MASS Principal Peter MacLeod addressed a full house of senior public servants, speaking for one hour about our recent work.

During the course of his presentation, MacLeod talked about the origins of our approach to public participation, and some of the paradoxes of civic engagement.

"Increasingly, it's fair to think that the public is a phantom that haunts our political system. The public is portrayed as polarized, volatile, ill-informed and emotional and is used to buttress all kinds of political arguments. But the great surprise and distraction is that no matter how much we persist, the public doesn't exist. You can't touch the public or see the public, and you certainly can't appeal to it. Instead we're a society of individuals, families and communities who are capable of discerning public interest and common good. Rather than appealing to something that doesn't exist, governments have a role in creating with citizens the experience of public purpose. Lurking beneath any democratic deficit is a deeper public deficit — a shortage of positive public experience. The failure to think in experiential terms and our persistence with the mythology of a singular public degrades the privilege of citizenship and erodes confidence in our political system.

You can download a PDF of MacLeod's presentation here.