Demand More From Your Government

Is our democracy still functioning?

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes it feels like the loudest minority groups, ones the government ideologically endorses, enjoy tremendous support. While others, like agriculture, feel forgotten. Or worse, disdained.

Farmers are only 2 percent of Canada’s population, right? So why, in a diverse country like Canada, or indeed anywhere else in the developed world, should farmers get any special treatment?

Why should governments care to develop policy that benefits such a small portion of the population? Why would government bother helping a group that makes zero difference in any elections?

This is a question that I hear and see frequently. Seems legitimate, doesn’t it? If you were in a business where your job is determined by votes, and a tiny, insignificant group has a problem, why should you care?

This belief is cynical and deeply flawed. And it highlights one of the greatest faults with our society today.

The Canadian Parliamentary Government System: How Does It Work?

In Canada, our government is operated by the Parliamentary system, as developed by Great Britain throughout the past millennium. In this style of governance, the executive and legislative branches of government are interconnected, with the head of government (the Prime Minister) being drawn from the legislative branch. The head of state (King Charles) is separate altogether, serving as a symbolic role.

Parliament is responsible for making laws, debating policies, and representing the interests of citizens. The government is formed by the party or coalition that has the majority in the lower house of Parliament (the House of Commons), which then forms a Cabinet responsible for various departments. The government can only remain in power if it maintains the confidence of the majority of the House.

We also have an “upper house” in Canada, called the Senate. These folks are appointed by the government, but once they’re there, they are allowed to remain as Senators until they retire or until age 75. They are to act as a chamber of “sober second thought” to review bills passed by the House of Commons, and are expected to act independently.

There are clearly some advantages to this system of government. It has, after all, been in existence in some form since the Magna Carta of 1215 in medieval England. It’s a quite stable form of government, decisions can be made efficiently, and there are clear lines of responsibility and accountability.

However, there are some downsides. There is a lack of effective checks and balances, which can lead to a concentration of power and the potential for authoritarian tendencies. Minorities are often poorly represented, as majority party thinking, or even coalitions, can dominate decision-making. The idea of the Senate is to counter that, but being that it’s an unelected position, it really isn’t accountable to the people.

Other democracies are similar in structure but do contain important differences. For example, the American federal republic system has more effective checks and balances on the power of the executive branch, but can struggle more to pass bills in what can be a deadlocked Congress and House of Representatives.

In any case, though, most democracies face the same problem: minority concerns are often ignored in the rush to secure votes.

A Broken System

“It is nothing strange that men, who think themselves unaccountable, should act unaccountably, and that all men would be unaccountable if they could.”

Cato’s Letters, as written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, 1720-23

The dream of democracy isn’t to be held hostage by majority mob rule, or the “tyranny of the majority”. In fact, our ancestors specifically sought to establish institutions that would protect minority rights and prevent the concentration of power, like a free press, the presence of multiple political parties, regular elections, an independent judiciary, constitutional limits, and the separation of the upper and lower houses. But are these truly working?

Our “free press” in Canada receives $595 million dollars from the federal government. A recent survey conducted by Statistics Canada found that less than a third of Canadians expressed a “good or great deal of confidence in media.” Only 23 percent of Canadians aged 25 to 34 responded as trusting the media. “Trust in Canada’s media has never been lower,” testified Peter Menzies, former Calgary Herald editor in chief. The perception of the majority of Canadians is that the media is acting in the government’s best interest.

“Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together: And it is the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them.”

Cato’s Letters, as written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, 1720-23

An unelected Senate already lacks accountability. But their behaviour over the last couple of months towards Bill C-234 is nothing short of atrocious. This bill was introduced to remove the federal carbon tax from natural gas and propane used on farms. Farmers across Canada use these fossil fuels to dry crops, heat their barns, and so on. Why exempt them? Because there are simply no viable alternatives and there are none on the horizon. Even the National Farmer’s Union, who is concerned with climate change more than most, was supportive of the bill. It swept through the House of Commons with support from all the opposition parties, and even a few Liberal Members of Parliament, too. It should have been a no-brainer to quickly pass through the Senate. But it wasn’t.

Certain Senators have played whatever political games they could to stop or destroy the bill in its original form. It’s extremely rare for amendments to be added to bills in their Third Reading in the Senate, but that’s exactly what happened, which substantially damaged the bill’s ability to reduce the impact of the carbon tax on farmers. And, worse, it now must go back to the House of Commons, where it can be delayed indefinitely, and likely will die on the Order Paper by the next election. This bill had strong bipartisan support in the House and was supported by virtually every single farm group in Canada. Why didn’t it pass? Political gamesmanship seems to be the only viable explanation. RealAgriculture did a great write-up on the ins and outs of the whole fiasco here.

