I'll take life in bland, boring Canada over U.S. every time
Peace, order and good government is the modest hope of the Canadian Constitution, and that's looking pretty good right now following a failed insurrection in the American capital.
The U.S. Constitution is a revolutionary document, seeded with mistrust, an allowance for independent militias and the right to bear arms.
At the time, bearing arms meant slow-loading muskets. More than 231 years later, it means assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons.
The U.S. Constitution prizes life, liberty and the individual pursuit of happiness, and is spoken of in reverential terms — “sacred” even. The country's unifying myth is of self-reliance and independence.
Beside that, Canada's Constitution has often seemed stodgy and dull, reflecting a belief that the common good takes precedence over individual liberties, and that governments will promote and protect the safety and well-being of everyone.
Enacted in 1982, our Constitution is a pragmatic document whose genesis is unobscured by the mists of time and myth-making. It's a compromise, hammered out late one night in an unused hotel kitchen pantry. The consensus was it was the best deal that politicians could make at the time. And it was passed, even though Quebec refused to sign, and still hasn't. It survives because it works well enough that nobody can be bothered trying to change it.
To be clear, Canada isn't inoculated against the kind of anger and dissent that has recently rocked the United States.
If it were, CBC cameraman Ben Nelms wouldn't have been assaulted Wednesday by pro-Trump demonstrators outside the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Canada has never have been immune to domestic terrorism, which is why our history includes the Front de libération du Québec and the Riel Rebellion.
But our modest aspirations have insulated us against political upheaval through laws as disparate as gun control and universal health care. Even so, there are cracks in which anger and anarchy could take root.
We don't have full equality. The gap between rich and poor is widening. There are far too many Canadians whose most basic rights to food and shelter are not met.
There is systemic racism that governments have been too slow to address. Since the pandemic, anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver have risen 138 per cent.
But it bears emphasizing that the disenfranchised and powerless weren't the insurrectionists trying Wednesday to overthrow American democracy. Overwhelmingly, it was white Americans — men and women, some of them armed — who stormed the Capitol Building in D.C., and in an echo of that violence, broke down the gates of the Washington state governor's residence.
It will take months and maybe even years to unravel exactly what went so badly wrong that hundreds of rioters so easily entered what more than a few American journalists described as the “sacred” halls of Congress.
But there are some immediate lessons to be learned, or relearned, if democracies including ours are to survive.
Humility is one. Democratic leaders borrow their power from the people when the majority vote for them.
We don't expect leaders to be better than us. In many ways, it's the opposite. We expect them to be more like us than dictators, monarchs and movie stars, and that their aspirations mirror our own.
We expect that they won't steal from us, that they won't break the rules that they helped formulate, or the laws they have sworn to uphold. And they won't hold us in contempt.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney infamously talked about the need to “dance with the one that brung ya.” But his trajectory from majority government to watching his party's extinction illustrates the political truism that people don't so much elect governments as they defeat old and unresponsive ones.
Four years ago, Donald Trump's “drain the swamp” rhetoric validated long-festering grievances in the heartland. Of course, he had no plan to address those grievances. Perversely, he stoked them and emboldened white supremacists and members of far-right militia groups.
Using social media, his “base” and frequent firings as a sledgehammer, he stifled dissent. Only with the mob at the gates did Republicans, including Vice-President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others, finally stand up to Trump.
This week's events underscore another hard lesson of democracy: It demands courage. It means speaking truth to power and being willing to pay the price, as former Liberal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and former health minister Jane Philpott did over the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
Democracy requires vigilance. Wednesday's insurrection didn't just happen. It was rooted in the thousands of tweets and actions of Trump, his supporters and Republicans who discredited every democratic institution from the courts to the media to the government and democracy itself.
In Canada, democracy is also eroded every time parliamentary committees don't meet or are stopped in their work, when members are “whipped” into voting the party line, or allowed to break the rules without consequences. It happens every time journalists are laid off or media outlets close because they are forced to compete for revenue with Facebook, Twitter and Google.
Each time it happens, we all lose.
Over the years, dozens of studies have shown a direct correlation between happiness (quality of life) and a high trust in government. Canada consistently ranks well above the United States.
Recently, an Oxford University study plotted a more a tragic correlation between higher incidents of COVID infections and distrust in government, with the United States as a prime example.
There was a period when the U.S. was exceptional, and we bland, boring Canadians might have looked south in wonder, if not awe or envy.
This week, our neighbour was proven exceptional again. Only this time, we're left wondering if it can find its way back.