A healthy democracy used to be taken for granted by many in the sector. Now the “democracy question” has seized some of the country’s largest foundations, charities, and civil society organizations, and momentum is building.
The threats are there, around every corner. The resiliency of Canada’s democracy and the democratic institutions on which we rely are being tested daily.
The threats come from south of the border with calls for secession from the president of the United States, amplified by his ambassador to Canada. They are there when Alberta separatists meet with U.S. State Department officials. They come from foreign actors making mischief, or much worse, with our elections or bad actors who post false, malicious claims on unregulated foreign social media platforms that trade in misinformation and disinformation.
Resilience is tested by the steady flow of social media where, it is often said, the drinking water and the sewer flow from the same tap; it is tested by the disappearance of the town square. Too much couch time with Netflix, not enough time interacting with real people. There is a deficit of trust in our politicians, our judicial system, our police . . . any institution that smacks of authority.
Warnings have come from the top. “At a time when democratic institutions are under pressure in many parts of the world, people are relying on those institutions more than ever,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner said in his annual spring news conference. “Here, too, our institutions are under pressure, as in many other jurisdictions in the world.” Specifically, Wagner was speaking about efforts to undermine trust in judges, but his message can be applied to all institutions in this country.
Some of this pressure is subtle, some overt. Researchers at McGill University’s Canadian Digital Media Research Network published a report on a network of 20 YouTube channels with nearly 40 million views featuring AI-generated avatars of Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Danielle Smith with voice actors reading scripts and showing maps with the Western provinces as US states, six months before Alberta voters decide whether they want to proceed to a referendum on separation.
Interest in democracy as stand-alone initiative grows
The philanthropic sector has taken notice. An issue that was rarely on the radar even 18 months ago has seized many of the country’s largest foundations, charities, and civil society organizations.
Niamh Leonard, executive director of the Montreal-based Euphrosine Foundation, was involved in fundraising efforts as chair of Apathy is Boring from 2015 to 2021. She found that funders were rarely interested in democracy as a stand-alone initiative and would offer support only because it intersected with other core programs they funded. “There were basically no foundations interested in democracy,” she says. “When I came into this position in December 2024, it was immediately clear that was no longer the case. It was clear there was momentum.”
Now that we are contending with very immediate threats . . . there is energy around coming up with informed and immediate solutions.
Niamh Leonard, Euphrosine Foundation
Lorne Johnson, vice-president of the Ivey Foundation, came to be involved because of Ivey’s concern about government getting things done – and his own personal passion. Ivey has drawn down its funding and will wind down at the end of 2027, but Johnson expects to continue his work on democracy. He was one of a small handful of participants on the original phone call that put this movement in motion last summer.
In the intervening year, he says, time has been spent trying to understand the issues and forces at play in the system and then deciding what can be done about it, individually or collectively.
Sabreena Delhon, CEO of the Samara Centre for Democracy, believes Canadians have realized that we have become complacent in protecting our democracy. “We don’t have a very coordinated or strategic response,” she says. “There are a lot of things that we have taken for granted. But now that we are contending with very immediate threats to our sovereignty and foreign interference in our democracy, there is energy around coming up with informed and immediate solutions, which is very encouraging.”
The challenges ahead
But with this momentum comes challenges. Can the sector collaborate and not work at cross-purposes? Can it cobble together a narrative around democracy – one that will find a larger audience – and do it a non-partisan way? How exactly do you get people off the couch and into the square? And, most importantly, how do you measure success?
Consensus is not needed, Johnson says. “I think philanthropy is at its best when we have a high-level framework that makes sense of what the issues and problems are for driving change and improving things,” he says. Once it’s known who is active in what space and what levers are available, “we retreat to our corners and do some granting,” he says.
It could undermine every charitable purpose we consider to be pretty straightforward today, if our democracy is lost.
Susan Manwaring, Miller Thomson
Jamison Steeve, president and CEO of the Metcalf Foundation, questioned whether 30 foundations committing $1 million each to democratic resilience work could make a dent without government involvement. That, however, does not diminish his commitment. “I think foundations are starting to recognize that the strength of our civic institutions, of civil discourse and democracy, might be a mission for which they are well suited to engage on. It’s a long-term, non-partisan issue,” he says. “No matter where you are in our sector, making sure that these elements of democracy are properly functioning is to our mutual benefit.”
Susan Manwaring, a leading counsel to charities at Miller Thomson, puts the potential chipping away at our democracy in blunt terms: “It could undermine every charitable purpose we consider to be pretty straightforward today, if our democracy is lost.” A healthy democracy underpins all work the sector is engaged with, she says.
Solutions to democratic backsliding
In testimony before the Parliamentary Committee on Procedures and House Affairs, Delhon, on behalf of Samara, presented some solutions to democratic backsliding, including a Canadian democracy endowment to invest in the “chronically underfunded civil society organizations” that are working to shore up democracy in this country. “This would serve as a permanent, non-partisan, arm’s-length funding mechanism that would help to sustainably support Canada’s civic resilience,” she said.
