Bird’s Eye: With the wave of a motion of contempt, Canada has headed into a federal election. It could be worse; it’s only a month till we vote, (as opposed to the US, endlessly slouching towards 11/12). So do something: watch Rick Mercer’s exemplary rant from ’08 (is just as applicable as ever) on why you should vote. Or try the CBC Vote Compass to see which party aligns best with your beliefs. Go to the Tyee for an exemplary list of party and media links, so you can support or troll, as your inclination takes you. Sign a petition to add your voice to those who want the Greens, supported by almost a million Canadians in the last election, to be in the debate. And read how we look from down under, or to Rick Salutin, who has recently left the decaying Globe for a better Star.
* Canada Watches Its Democracy Erode The Australian
Edmund Burke noted that all that was necessary for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. Canadians are certainly good and worthy folks, but they suffer an excess of civil obedience, politeness and lack of civic rage that could be harnessed to combat political atrophy. At a time when Arabs risk life and limb for political freedoms, Canadians seem largely apathetic about the erosion of their democracy.
The centralisation of power in the hands of the prime minister and political staffers – with the resulting diminution of the role and status of cabinet, parliaments and parliamentarians – is common to Anglo-Saxon democracies in Australia, Britain, Canada and the US, but the extent to which constitutional conventions, parliamentary etiquette and civil institutions of good governance have been worn away in Canada is cause for concern.
* The Romance Of Elections (Seriously) Rick Salutin The Toronto Star
What about those, and I include myself, who feel they’re undeluded about how democratic the reality is; who realize elections are stacked due to corporate money behind the big parties, a biased media and a moronic first-past-the-post voting structure that makes real democratic outcomes wishful-thinking? Are they absolved from participating in these rigged elections?
No. Because you never know for sure what might happen if you act politically. South Africans fought apartheid for years and it didn’t budge. Then it crumbled. The Soviet Union seemed impregnable. Then it crumbled. Now it’s so gone that if you describe it to anyone under 25 it sounds like medieval times. There’s Egypt, Tunisia. . . You just never really know.
Even the thinker whose name is synonymous with cynicism about politics — Machiavelli — wrote: “Men ought never give way to despair; since they do not know their end and it comes through indirect and unknown ways, they always have reason to hope.” If that’s the conclusion he reached, then it’s up to the rest of us to suck it up and do what we can politically, grim as the options often seem.
