind of participation a reform actually invited.
The 1969 Hellyer Task Force on Housing and Urban Development — launched during Trudeaumania's participatory-politics wave after a Canada-wide public consultation — blended "liberal" and "deliberative" types of participatory democracy in a four-part typology the thesis proposes; the differing political approaches of Paul Hellyer and Pierre Elliott Trudeau help explain the Cabinet's hostile reception of the report and Hellyer's resignation in April 1969.
Why it matters
Public consultation doesn't fail in one way — the thesis gives a taxonomy (liberal, deliberative, radical, revolutionary) for diagnosing exactly which kind of participation a reform actually invited.
Use when: When a consultation exercise collapses, ask which democracy it was practicing — Hellyer's task force asked for input in one register and was judged in another.
