Read on Twitter
Mobilizing citizens and building morale: two capabilities gov seems to have lost or forgotten https://twitter.com/kbardeesy/status/1355886565134905346
And 50k+ Canadians who volunteered to assist with tasks like contact tracing early in the pandemic are still waiting to be called up.
My hunch is this is a capacity issue. Gov could send money more easily than build systems to coordinate volunteers. Two peace-time exceptions: Olympics and Syrian settlement. On the former, it’s been a decade and the systems and ppl are gone; the latter, highly decentralized.
In retrospect, it will be interesting to see if mass volunteerism, military draft or civil contingency committees were meaningful variables in forestalling illness, accelerating recovery, boosting morale, or perceptions of gov efficacy. Comparative politics PhD... Go!