Delhon also said that, unlike in other global middle powers, civic education is badly underfunded across provinces and territories in this country. Canadians are missing an opportunity to be inoculated against grey-zone threats to our sovereignty and democracy. “Picture children in elementary school learning digital media literacy across subjects – from social studies to math,” she said. Without government help, she said, private philanthropy will set the terms of support for Canada’s democratic renewal, which risks fragmenting and distorting public-interest work, leaving it vulnerable to shifts in donor priorities and ideological filters. “More importantly, it limits the government’s ability to shape and scale strategic, evidence-based efforts to engage Canadians in a time of global disruption and domestic uncertainty.”
Exercising the democracy muscle
In spring 2025, two groups of foundations interested in democracy began having informal conversations. By the fall, they had merged. One group had been initiated by Allan Northcott, president of the Max Bell Foundation. Max Bell has been involved in public policy – and, by extension, democracy – for 25 years. But Northcott had read the literature on democratic degradation in other countries and realized there wasn’t a lot of work being done to fortify the foundation right here at home. “Democracy is a muscle that needs to be exercised, and I don’t think it’s a wise approach to just assume that the institutional forums we’ve had for decades can endure without change,” he said.
An informal grouping, Democracy Funders Canada, was formed, which included the Metcalf Foundation, Waltons Trust, the Euphrosine Foundation, the Ivey Foundation, the McConnell Foundation, and the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation. Some had long experience working in technology and accountability; others came to the issue through the lens of human rights; others had focused on democratic resilience, the survival of local news, or working to rebuild civic institutions. Civil-society organizations that had long been in the arena of democratic reform and resilience offered their expertise and efforts, including New Majority, Civix, the Democratic Engagement Exchange, the Samara Centre, and Apathy is Boring.
In April, civil society and foundation partners released the views of 58 organizations involved in democratic initiatives aiming to build “a broad, nonpartisan ecosystem of organizations that depend on democratic conditions, with a dedicated coordination entity at its centre.” That coalition, dubbed the Canadian Democracy Coalition, could “secure sustainable funding and shift Canada’s democratic culture from something people take for granted to something people actively maintain.”
The coalition’s report – sponsored by Euphrosine and the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, in partnership with New Majority, Apathy is Boring, the Democratic Engagement Exchange at Toronto Metropolitan University, the Centre for First Nations Governance, and the Simon Fraser University Centre for Dialogue – created an atlas of 151 organizations working on democracy across this country and offered an exhaustive study on how civil society believes democratic resilience work should proceed.
The need for the sector to find its voice – and its power
Not everyone wants to portray the problems with democracy as a “threat.”
The report stresses that the sector needs to better explain what it does for the Canadian public and craft a coherent narrative about what democracy work is and why it matters. A number of respondents said that rather than talking about threats, the sector would have better success in explaining why democracy holds together everything important to our society – the quality of our schools, community safety, and the responsiveness of our institutions. “Anti-democratic movements understand this connection intuitively and recruit accordingly,” the report states. “The democracy sector has not yet found language that does the same.”
One man who is not in the sector believes we are under threat and believes philanthropy and the civil sector are not speaking loudly enough about it. Charlie Angus, a long-time NDP member of Parliament, musician, and author, has toured the country speaking about threats to Canadian democracy from the south and other nefarious forces peddling disinformation and AI “slopaganda.”
In just over a year, since launching Meidas Canada Network and a Resistance Tour and Substack, Angus has published more than 385 essays, built a global Substack community of 77,500 readers, held 30 Resistance Tour events across the country, and built the Meidas Canada subscriber base to almost a quarter million. “Fighting fascism – it gets me up in the morning,” he says.
My advice: stand up and speak out. It falls to us to take control of our democratic future.
Charlie Angus, former MP
Angus believes the biggest threat is the rise of “gangster misinformation,” which has undermined confidence in public institutions and targeted democratic rights. “It’s a playbook that was beginning to work in Canada because there was a high degree of naïveté in Canada,” he says. “But I think Trump’s overt threat to us has dramatically changed the game. I didn’t necessarily think that would happen. I see a sense of determination from ordinary people wondering how we shore up our democracy and defend our democratic rights. There is a light in the dark that could become brighter if we hold to it.”
And that’s where philanthropy comes in. Angus believes the sector must find its voice and realize it has more power than it often believes it has. Being cautious at this point serves no one, he says. “My advice: stand up and speak out.” Nobody is coming to help us, Angus says. “It falls to us to take control of our democratic future.”
Delhon concurs. A sector that is often accused of being risk averse must understand that the biggest risk is to have no impact.
Democracy as a human rights issue
There are other ways to get to democratic resilience beyond forming coalitions. Maytree in Toronto has come at the question of democracy from a human rights perspective. “Our work is focused on protection of people’s economic and social rights,” Maytree president Elizabeth McIsaac says. “Democracy is not just getting people out to vote. The realization of human rights and the right to a democracy go hand in hand.”
