In a time when democracy feels increasingly at risk, Canadians need a way to understand how politics is playing out online.

The Samara Centre’s Democracy 360 report cards provide a broad and ongoing assessment of the state of Canada’s democratic culture. Democracy 360 combines quantifiable indicators, focused on three areas: communication, participation, and political leadership. Instead of asking Canadians their opinions on current events, policy issues, or political personalities, the public opinion surveys underpinning this research focus on enduring indicators of democratic health and vitality: whether Canadians get involved in political decisions that affect them, whether communication channels between elected leaders and those they represent are open and being used effectively, and whether the electorate believes that MPs and political parties are capable of looking out for their interests. Democracy 360 allows Canadians to compare and assess their democracy over time. First published in 2015, the Democracy 360 was published again in 2017 and 2019 to measure improvement or decline.

Bringing together insights from the study of difficult conversations and social media, as well as Samara Centre survey data, The Field Guide to Online Political Conversations examines what’s going wrong in online civic discussion, why it matters, what government action we should expect, and how citizens can change the nature of online political conversations.

The Samara Centre for Democracy has developed teaching resources to help educators across different spaces teach about active citizenship in Canada. These resources are designed to empower students (and learners from all walks of life) so they can evaluate and participate in strengthening Canadian democracy. These resources provide an accessible way to enhance curriculum and programming about Canadian politics and society.

Democracy Monitor looks at the profound effect that COVID-19 had on the functioning of Canada’s democracy. Various themes explored in this series include: how legislatures (federal, provincial and territorial) sought to adapt during the pandemic, digital contact tracing, hybrid virtual Parliament, and how Canada compared in emergency lawmaking with other Westminster Parliaments.

The MP Exit Interview project is the first ever systematic collection of interviews with former Parliamentarians in Canada. Since 2008, the Samara Centre for Democracy has interviewed over 160 former Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to learn more about the practice of politics in Canada. We continue to collect interviews on a rolling basis.

Online abuse is a barrier to civic engagement and active participation in our democracy. It can disrupt political conversations and even prevent people from entering politics. Our SAMbot project measures abusive content that candidates and political parties receive online during Canadian elections. We do this to illuminate the realities of abuse on the digital campaign trail and the barriers to civic engagement created by technology’s influence on our democratic culture.