Furthermore, there is an entire industry built up by the government of bureaucrats and agencies that are powerful political entities in their own right. Left unchecked, they make citizens small and corrupt interests large. The public sector has been the fastest growing labour force in Canada in recent years. This is a problem.

The checks our Parliamentary system was designed to have are not working. Our government has taken far too much power as well, often imposing its will on matters always considered to be provincial jurisdiction, like the carbon tax. Imposed on any provinces that didn’t develop their own carbon pricing scheme, the tax was at least, if nothing else, consistently applied. But with the recent carve-out for Atlantic Canada’s home heating oil energy usage, it’s clear that politics are driving their decisions. Other provinces, like Saskatchewan and Alberta, are now rightfully claiming that the carbon tax is being unfairly applied, and will stop collecting it for the feds. A war is coming.

I doubt this is a problem just here in Canada, either. In the United States, public trust in government is at an extreme low. In fact, it’s the lowest since polling started in 1958, as posted by the Pew Research Center. Fewer than 20 percent of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “most of the time”. For context, in the mid-1950’s, more than 75 percent trusted government to do the right thing most of the time.

Guard Your Freedom Jealously

People are seeing that their governments aren’t doing what is in the best interest of the public, but what’s best for the government itself. This needs to change. In 2012, there were forty-two liberal democracies in the world. In 2021, that number was down to thirty-four and continues to fall. Dictators don’t gain power through force – they are voted in. To quote Senator Amidala from Star Wars, “So this is how liberty dies. By thunderous applause.” A public that lacks faith in their governments to do the right thing, to do what is best for the country in the long term, is one at risk of losing the very liberty they once treasured.

Liberal democracies are not the natural state of humanity – they are a relatively recent development in our history. Guard your freedoms jealously and never assume those in power won’t use the tools you give them to erode your freedoms away.

Are There Any Solutions?

It’s easy to become cynical about corruption in government. It’s easy to assume politicians will always act in the best interests of their party, rather than they people they are elected to represent. It’s much harder to come up with real solutions to these problems. But they are out there.

Our government needs to stop funding media – and they need to stop asking for hand-outs and find a path to sustainable profitability. And it would be nice if the the media could stop calling anyone they don’t like “populist” or “far-right”. Populist means “support for the concerns of ordinary people.” The way the media has been using it suggests that the elite, educated political class needs to operate independently from the desires of the population. This condescending attitude is the reason populist politicians are coming about in the first place! Using degrading terms for anyone you disagree with will not endear your ideas to the other side.

Maybe it’s time to retire first-past-the-post elections and use ranked ballots instead. Our current system in Canada results in parties with less than a third of citizens supporting them winning elections. We have smaller parties, like the Green Party and the People’s Party of Canada, parties on opposite sides of the political spectrum, who struggle to acquire seats in the House, despite receiving almost as many votes as the Bloc Quebecois, who took 32 seats out of 338 in the last election. This doesn’t strike me as particularly fair.

Maybe it’s time to mix up our Members of Parliament in Ottawa and force them to sit beside members of the opposite party. This could humanize their ideological opponents. Anytime I’ve spent social time with individuals I disagree with, we always find common ground, in our families, in our dream of a better future for our children. We may disagree about how to get there, but at least we can talk to each other. Democracy only works if we talk to each other. And not in the blood-sport style of our often childish Question Period debates. I bet it would be tough to call someone names if they’re sitting right beside you. How can we ever figure out the answers to our biggest, most complex problems if we immediately eliminate half the ideas because they come from “the other side”?

We could make it a lot easier for normal people to get involved. Even local politics seems daunting. Provincial and federal politics is a lifetime career for many. How can you really understand normal people’s lives, or what it’s like to run a business, if all you’ve ever done is be a politician?

“Democracy doesn’t have to be an insider’s game.”

Teardown: rebuilding democracy from the ground up, by David meslin, 2019 (recommended read!)

Things will only get worse if we don’t change something. You can’t change human nature and its susceptibility towards corruption, but you can make people follow virtue as their interest. That’s the beauty of capitalism: the pursuit of wealth forces us to provide products and services to others to gain it. Laws should be designed and enforced to protect this, to encourage entrepreneurship and hold our government officials accountable. How many ethics violations has our federal government broken with seemingly no consequences?

Honestly, it comes down to you. Yes, you. And me. The largest elected “party” is the one of no voters. Too many of us are apathetic, uninterested, and assume the worst from our leaders. That needs to change if we want better governance.

Demand more from your government. Tell them to stop blindly following the will of their party and do what is right for the future of their country. And if you don’t like how it’s being done, run for office yourself, whether in local municipalities, school boards, commissions, or further up. Policy is made by those who show up. Be someone who shows up, even if only to vote.

Call me an idealist. Call it naivete. Either way is simply untrue. We can improve policy from our government. We can solve problems of more than just the majority. We just have to step up and believe in a brighter future.