The evolution of Canadian democracy

We shall have a lasting constitutional liberty, as opposed to democracy. John A. Macdonald, at the 1864 Quebec Conference that hammered out the framework of Confederation.

Macdonald was not alone. Many of our founding fathers opposed democracy. The great irony is that their resistance likely helped make Canada arguably the world’s best democracy.

In most of the century years from the fall of New France on the Plains of Abraham to Confederation, democracy was a weak weed in British North America. The British generals who came to rule as governors general were no democrats. They appointed allies to their advisory executive councils and helped secure elections of the like-minded to the largely powerless assemblies.

Those who governed preached British liberty and practiced aristocracy, comforted by Aristotle’s theories of government more than two thousand years earlier. Aristocratic government is undoubtedly splendid—splendid, that is, for aristocrats, who enjoy the perks, privileges, power, and wealth.

Canadian democracy ultimately prevailed but it is missing some features of U.S. democracy. For the most part, they are missed like one might miss not hav-ing a toothache or the mumps.
But make no mistake. Canadian democracy still has its flaws, it’s under pres-sure as it is everywhere, and a “democratic deficit” is widely assailed.

The autocrat of the Family Compact

At the apex of aristocratic rule was the notorious Family Compact, which oppressed, suppressed and exploited Upper Canada (Ontario) during most of the first four decades of the nineteenth century.

The Family Company’s éminence grise was The Right Reverend John Stra-chan, first Bishop of Toronto, founder of the University of Toronto, a member of both the executive council and the assembly, president of the Board of Educa-tion, chairman of the Clergy Corporation, and the most power politician of his day.

Strachan came to Canada a twenty-one-year-old schoolteacher of modest means who, he wrote, “dreamed of riches and honour.” He found both.

He seldom missed a rant against democracy. He dismissed responsible gov-ernment as “an insane paradox” where “all is corruption.” He complained that the elected Assembly was “composed of ignorant clowns, for the spirit of leve-ling seems to pervade the province.” He warned against good Canadian boys attending American universities where they would “commonly learn little beyond anarchy in Politics & infidelity in religion.”

When social reformer Robert Gourlay undertook “A well authenticated statistical account of social and economic conditions” in Upper Canada, based on a survey of thirty one questions (How many farm animals do you own? How many schools and churches in your district? How can conditions be improved?) Strachan branded him a “dangerous radical.” He wrote a friend: “A character like Mr. Gourlay in a quiet colony like this where there is little or no spirit of inquiry and very little knowledge can do much harm by exciting uneasiness and unreasonable hopes.”

When the Bishop of Quebec proposed to petition settlers on a church matter, Strachan protested, in part because of “its democratic aspects… I am quite satisfied that in this province the plan of petitioning the people will be followed by many evils.” He said British settlers would be welcome in Upper Canada, except “levelers and democrats.” He protested a British Parliamentary report, which, he said, would “Strengthen the Levellers and Democrats.”

Newspapers controlled by the government and its supporters echoed the anti-democracy rants.

The Upper Canada Gazette, boldly forecast the failure of republican gov-ernment in the United States:

“Viewing all republics, ancient as well as modern, as so many imperfect sys-tems of government, differing only in their respective degrees of imperfection, we consider the growth and extension of the Federal Government of the United States, as a subject of deepest interest—as an experiment on a large scale of a system which, it appears to us is contrary to the universal order of nature, from the Divinity, downwards, to the communities of the meanest insects; and so satisfied are we of the impossibility of any long duration of the present order of things in the United States—that we have no doubt there are many now living who will see an entire disruption of the North American Federal Government.”

The Brockville Gazette warned that democracy rests “…upon the whim and caprice of a vain and arrogant people [and] has a tendency to blunt, and ultimately do away with the finer feelings of humanity.” It claimed that in the United States “the ideas and sentiments peculiar to what are emphatically styled gentlemen in England, are almost unknown… and in lieu of them little is to be found except an all absorbing thirst of gain.” Americans were said to be “cajoled by the rich, who do in fact despise the poor more than any aristocracy.” Believing that they had no superiors, Americans were said to “feel no inclination to respect any station more exalted than that to which a notorious slave dealer is eligible.”

There were, of course, democratic voices, none louder than William Lyon Mackenzie, who praised American democracy in his Colonial Advocate. Or at least he did until, as a fugitive from his failed 1837 rebellion, he lived in the United States, where he witnessed, he reported, democracy riddled with corruption.

Things we gladly miss

Embers from these and other anti-democratic and oppressive episodes of a long bygone era have cast a lasting mark on Canadian democracy, in which we miss some of the more democratic features of our southern neighbour. A few of the thing we miss are:

Election excess. Election of sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys and judges, and the elevation of jurists to the Supreme Court based on political ideology or partisanship.

Dollar democracy. Virtually unrestrained election spending of billions of dollars by Big Business, Big Unions and Big Billionaires helps secure the best politicians that money can buy.

