shockedcanadian
Diamond Member
- Aug 6, 2012
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Interesting article from a few months back. The author who has a fairly large profile in Canadian media is your standard talking head in Canada, he flip-flops and over the years he has been a big cheerleader for some political parties instead of criticism.
Ultimately he states that we are basically a democracy in optics but not substance. Even English politicians have more honour and character than our creepy system of centralized power. Men in the U.K resign rather than being insulted. In Canada, these people see a chance at being "an elite" while achieving nothing of substance.
I believe firmly if you have unaccountable agencies who can violate citizens rights at will, the term "democracy" means nothing more than "vote for one of the two options we present to you every election but don't expect any difference in your life or civil liberties".
www.theglobeandmail.com
Andrew Coyne is a columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is the author of a new book The Crisis of Canadian Democracy, from which this essay has been adapted.
Whatever their opinion of the result, Canadians might take some satisfaction from the recent election, if only for what did not happen. The paper balloting process once again worked without a hitch. No one challenged the legitimacy of the result. The victors did not vow revenge upon their enemies. Democracy may be in decline or in retreat elsewhere, notably in the United States, but in Canada it remains, as we perceive it, in relatively good health, a model for others to follow.
We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as one of the world’s great democracies. Didn’t the Economist Intelligence Unit, in its latest annual Democracy Index, rank us 14th among the world‘s democracies, one of only 25 “full democracies” around the world? Didn’t Freedom House rank us fifth in its annual Freedom in the World report, with a score of 39 out of 40 for “political rights”?
And it’s true: By many of the usual measures Canada is indeed an exemplary democracy. Our elections are free, in the sense that no adult citizen is prevented from voting or standing for office, and fair, in the sense that all ballots cast are counted accurately. Elections take place without significant voter intimidation or fraud. Power transfers peacefully. Corruption, if not unknown, is at least contained.
But this is setting the bar awfully low. The types of metrics that go into the EIU or Freedom House indices ought to be regarded as a bare minimum; that our elections are not actually fixed is hardly something to brag about. If the question is whether we observe the basic procedural formalities of democracy, Canada scores rather well. Measured in more substantive terms, however – whether elections are truly fair for all, whether Parliament genuinely holds government to account – things look very different.
Put simply, we do not live in the system we think we do. We have the form of a democracy but not the substance; the rituals but not the reality. Because we preserve the forms and rituals, people find it hard to accept how far the substance has been eaten away. But at some point the facts become unanswerable. Far from a democratic example to the world, our parliamentary system is in a state of advanced disrepair – so advanced it is debatable whether it should still be called a democracy.
The plain truth is that none of the institutions of our democracy work as intended, or as we imagine they do, or as they used to, or as they do elsewhere. Some are best described as having ceased to work at all. The rot has set in at every level, from the corrupt and chaotic process by which the parties choose their candidates and leaders, to the sordid fraternity hazings that are modern election campaigns, to the random distortions in representation imposed by our electoral system, to the many dysfunctions of our increasingly irrelevant House of Commons, to the almost total concentration of power in the office of the prime minister. While any one of these on its own might not trouble us unduly, their accumulated weight should.
The effect has been to invert all of the institutional relationships characteristic of a properly functioning parliamentary democracy. The government does not answer to the Commons so much as the Commons answers to the government; party leaders are not accountable to the members of Parliament in their caucus, but rather caucus is accountable to the leader; the prime minister is no longer a member of Cabinet so much as Cabinet has become an extension of the prime minister. And so on.
Ultimately he states that we are basically a democracy in optics but not substance. Even English politicians have more honour and character than our creepy system of centralized power. Men in the U.K resign rather than being insulted. In Canada, these people see a chance at being "an elite" while achieving nothing of substance.
I believe firmly if you have unaccountable agencies who can violate citizens rights at will, the term "democracy" means nothing more than "vote for one of the two options we present to you every election but don't expect any difference in your life or civil liberties".
Opinion: Canada has the form of democracy, but not the substance
Our parliamentary system is in a state of disrepair so advanced that it has lost much of its relevance
www.theglobeandmail.com
Andrew Coyne is a columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is the author of a new book The Crisis of Canadian Democracy, from which this essay has been adapted.
Whatever their opinion of the result, Canadians might take some satisfaction from the recent election, if only for what did not happen. The paper balloting process once again worked without a hitch. No one challenged the legitimacy of the result. The victors did not vow revenge upon their enemies. Democracy may be in decline or in retreat elsewhere, notably in the United States, but in Canada it remains, as we perceive it, in relatively good health, a model for others to follow.
We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as one of the world’s great democracies. Didn’t the Economist Intelligence Unit, in its latest annual Democracy Index, rank us 14th among the world‘s democracies, one of only 25 “full democracies” around the world? Didn’t Freedom House rank us fifth in its annual Freedom in the World report, with a score of 39 out of 40 for “political rights”?
And it’s true: By many of the usual measures Canada is indeed an exemplary democracy. Our elections are free, in the sense that no adult citizen is prevented from voting or standing for office, and fair, in the sense that all ballots cast are counted accurately. Elections take place without significant voter intimidation or fraud. Power transfers peacefully. Corruption, if not unknown, is at least contained.
But this is setting the bar awfully low. The types of metrics that go into the EIU or Freedom House indices ought to be regarded as a bare minimum; that our elections are not actually fixed is hardly something to brag about. If the question is whether we observe the basic procedural formalities of democracy, Canada scores rather well. Measured in more substantive terms, however – whether elections are truly fair for all, whether Parliament genuinely holds government to account – things look very different.
Put simply, we do not live in the system we think we do. We have the form of a democracy but not the substance; the rituals but not the reality. Because we preserve the forms and rituals, people find it hard to accept how far the substance has been eaten away. But at some point the facts become unanswerable. Far from a democratic example to the world, our parliamentary system is in a state of advanced disrepair – so advanced it is debatable whether it should still be called a democracy.
The plain truth is that none of the institutions of our democracy work as intended, or as we imagine they do, or as they used to, or as they do elsewhere. Some are best described as having ceased to work at all. The rot has set in at every level, from the corrupt and chaotic process by which the parties choose their candidates and leaders, to the sordid fraternity hazings that are modern election campaigns, to the random distortions in representation imposed by our electoral system, to the many dysfunctions of our increasingly irrelevant House of Commons, to the almost total concentration of power in the office of the prime minister. While any one of these on its own might not trouble us unduly, their accumulated weight should.
The effect has been to invert all of the institutional relationships characteristic of a properly functioning parliamentary democracy. The government does not answer to the Commons so much as the Commons answers to the government; party leaders are not accountable to the members of Parliament in their caucus, but rather caucus is accountable to the leader; the prime minister is no longer a member of Cabinet so much as Cabinet has become an extension of the prime minister. And so on.
