Maple Leaf Rag

Does Canada Matter?

Jeremy Lott from the May 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

The thing is, as Simpson makes clear, the Canadian way is no better, and it shows. Through the splintering of the Canadian right into two parties -- the squishy center-right Progressive Conservatives and the populist, mostly western Canadian Alliance -- Jean Chrétien's Liberal Party has won the last three elections in a walk. On its own, that might not be a bad thing, but Simpson highlights two related trends: the sharp decline in voter turnout and the increasing centralization of power in the hands of Prime Minister Chrétien.

Canada borrowed from Britain a nearly unfettered parliamentary democracy with a first-past-the-post voting system. That's a fancy way of saying that the party that wins the most districts can form a government. It also means that the winners are often determined not by a majority of the vote but by a plurality. In the last three elections, Liberals have gotten a vast majority of seats but never more than 42 percent of the votes. Electoral contests have been determined by who stayed home. In spite of this, the governments have claimed popular mandates and proceeded to "speak for Canadians" and pursue whatever policies they -- that is, Jean Chrétien -- pleased. With an appointed rather than elected senate, a near total control of federal appointments, the right to pick future Supreme Court justices and not have them subjected to ratification, and even the right to appoint his own ethics investigator, Chrétien has had the run of the house.

This amounts, as Simpson's title suggests, to a "friendly dictatorship" -- a dictatorship because one man controls everything and can only be unseated with great difficulty, a friendly one because that man hasn't done a horrible job and, with one famous exception, has refrained from throttling people. (The exception occurred in 1996, when he topped off an unsuccessful speech by attacking a protestor.)

Simpson even admits, using a rational choice model of voting, that decreased participation might make sense. Unlike his predecessors, Chrétien hasn't embarked on constitutional reform, hasn't tried to grab too much power from the provinces, has politely but firmly told his fellow Quebecers that the rest of the confederation isn't entirely beholden to them, has presided over a decent economy, and has even decided recently that taxes should be cut. For a Canadian prime minister, that's a sterling record. Why rock the boat?

But the unrepentant good government advocate in Simpson simply cannot let the matter drop at that. In his telling, the Canadian government "represents the entire citizenry." His high-watt verbiage tags the state as the "crucible for shaping the rights and responsibilities, duties and laws, priorities and challenges, values and aspirations -- in short, the overall framework of society." Seeing such an institution reduced in respect and importance is simply too painful for him to bear.

Simpson thus proposes a slate of reforms to get people voting again: a British-style civil service, an independently appointed ethics investigator, an elected senate with staggered terms, multiple-preference ballots to ensure majority support, campaign finance reform to shake off those dreaded special interests, and guaranteed representation for the First Nation aboriginals. But he ignores the one type of voting that has already seen a marked increase. Given the current state of Canada -- with its defensive culture, fossilized institutions, deferential habits, and ever-sliding Canadian dollar -- many Canucks, like Jeff Douglas, have been using a much more effective ballot: the one cast with their feet.

September 11 may have changed all this. In his book's most accidentally prophetic passage, Simpson laments that "there is no one, sweeping reform that can reverse the trends of disengagement overnight." A change of leadership, however, might shake things up. Or, failing that, "there could be an international crisis." The planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon instantly slowed the flow of people and trade across the Canadian-U.S. border. Canada plunged into its first recession in almost a decade, and the drop in gross domestic output between August and September was the worst since 1986.

Chrétien's Liberals fear the vengeance the Canadian electorate might exact on them if the recession is prolonged. This fear has led to a series of radical but seriously considered proposals, including a harmonization of Canadian and U.S. immigration laws, arresting the Canadian currency's fall by pegging it to the U.S. dollar, and having Canada's spies report to the U.S. authorities. The whole package would add up, in Commons Finance Chair Maurizio Bevilacqua's words, to "a truly integrated economic unit." The "unit" -- note the singular -- that he refers to is Canada and the U.S.

If this package of proposals does not get hobbled, watch for it, like free trade, to become the tail that wags the dog and bashes it against the walls. The Canadian identity already consists mostly of being America's kinder, gentler, poorer neighbor. That chafes, but it makes for occasional, hilarious bouts of resentment rather than for serious nationalistic impulses. With further integration, resentment may yet turn to something even more benign. The Canadians may even decide, ceteris paribus, to opt in. As one headline declared during the Jeff Douglas saga, "I am...moving to the U.S."