Youth Are Assembling: New Report Highlights Youth-Led Deliberative Democracy Across Canada

The Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University has documented deliberative youth assemblies emerging across Canada, including New Westminster's Community Advisory Assembly (the first standing deliberative body embedded in municipal decision-making with nearly 17% youth participation), Gen(Z)AI (a national initiative engaging youth on AI policy through regional forums and digital platforms), the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly (which presented recommendations to parliamentarians in the Senate Chamber), and University of Victoria student assemblies addressing campus challenges. These initiatives use civic lotteries for proportional representation, honoraria, and travel support to reduce barriers, expert learning opportunities, and structured small-group dialogues to create meaningful engagement with complex issues, including climate change, AI governance, and health crises. The assemblies demonstrate that treating youth as current civic participants rather than future stakeholders strengthens democratic processes and that long-term policy decisions benefit from intergenerational perspectives. This work advances NCDD's mission by modeling deliberative democracy approaches that address persistent barriers to youth participation, build civic skills and cross-generational connections, and produce policy-influencing recommendations that challenge assumptions about young people's capacity to engage in real-world decision-making on complex public issues.

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The Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University has released an overview of deliberative youth assemblies emerging across Canada, documenting how civic lotteries, honoraria, expert learning opportunities, and structured small-group dialogues are creating meaningful opportunities for young people to engage with complex public issues and shape decisions alongside peers and across generations. The report challenges assumptions that youth are too inexperienced to participate in real-world decision-making by highlighting initiatives engaging young Canadians on AI governance, urban planning, climate change, health crises, and democratic renewal through deliberative processes that address persistent barriers to youth participation. These assemblies represent a growing recognition that meaningful youth engagement requires investment in processes treating young people as partners in shaping collective futures rather than merely consulting them on predetermined agendas.

The overview documents four major initiatives demonstrating the breadth and depth of youth deliberation in Canada. New Westminster's Community Advisory Assembly represents the first standing deliberative body embedded directly into municipal decision-making, meeting monthly to develop recommendations on diverse city priorities with nearly 17 percent of its 2025-26 cohort aged 19 and under, including participants as young as 13. Gen(Z)AI brings youth together nationally to learn about AI implications for online harms and develop policy recommendations through layered engagement combining regional in-person forums with a national digital platform allowing broader participation beyond lottery-selected participants. The Canadian Youth Climate Assembly, Canada's first citizens' assembly focused on climate solutions, convened youth from across the country to develop policy recommendations that were presented to parliamentarians in the Canadian Senate Chamber in September, demonstrating growing legitimacy and policy influence of youth deliberative processes. At the University of Victoria, assemblies have engaged students on civility in public discourse, youth engagement in democracy, and reducing harms from toxic drugs, using civic lotteries to ensure equitable representation of students at different degree levels, international students, and on- and off-campus residents.

These initiatives demonstrate how deliberative democracy models create structured opportunities for youth to develop civic skills, build national and cross-generational connections, and engage deeply with policy complexity while producing recommendations that influence actual decision-making. By using civic lotteries to ensure proportional representation, reducing financial and logistical barriers through honoraria and travel support, creating learning opportunities with experts and policymakers, and facilitating small-group dialogues encouraging participation and consensus, these assemblies show that traditional consultation methods often fail to create the constructive, inclusive conversations necessary for addressing sensitive and contested issues. The Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue positions these examples as evidence that long-term policy decisions benefit from perspectives spanning generations and that treating youth as current civic participants rather than merely future stakeholders strengthens democratic processes.
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To learn more about deliberative assemblies empowering youth voice or to contact the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue consulting team, visit https://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/news/2026/youth-are-assembling.html