Guns. Laws that permit carrying concealed guns into offices, schools and churches contribute to the highest rate of homicides among the world’s twenty most prosperous nations.

Healthcare. The United States is the only industrialized nation that fails to pro-vide universal public health care, and spends more on health care with results that are generally no better for those who have care coverage and worse for the millions who don’t.

Market ideology. Reliance on the self-correcting discipline of free markets in lieu of regulation of banks and brokers resulted in the 2008 collapse of financial institutions and the worst economic recession in six decades. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, their savings, their homes, and their hopes.

Alan Greenspan, a disciple of Ayn Rand and an icon of market self-regulation under whose eighteen-year rule as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve the market ideology held sway, told a U.S. Congressional committee, after the collapse, that he had been wrong. Asked if he had been “pushed” by ideology “to make decisions that you wish you had not made, Greenspan responded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw… I’ve been very distressed by that fact… I was shocked, because I have been going on for forty years or more with very considerable evidence that it [free market self-regulation] was working exceptionally well.”
The lesson of 2008 is that business competition cannot function without rules and regulators, any more than hockey, basketball, or football can be played without rules and referees. Without regulation, business implodes, as it did so spectacularly with the fall of financial giants that were “too big to fail.”

The job of regulation is not to supplant market competition, but to ensure that it works. Governments must also prohibit, avert or mitigate unintended adverse side effects of business, or any other human activity. A prime example is the cause or contribution to global warming from the producers and users of fossils fuels.

Political gridlock. When a Congressional majority opposes a U.S. administra-tion, nothing much is what often happens. That gridlock killed hopes for universal health care. It has stalled measured by Barack Obama to revive the U.S. economy and relieve the distress of the unemployed.

In Europe, we have seen the economic effects of dysfunctional democracy in countries such as Greece and Italy, which brought ruin and suffering to these countries, pushed the European Union to the brink of breakup, and threatened the world with renewed economic recession.

World’s best democracy?

There are few countries that match both the range and depth of the many attributes of Canadian democracy. Among them:

• Personal liberty and fundamental rights. Where in the world are these in better balance with collective welfare—the common good?
• Governance. Almost alone among industrialized nations, Canada largely escaped the ravages of the enduring 2008 economic recession, thanks in large measure to one aspect of good governance. Strong earnings from natural re-sources, especially oil and natural gas, helped. But sound regulation of banks and brokers—regulations seen by some as infringing free markets—was key to averting the collapse of financial institutions that toppled the United States and Europe into recession.
• Peacefulness. Canada is in the top five percent of the world’s most peaceful country, as ranked in 2011 by the Global Peace Index.
• Quality of life. Canada ranks second for quality of life, among thirty-four na-tions assessed by the OECD in 2011.
• Social harmony. There are few nations with greater social harmony and less racial and ethnic tensions than Canada. That’s not in spite of the fact that Can-ada has greater cultural, racial and ethnic diversity than any other country, it’s in large measure because of that very diversity (see Chapter Six).

The democratic deficit

Great though it may be, critics are quick to point to flaws in Canadian democ-racy, and assail a democratic deficit. And this is in perilous economic times when democracies are often most vulnerable. As well, catastrophe looms in global warming, obscured by deniers and economic angst. Politicians too often downplay or deny the threat of global warming, perhaps because they don’t believe the scientists, or they don’t want to be bearers of bad news, or because there are votes to be won by telling what many long to hear and believe.
Global democracy is under stress by the economic failures in Europe; the rise of authoritarian powers, such as Russia and China (which will soon, perhaps this decade, pass the United States as the world’s largest economy); from the theocratic terrorism of Iran and other regions; from brutal tin-pot dictators who still rule here and there around the globe.
Yet at the same time, worldwide democracy is riding an Internet jet stream, marshalling armed resistance to overthrow tyranny and terror in an Arab Spring, or the more peaceful Occupy movements against extremes of wealth and poverty, no matter how inchoate or anarchic the movements may be.
In Canada, as elsewhere, the ability of demagoguery to hoodwink the public and to slice and dice electors with appeals to special interests that short-change the common good, or appeals to prejudice and sentiments less than noble, has never been as great. The unprecedented detail of computer-crunched public opinion data enable politicians to discern attitudes of class, ethnic or other groups, or regional attitudes as small as city blocks, and tailor-make appeals to the smallest voting blocks. The result too often can be minority political leadership that debases, rather than inspires and uplifts. We hear no echoes of Laurier’s call to “Raise ever higher the standard of life and living;” nor Roosevelt’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself;” Churchill’s call for “blood, sweat and tears;” nor Kennedy’s plea, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,”
Against this background critics point to such Canadian democratic deficits as these:

