Many of you are undoubtedly shocked by the election outcome tonight. Our American neighbours will endure 4 more years of brash, incompetent populism.
Can it happen in Canada?
I couldn't sleep, so here I’ll list reasons how I think we can avoid a similar outcome
Can it happen in Canada?
I couldn't sleep, so here I’ll list reasons how I think we can avoid a similar outcome
The rot that takes place with the loss of democratic norms requires a society to be in great distress, like hyperinflation in Germany in the 1930s. A well functioning government anticipates and cares for its citizens and heads off these crises through shared action.
Firstly, our government is much better run. A strong civil service was able to roll out funding during the Corona lockdown in record time. We have non partisan judges, who issue perfectly bland rulings. Hardly anyone here would be able to name a judge on the supreme court
Corporate donations are banned, and we don’t have massive amounts of money from shadowy sources flooding into election campaigns. Elections are cleanly run by a non-partisan election commission. Districts are clearly marked and not manipulated for partisan gain.
Our media landscape is very different. Foreign news media is forbidden, we never were infected with Rupert Murdoch’s news outlets (Fox News). Falsehoods and misleading news are also forbidden. The US lifted these restrictions in 1987, and a hyperpolarized media is the result
Policing and justice in Canada are very different, there is much greater oversight, and less scope for corruption. I went over some of these differences in an earlier thread:
https://twitter.com/KashPrime/status/1266924786841800704?s=20
https://twitter.com/KashPrime/status/1266924786841800704?s=20
Our education system is much fairer and performs well; there is no hyper-prestigious Ivy League in Canada. It’s far easier to get into a top university here, and much more affordable. Public schools are high quality and get the same funding across neighbourhoods.
Other big differences; the country was founded on two founding languages and cultures. From there an evolved the understanding that you need to have consensus and compromise between peoples to move forward. A big difference between the open hostility between races in the US.
This is just spitballing for now, I’ll develop some of these ideas with more details later, and would love feedback. We are of course not free of danger; the same cancer of disinformation and bigotry is already seeded in segments of our population.