Roundup: The inevitable comparisons will be flawed

It’s the anniversary of the Capitol Hill insurrection, so you can expect the media on both sides of the border to be full of thinkpieces about What It All Means™, particularly as America continues down the path of being a failed state. So while there is some good stuff out there, such as this good analysis piece, we’ll see some inevitable “what about Canada?” pieces out there as well. Case in point:

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478858665423745026

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478861864541036544

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478865054699294726

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1478868398192930817

To answer Wherry’s question, there aren’t the same structural weak points in Canada, because our system is far more robust than the Americans’ system. For example, the insurrection happened on the date that Congress had to ratify election results, which doesn’t happen here, because Parliament is dissolved for an election. Elections Canada, which answers to the Crown, does the work of verifying election results, and they have uniform rules around the country, unlike the US, where every state and county runs their own federal polls, and there is no uniformity and voting rights are a mess across the board. We don’t have their gerrymandering because we gave that to arm’s-length judge-run panels decades ago. Nothing could prevent a transfer of power, short of a recalcitrant Governor General, and in that case, there would be the recourse of going to the Queen, but even in those cases, things tend to work behind the scenes to prevent that eventuality from ever happening (because the first rule of constitutional monarchy is that you keep the Queen out of it).

Our structure is sound, but we do have a problem with bad actors because much of our system depends on people having a sense of honour or decency to do the right thing, and when they don’t, things get sticky. They tend to work out in the long run because it’s resilient—but if we go about codifying a bunch of things that operate by convention, we would likely find things being perverted even more so, because then the impetus to find ways around those written rules becomes apparent, rather than there being a broader spirit of the convention to be upheld. It also tends to lead to all kinds of unexpected consequences—Erin O’Toole weaponizing the (garbage) Reform Act is proof of that. And it’s hard to build systems to be bad actor-proof, because bad actors will find a way to exploit the system to their ends. We do need to fix some things in our system, such as the way we’ve bastardised leadership contests and turned them into quasi-presidential primaries, the broader point is that we don’t have the same structural vulnerabilities that the Americans have, which is a good thing, but we do need to be on guard to ensure that bad actors don’t get the chance to wreak havoc.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau acknowledged that the next few months of omicron will be tough, and added that Canadians are frustrated and angry with the unvaccinated.
  • The government has ordered 140 million more rapid tests for the provinces, which is quadruple what they ordered and received before.
  • Canada has only delivered about a quarter of its promised vaccine donations, and doesn’t have a timeline for future deliveries yet.
  • Iain Rankin is stepping down as Nova Scotia Liberal leader after losing the last provincial election, but says he’ll stay on as MLA.
  • Jen Gerson makes the case for optimism in the face of everything right now.
  • Paul Wells interviews Kathleen Wynne, as she prepares to leave political life.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: The inevitable comparisons will be flawed

  1. Mike Wernick tried to warn the public about the Jan 6-esque mentality of the “United We Roll” chuds driving their oil tankers to Parliament Hill and calling for Trudeau to be hanged for treason. He was run out on a rail by media morons for being a “partisan hack” supposedly trying to run interference for the “corrupt Liberal government.” A year later, media hyperfocuses on their manufactured scandals again and an actual QAnon conspiracy theorist crashes his truck full of weapons onto the PM’s residential grounds. Media morons downplay it once more and continue with their obsession with fake scandals. So much so that their repetitive scandalmongering led to threats against the PM’s family and an innocent Jewish couple who owned a public speaking agency.

    Anti-vaxxers throw rocks at the PM during a campaign, and the media morons analyze it to death in terms of horse race polling and “strategy.” Even going so far as to “just ask questions” of whether he benefits from it. The results prompt sore-loser opposition partisans to allege that the vote was “rigged” and that the way the seats were distributed is “undemocratic.” This isn’t just confined to the Cons anymore as the NDP start chiming in with their own version of “stop the steal.”

    It’s not just a matter of Canada’s system of government being different from that in the US. Canadians would be foolish to think “it can’t happen here” for all of the times that it nearly did. And the media yet again continues to downplay their role in increasing that risk, preferring instead to point fingers at the dysfunctional USA. “Canadian exceptionalism” is a potentially fatal flaw. It’s time for an end to bothsiderism and false objectivity and brutal honesty as to which bad actors are overwhelmingly to blame.

  2. Scenario: Trump becomes president again, either by 2024 vote or by making him speaker and then impeaching Biden/Harris. Trump and his minions then dismantle American election infrastructure to make sure Republicans will never lose a vote again.
    America erupts in a declared or undeclared civil war. New York/New England and California/West Coast declare their independence. Some of the armed forces won’t listen to Trump so who knows where their allegiances end up. Tens of thousands of Americans take to the roads, either to move to the coasts or north to Canada. By 2030, all of North America is destabilized and the economy collapses.
    I’m not sure what Canada can do in such a nightmare scenario except to expand our own armed forces, and to provide a safe haven for evicted Americans. We can expect to become a target at some point, too, when the new America is devastated by climate change and needs our water.
    The alternate scenario is Biden getting re-elected, and the Democrats holding the House and Senate. This is looking increasingly unlikely unless Americans can somehow recognize the threat.

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