Why Canadian politics can’t be taken too seriously?

Political observers in Canada are in a state of smug unease.

Their pollsters claim that Canadians think the country’s “on the right track.” Separatism in the regions is acting dead. All the growing problems—demographic, economic, and environmental—are still looming, and if something controversial had to be done, a majority government is in place to do it decisively.

Nevertheless, year-end political conversations are laced with worry: why is talk in Ottawa so listless and boring? Where are the aggressive idealists with new ideas to shame the incrementalists? Why are young adults—who are extraordinarily worried about the future—so apathetic about the country’s political affairs? Why are there literally no promising, experienced, dangerous, or naive Canadians running openly for the leadership of Canada’s time-tested instrument of political innovation—the Liberal Party? 

The explanations of the moment are unimpressive. Canadian politicians are as “authentic” today as ever. The country’s majority prime minister dominates Ottawa but has no mind-numbing influence elsewhere. The housing market hasn’t collapsed; the middle class doesn’t feel much poorer. But, there are plenty of things going on elsewhere that scare Canadians.

Richard Gwyn, columnist and author of several great dramas about Canadian politics, offered a dangerously basic explanation in a Toronto Star column entitled “Much ado about nothing in Canadian Politics.” His picture of Canada’s politics was “destabilized” by the whisper of a retired Ottawa mandarin:

“While we were discussing some current issue he, once a senior deputy minister, remarked casually, “During all my years in the civil service, I never took Canadian politics the least seriously.”

“First came surprise. Then a certain annoyance at his blithe dismissal of an activity we’d both for so long treated as important (he outwardly).

“Afterwards came the uneasy thought that maybe he’d blurted out a truth as obvious as that of the small boy about the naked emperor parading past him.

“Does it in fact make the least difference to the way most Canadians live most of the time whether the government of the day is Conservative or Liberal or, maybe one year or other, New Democrat?”

Click on: www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1100889--gwyn-much-ado-about-nothing-in-canadian-politics

Gwyn goes on to outline the cozy constraints on Canada’s federation and concludes that its politics are merely “competent house-keeping.” Gwyn acknowledges that he’s probably always taken it all too seriously.

Actually, Gwyn just took Ottawa too seriously.

“Democratic politics is about choice.” Gwyn points out, “But if we have no politics, how can we make choices?”

Political choices only really matter, however, where there is political power. Democratic federal capitals exist, not to keep the people at a distance and build sophisticated bureaucracies, but to assemble enough power in one place to make a significant difference.

Young people today haven’t retreated back to the village square. Indeed, they are highly interested in global affairs and the politics of those capitals that hold real power. Ottawa doesn’t and, so, increasingly, it’s not their destination.

Half the battle to restore politics amongst Canada’s very political population is to acknowledge, as Gwyn nearly has, that the idea of a “strong central government” for Canada is a distraction—not because more power should go down to the provinces, but because Canadians have invested in the wrong capital.

Ottawa isn’t more powerful than the sum of Canada’s parts. Indeed, Canadians would individually have more influence on real power—and real choices—if they were full-fledged citizens of a North American federation.

Canada Day can’t be like Independence Day

It’s not modesty or a reluctance to spend money on smoke and mirrors that makes Canada Day less interesting and less impressive than America’s Fourth of July.

Independence Day celebrates those who signed a declaration of independence—a piece of evidence that in 1776 could have sent its authors to a British gallows.  Canada Day marks the passage of a British statute to federate the administration of five of its North American colonies.

Canadians are easily as smug about modern Canada on the First of July as Americans are proud of their past glories on the Fourth of July. On Canada Day, however, we can’t literally—and generally don’t—talk about being independent. We see Canada as an ideal place to live. Boasting about being a “beacon of liberty” is strictly American practice. Besides, we are no such thing.

For those of us who take our liberal values to heart, there is something bittersweet about Canada’s national anniversary. It’s like celebrating the birthday of a healthy, law-abiding, gainfully employed thirty-year-old son who still lives at home.

It is said by almost every Canadian political analyst that Canadians have absolutely no appetite to bother to reform their constitution. Look at what they live with: a British head of state, an unelected Senate, and no formal process to check the prime minister’s power to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court—the arbiter of our constitutional rights. We turn out to vote, just like Americans, even though only one of our governing institutions is elected by the people.