Issues like poverty are key to democracy, McIsaac says, “because when people’s rights are not realized, they are unable to participate in that democracy. They are no longer valued and unable to participate. You can’t vote if you haven’t had breakfast or if you can’t read.”
So, Maytree funds programs like the Malvern Family Resource Centre in northeast Scarborough in a neighbourhood of high need. Participants in a program there are learning how to articulate on issues like education, housing, and transit and organize to “bring their voices forward.” They are learning how to delegate, have learned how to meet with elected officials, how to craft a policy brief, and how to organize with other groups to make a difference in their lives. Those who have graduated have written opinion pieces in local media.
You can’t vote if you haven’t had breakfast or if you can’t read.
Elizabeth McIsaac, Maytree
Maytree also offers a six-month public policy course for non-profit leaders wanting to advance “evidence-based” public policy solutions.
Her work often feels like an exercise in futility, McIsaac concedes. “But I also feel there is a bit of getting up every day and pushing at the systemic changes we know are needed. There’s no silver bullet.”
When the social safety net is threadbare, McIsaac says, Maytree keeps pushing at more threads to make it stronger so fewer people fall through. “You are building pieces to a system which will be more reliable, that you can point to and hold government to account on,” she says. “We’re in it for the long haul. It’s not a 12-month solution. But if we’re not doing the work, we’ll never get there. We have to keep lifting the threads to get there.”
Where does Canada stand vis-à-vis other democracies?
With all the attention paid to the cracks in the bricks of our democratic foundation, how strong is Canada’s democracy when measured against other nations?
The Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister organization to The Economist magazine, surveyed the strength of democracy in 167 nations and found a sliver of optimism. Its 2025 study of democracies found that nearly three-quarters of the countries surveyed held steady or slightly improved their democracy score in the past year. The study ranked Canada’s as the ninth-strongest democracy in the world. The United States was ranked 34th. Canada rose five places based on the strong turnout in last year’s election, something the authors of the study suggested might be a blip attributed to Donald Trump. The study ranked the United States a “flawed democracy,” because of Trump’s use of the military to quell protest, his efforts to redraw electoral maps, his attempts to muzzle the media, and the polarization of the US electorate.
Placing ninth is a long way from the podium. Other countries are working to repair their democracies, and Canada can take a cue from them. In the United States, the Democracy Funders Network generates research and reports to generate knowledge about democracy. Civitates is a pooled philanthropic fund in Europe, formed to combat misinformation, boost a free media, and push back against the rise of authoritarianism on the continent. Mannifera in Australia is a collective of funders fighting for a better democracy, and Brazil’s Pacto Pela Democracia was an inspiration for many of those involved in the effort here.
Hilary Pearson, the founding president of Philanthropic Foundations Canada, attended a one-day conference in Brussels convened by the King Baudouin Foundation, one of Europe’s largest public foundations. The event brought together Western Europe’s foundation and non-profit leaders, and the focus was on liberal democracies there under constant stress. “What we need in Canada is more urgency of action, and greater alignment of philanthropic efforts,” Pearson wrote in her blog. “We can learn from the Europeans who are already moving in this direction with a real firmness of purpose.”
The first steps to democratic engagement
That firmness of purpose can begin with small steps. Steeve’s Metcalf funds diverse projects, from theatres to ravines – all part of finding a more vibrant public square. There is democracy in going to the theatre, Steeve says. Watching a live performance is a shared experience, unlike the solo act of watching a streaming service at home. Ravines and parks can be public squares, adding to democracy because they promote human interaction, a key to democracy. “My favourite place in west Toronto is High Park when I am out for a run,” he says, “and I hear five or six different languages, and people who wouldn’t see each other in their daily life are mixing – so I envision a public square as some place where people who don’t usually bump into each other bump into each other.”
Delhon says democracy is not about being in Ottawa or running in elections or even voting. “Democracy is about how we relate to one another in our community and how we interact with one another. It’s about your local school or the public library and your neighbours.”
Others say the first steps to democratic engagement involve attending a neighbourhood meeting, reading about your community in local news, or even just talking about news at the dinner table.
The sector now has collaborative infrastructure. On democracy, that didn’t exist a year ago.
Niamh Leonard
It’s early, but ambitions are lofty among those in the sector seized by the democracy question. Some see in a burgeoning democratic movement an echo of the way the sector came together on the environmental front.
“The sector now has collaborative infrastructure,” Leonard says. “On democracy, that didn’t exist a year ago. I look to the environment as a place that philanthropy had to organize quite rapidly. Fifteen years ago, that collaboration between funders, civil society, and the climate sector were not what they are today. If you fast-forward 10 years, you will have the same thing on the democracy front.”
Johnson points to the establishment of Environment Funders Canada and the Clean Economy Fund, both of which brought funders together, and believes the sector could move more quickly on the question of democracy. “I think we’re actually going faster than those two efforts,” he says, “partly because we all learned the ropes of how to do that together through the climate and energy space. Many of the foundations are the same, and there is muscle memory still there from working in climate.”
