Conversations Are All We Have

Guest post by Leah Levac (bio)

I have a strong opinion about important conversations. I believe that they should be had, and that you should be invited to participate in and create them, whoever you are. I also believe that the only way to make sure conversations are actually important is by having them with people who wouldn’t normally talk together.

Last week at the Trudeau Foundation Annual Conference on Public Policy, my opinion about the importance of conversations, and about diverse participation in those conversations, was reinforced.

Dr. Mark Kingwell gave a keynote address on diverse cities, and discussed incivility as a problem facing our cities. He maintained, throughout his talk, that hope of achieving justice (which he referred to as ‘democracy’s gift’) is dependent on civility, primarily because important and productive conversations can only occur through civil discourse.

Last month, we (21inc.) started experimenting with ways to bring a wider range of participants to important conversations, and important conversations to more people. Moderated by Lisa Lane, four people – Ed Broadbent, Kelly Lamrock, David Alward, and I – chatted on video, unscripted, for about an hour. Clips of the conversation are now available.

For me, it was a remarkable experience; after all, it’s not every day you get to chat with Ed Broadbent. But it was remarkable for more reasons than that one. First, it was awesome that everyone agreed to participate. We need more people who hold positions of power to agree to participate – to really come to the table. Second, it was frank. Sure there was a bit of shiny political speak, but not much. Third, it was respectful, which is more than I can say for the Legislative Assembly, the work place for 2 of us (Kelly Lamrock and David Alward). Finally, it was enlightening, because it wasn’t rehearsed.

We were engaged in civil discourse, and so somehow, we’re a step ahead of where we were before our conversation took place. We talked about public engagement, about media’s coverage of politics, and about our antiquated democratic system. We talked about the importance of social welfare. We talked about government accountability. We talked about these things because they’re important to us. We talked about them on video so that if they’re important to you too, you can join us.

I hope that we, the New Brunswick ‘we’, can start to invest ourselves in more important conversations. Because conversations are all we have.