Allan Fotheringham, a cosmopolitan and distinctly Canadian writer, expressed his embarrassment in a column entitled “When Will Canada Grow Up?” He concentrates his fire on the monarchy and concludes on a nearly optimistic note:

“Canadians only lack one political leader with the courage to cut the irrelevant ties to Mother England. When will this immature, silly country eventually grow up? Not for a while.”

Click on: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1015810--when-will-canada-grow-up

Unfortunately, the problem is bigger than timid leadership and the influence of British loyalists.

Canada has a prime minister who now wants to democratize the Senate. He’s stirred almost no active grassroots support. Indeed, appointed Senators, political opponents, and premiers in every region seem completely free to distain the idea. Polls have shown for years that the monarchy is little understood or appreciated by a majority of Canadians from every region. Yet it persists unchallenged, from sea to sea. 

Is it possible that Canadians are generally happy about living in a less than mature democracy? Like the art of bonsai, has Canada’s democracy been so cleverly managed, so constrained for so long that it is destined to never be more than a houseplant?   

Online voting and renewing our democracy

It makes sense for Canadian opposition politicians to make democratic renewal an issue. If they were happy with the way the people expressed themselves in the last election just 2.5 years ago we wouldn’t be in the midst of another election now. Furthermore, compared to best practices elsewhere, democracy in Canada is incomplete: one legislative body doesn’t answer to the people and, for over a decade, voters in Canada’s three growing provinces have been significantly underrepresented in the elected House of Commons.

Yet, in its platform “Respecting and Renewing our Democracy,” the Liberal Party is silent on structural reforms that would literally give the people more power; instead, it concentrates on improving voter turnout by making it easier to vote.

“It is time to harness its power to bring electoral participation closer to citizens. A Liberal government will direct Elections Canada to develop an online voting option, starting with a pilot project for individuals serving overseas in the Canadian Armed Forces and the federal public service, and post-secondary students living outside their home ridings. The pilot will support a broader discussion with Canadians about an online voting option for every voter.”

Click on: http://www.liberal.ca/platform/bringing-canadians-together/respecting-renewing-democracy/

No one wants to look uncharitable and reactionary or opposed to experiments, but some gimmicks are bad ideas in their own right.

People can bank, gamble and bankrupt themselves online, on secure sites. There’s nothing especially innovative about voting online as well. In limited circumstances it might make sense. The broader rationale, however, should be debated.

If physical inconvenience was a deciding factor in voter turn-out, why are the least fit three times more likely to vote than the young?  More important, is it really a step forward to make it almost effortless to vote? Will boiling down the task to nanoseconds on a keyboard make it look more important to those who don’t care now? Finally, is a nanosecond all that a democracy needs from its citizens?

The most discouraging, difficult—and important—task in exercising our franchise is deciding who to vote for – something that is easy to avoid, even during the three hours employers are required to give us in order to vote. Walking or driving to the polling station, however, creates its own sense of urgency and challenges the brain to ponder its civic responsibility and what we hope our politicians will achieve.

Furthermore, going to the polls is a moving social occasion. It forces us to think about what we are there, with others, to do. Sitting at a computer in a sweat-suit playing with a software program from Elections Canada or the CBC’s Vote Compass simply isn’t good enough.

  

Stephen Harper’s temperament as an election issue

If there is going to be another national election in Canada this spring, the precipitating issue will be personal: a majority of members of parliament will think they can sell the argument to voters that Stephen Harper is an intolerable menace to Canada’s democracy.

Slipping back as a leading democracy is an alarming idea and should excite attention. This is a practical and, to some extent, a measurable issue. A real brute would quickly divide the country and, as a threat to national unity, would have to be removed.

Not to spoil the fun, however, but as a charge by one set of politicians against another, it should pass a pretty high threshold. The Speaker of the House of Commons and the courts are available to find Harper guilty of unlawfully undemocratic behavior. The opposition must do better than suggest they’d be better and nicer in the job. Surely, they must convince a working majority of voters that Harper’s government is undermining the checks and balances in our democratic system and demoralizing the democratic temperament of the country.

