Canada's Shrinking Democracy Water Hole

 

 

What’s odd is that Canadian default values, according to Ekos, haven’t really shifted to the right and the prime minister and his government really don’t represent the country’s defining political and ideological beliefs.

 

What has happened, first, is that the overwhelming majority of Canadians under age 45 have stopped voting — not out of apathy as far as anyone can tell, but because they simply don’t see their political agendas mirrored in the agendas of Parliament and the provincial and territorial legislatures. How democratic is a country where most citizens below the median age don’t vote? Canada has become a country governed by a gerontocratic minority.

 

Call it the Tragedy of the House of Commons.  There's little point in placing blame with some arbitrary other - we're all in glass houses.  We've dug this democratic deficit together.  Together's the only way out of it.

 

The leader(s) who inspire Canadians to stop finger-pointing and start communicating, planning and building together as a society will find a country ready to believe again.