Reinventing Canada

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s.

The distinguished journalist Anthony Westell believes that Canada needs
to be re-thought. The system does not work, and Quebec’s continuing
unhappiness is merely a symptom of the great national malaise that grips
us all. Our political system, based on the obsolete first-past-the-post
system, produces dysfunctional Parliaments that deny representation to
huge numbers of people. Our belief structures no longer hold the
populace. Central government is all but ineffective and certainly
obsolete. Westell’s is a rational cri de coeur, a call for change
before Canada flies apart.

But is Westell right? Not if you believe that only a strong central
government can preserve a Canadian nation in the face of the U.S. global
hegemony. Not if you believe that alternative forms of election are
likely to produce more, not less, division. Not if you believe that
representative government, for all its flaws, is infinitely better than
“direct democracy.” On this latter point, Westell argues that
because Canadians are better educated and better informed, direct
democracy is essential. One can doubt that Canadians today, the products
of a dreadful educational system, are better informed, for a start.
Moreover, direct democracy means hanging criminals or jailing them and
throwing away the key. It means banning guns and permitting abortion. It
means scrapping multiculturalism. The point is not that these positions
are right, merely that the popular majority will impose its will,
leaving a huge and unhappy minority. Where’s the improvement over what
we have now?

Democracy, the old saw goes, is a failure— except when it is compared
to all other systems of government. So too with Canada: a failure except
when it’s compared against almost all other nations. We should think
long and hard before we alter our flexible Constitution and political
system to suit the fads of the moment.