Historically, the charge seems far-fetched. Harper holds the Canadian record as the longest-serving minority prime minister. In other words, he has held power as a relatively weak leader longer than anyone else. He may look like a wax bully, but he’s survived by working within the humbling limits of his mandate.

His lousy batting average as a legislator was grimly documented by Ned Franks, a retired professor of political studies at Queens University:

“Mr. Franks’ research, which spans from 1945 to 2008, found that Mr. Harper’s first government, from 2006 to 2008, had a “batting average” of just 52.6% — the worst record of any prime minister, save for Joe Clark, whose tenure lasted less than a year.”

Click on: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/03/11/zombie-bills-what-happens-to-legislation-killed-by-elections/

Has Harper’s style made intergovernmental relations worse? Has he shown no ability to negotiate with other leaders? His record seems a net positive so far. He secured an agreement to extend Canada’s participation in an unpopular foreign war, is in active border negotiations with President Obama, and secured a joint Canada-Ontario-US initiative to save General Motors and Chrysler. His reform of the equalization formula infuriated the premier of Newfoundland & Labrador Danny Williams. However, for the first time since the conscription crisis on World War Two, national unity today is not an active political issue in Quebec or in the West.

We’re told that Harper is a cold SOB of a boss. And Liberals reminisce with unaffected emotion about how they liked to work with “civilized” Conservatives when they were in opposition. Then they were idealists; then they spoke their own minds; and, of course, then they had crazy ideas about dinosaurs and men roaming the prairies.

The appeal of a brainy politician in opposition is easier to take than that of one in office—especially one without the safety net of a parliamentary majority. However, our most successful modern prime ministers—Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien—were tough administrators and Liberal icons.

Temperament isn’t irrelevant, but competence allows us to make amends.

Trudeau secured a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Chretien held the country together through another Quebec referendum. Harper, thus far at least, has led other leaders in trying to democratize the Canadian Senate, involving the House of Commons in the deployment of Canadian forces abroad, and securing greater transparency in the appointment of the Governor General and members of the Supreme Court.

Harper may want to take Canada to a place millions would rather not go. But, democracy itself is evidently not at stake.

Spare America our tears on November 2 election night

Two years ago, Canadians secretly found themselves envying Americans, who were lining up at polling stations to make history—while we watched.  Today, we’re free of that. Through the dead of winter, many will be indulging in our safest sport: thrilling at the decadence of American democracy and purring about how we grew up so straight and sure.

After the mid-term congressional elections, Canadian border watchers and embattled American Democrats will titillate us with grim scenarios about our neighbour and pronouncements about the superior Canadian ways of doing politics. Other than silence and hockey, there are a few points that we could keep at hand to protect one’s sanity and hold up the case for change in Canada.

(1) American democracy is loud, expensive, and unpredictable. However, each American party is open. Their candidates and leaders must first win the votes of grassroots partisans and mediocre incumbents face their own parties as well as the electorate. Canadian parties don’t have primaries. (Our incumbent Liberal leader won his job at an uncontested leadership convention.)

(2) The constitutional checks and balances in the US legislative system lead to delay and compromise on major strategic issues. However, during the last two years, the US Congress passed a universal health care package far more expensive and intrusive than the Canada Health Care Act. And it launched a stimulus package that ensured the prompt end of the recession in the US and, to a great extent, its end in Canada and in other major American importing nations.

(3) American dominance of the world economy is over so Canada should chart its own course with those emerging powers that will drive the future. However, the United States is diversifying its exports as fast as we are and has the means to be a winning trader in the future. It is the home of three-quarters of the Nobel Prize winners in science. And its manufacturing sector remains nearly one-quarter more productive than ours. Americans are reluctant to pay higher taxes, but they do have the means—substantially higher incomes—to pay for new infrastructure and other national objectives, when they choose.

When our side wins, we celebrate the resiliency and idealism of American democracy. When our side loses, some of us wonder whether the paler democracies of Europe had it right. Whether Canadian democracy further evolves along more populist American lines or not, we should not delude ourselves about our neighbour: it will carry on arguing and engaging the future as a demanding, classical liberal, mass democracy.