Democracy fades like smoke in the wind

Many Canadians are watching with alarm as democracy seems to be taking a beating around the world. The United States is experiencing aggressive attacks on the foundations of its democracy by its president and his cronies. In recent years other countries have elected leaders with little regard for democracy, in some places a hard-won democracy after years of tyranny. India has fallen to strongman rule, and China and Russia have known little else.

We may presume that our democracy is in good health but that would be naive. There are signs that our democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

• Provincial premiers are bandying about the Charter’s notwithstanding clause when they are thwarted, treating it like a “get out of jail” card rather than the tool of last resort it was intended to be. This makes a mockery of the Charter and its aim to protect people from the overreach or caprice of government officials.
• Politicians talk about courts being obstacles, and cleaning things up by appointing “like-minded” judges. Who then will hold them to account? Where can Canadians go to challenge injustice and corruption? Hobbling our system of justice doesn’t serve our democracy.
• Toronto city council has approved “bubble zones” around certain locales to prevent public protest. While the type of site being initially considered makes sense to some, this precedent of government deciding where protest may happen can be easily enlarged and turned against any opposition. Existing laws are in place to protect vulnerable sites: they need to be enforced. The right to protest is too central to democracy to be dictated by elected officials.
• The Toronto police union endorsed candidates in recent provincial and federal elections, an inappropriate activity for police. This not only puts a thumb on the scale but also creates political tensions if their candidates lose. The endorsements violate both the law and policing policy, yet neither the police service nor its governing board have taken any action.
• The Ontario premier interfered during an election campaign to slash the size of Toronto council, closed safe injection sites, ordered encampments in city parks cleared, and is removing (or threatening to remove) cycling paths approved by the City, all an overreach outside his jurisdiction, and mostly on personal whim.

Democracy Watch, Canada’s essential monitor of our democracy, consistently points out the ongoing disregard for laws and instruments that can give people transparency into government actions. Access to information requests that suffer long delays and produce heavily blacked-out documents, lobbying rules ignored or obscured by evasive behaviour, political party finance infractions which go unpunished, or whistleblowers sidelined or disabled: all erode our ability to monitor and improve the health of our democracy.

Majority governments often operate like dictatorships, with the premier or prime minister having iron control. They make arbitrary decisions based on their own views or wishes, like an absolute monarch. Party caucuses don’t usually hold them to account. Elected members of a governing party who do not sit in cabinet are members of the parliament or legislature, intended to be a moderating influence on the government. While they do not need to agree with opposition members, they need to be something other than “trained seals,” as they are sometimes described. They need to be able to represent their constituents and exercise their own judgment, rather than being directed by the government or being manipulated by appointments or other supports.

In most cases, Canada has legal frameworks to secure safety and security, and to support human rights. In too many cases, we fail to enforce those laws, letting transgressions go uncorrected and unpunished. Standards slip, and such slippery behaviour becomes normalized. It’s not that we lack police or regulators; it’s that those responsible often look the other way, act too slowly, or fail to follow through.

Canadians take pride in our long history of democratic government from even before Confederation. But as Alexis de Tocqueville warned nearly two centuries ago, democracies can be stymied by a network of complicated and conflicting rules and protocols which aren’t all that apparent to people, but put control firmly in the hands of the state. He called it “soft despotism.” Often the stymie isn’t intentional, but a matter of conflicting rules and differing loyalties or responsibilities, which can obscure the path forward.

There is also a reluctance to revisit and redesign existing programs and policies to ensure they meet today’s needs. The bar for making change is set too high; unless an overwhelmingly strong case is made, things stay the same, even when they clearly don’t work very well.

Canada is complacent, having had it relatively good for a long time. Our businesses are complacent, ignoring productivity as long as the enterprise makes them a good living. Our institutions are often complacent, relying on old ways even when the times call for new ones. Our governments are complacent, managing for today rather than building for tomorrow. They want to clear away obstacles so they can get things done, but then they don’t get anything done on pressing issues like housing or health care.

We are often like a farmer keeping the old truck running just enough to get the turnips home to feed the family, rather than refitting the truck to feed the neighbours too.

A new federal government is talking about more ambition in economics, finance, trade, and service to Canadians. They should have ambitions for our democracy too, creating new levels of transparency, accountability, and performance evaluation. A good way to begin is to apply a human rights lens, because when they see each Canadian as a rights holder, a key step is to let us know what they are doing, who has influence, and if goals are being achieved. Only with clear sightlines can we know we are being served.