• A majority government (in the House of Commons), elected by a minority (forty percent) of voters, pushing through policies and programs opposed both by most Canadians and knowledgeable experts and professionals; actions that evidence says are deleterious public policy; that are widely seen as driven by either ideology or slice-and-dice politics.
• An “Omnibus crime bill that flies in the face of statistical facts, the objections of almost everyone who works in the criminal justice system, and international evidence,” most notably from the United States, in the words of Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson. The bill is expected to entail vast public expenditures on new prisons, which will breed more crime, as they have in the United States.
  Lawyer Kirk Tousaw, writing in the Toronto Star, predicts that just one provision of the crime law—mandatory sentences for drug crimes—will eliminate the ability of judges to exercise judgment, “create all manner of injustices,” result “in the jailing of untold numbers of Canadian who do not deserve to be there,” and cost taxpayers “billions of dollars.” He cites the examples of Mrs. B. a law-abiding, sixty-seven-year-old grandmother of four who, if the law had then been in effect, would have been sentenced to a year in jail on a technicality, ruining her life, and taxpayers more than $100,000 in prison expenses. Mrs. B. was legally smoking marijuana, with a doctor’s authorization, to relieve acute chronic pain from arthritis and fibromyalgia, without the side effects of pharmaceuticals. Except that Mrs. B. neglected—until it was too late—to forward the doctor’s papers to Ottawa for a required licence, which she later obtained. If the mandatory provision of the law crime bill had been in effect, the judge could not have discharged her, as he did.
• The emasculation of the national census. The demise of the long form was publicly supported by two politically-allied organizations; opposed by more than twenty other national organizations (as varied as the Canadian Economic Association and the Evangelic Fellowship of Canada); opposed by five provincial governments representing seventy percent of the population; by the former chief statistician of Canada and his successor, who resigned in protest.
• Promoting exports of asbestos, a toxic substance more deadly than cigarette smoke. Its use in Canada is virtually prohibited, millions of dollars have been spent to remove asbestos installation in buildings, it is banned in scores of countries, including the Europe Union and the United States. Yet the Canadian and Quebec governments continue to support sales of Canadian asbestos to those impoverished countries that have not yet banned its use. Canada’s action is opposed by the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, one hundred-thirty seven of the one hundred-forty three member nations of the Rotterdam Convention on hazardous substances; twenty six Canadian health and environmental organization; the federal government’s own Department of Health, and more than one hundred scientists from twenty eight countries, who wrote an open letter to Quebec Premier Jean Charest . “In Quebec itself, exposure to asbestos is the single biggest cause of worker deaths,” the scientists wrote. “Your government is spending millions of dollars to remove asbestos while at the same time exporting it to developing countries and telling them it is safe.”
  “The Harper government has this weird contempt for solid evidence,” Simpson wrote in the Globe and Mail. “Some day, many years and many failures from now, it will fall to some other government to undo these matters.”

A lesson from America

If there is one lesson from the United States that Canada might do well to emu-late, it is the capacity to undercover what is wrong and to engage in vigorous self-criticism. If we are acutely aware of American flaws, it is because no other country does as much to expose them to public view, and subject them to criticism. It is a step toward cures. It is a great redeeming feature of U.S. society.
Here is one small example.

“The United States Congress is a forum for legalized bribery.” That’s from New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. He was commenting on the $2.3 billion spent by the financial services industry on federal election campaigns from 1990 to 2010, “more than the health care, energy, defence, agriculture and transportation industries combined.” The reason there are sixty one Congressmen on the House Committee on Financial Services, writes Friedman, is that “So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.”

Friedman’s remarks are both an indictment of U.S. politics and a testimonial to the vigour of healthy criticism.

In Canada, such criticism is less widespread and less vigorous. Self-criticism is too often muted; probing for flaws is too often missing or shallow; news media political coverage, too often fawning.
An Israeli journalist has opined that the time to really worry about corruption or misrule is when we see no reports about them. Perhaps we should be worried.
We could use some better microscopes and bigger megaphones.

 

Strachan, John. “Documents and Opinions.” J.L.H. Henderson, editor. )To-ronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969).
Craig, G.M. “John Strachan.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, online.
Milani, Lois Darroch. “Robert Gourlay, Gad Fly. (Toronto: Ampersand Press, 1971).
Strachan. “Memoir.” A.N. Bethune, editor. (Toronto: Henry Rowser, 1870).
Stracha. “Documents and Opinions.”
Craig, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
Upper Canada Gazette, York (Toronto), July 7, 1825.
Brockville Gazette, December 26, 1818.
New York Times, October 23, 2008.
Globe and Mail, September 24, 2011.
Kirk Tousaw. “Targeting Mrs. B.” Toronto Star, October 31, 2011.
CBC, June 13, 2011. Based on information obtained under Access to In-formation law, CBC reported that the federal government rejected the department’s advice that Canada should join with more than 100 other nations in approving listing asbestos as a hazardous substance under the Rotterdam convention.
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, April 10, 2010.
Thomas L. Friedman. “Did you hear the one about the bankers?” New York Times, October 20, 2011.