National Post

Nothing to sneer at

If the country isn’t broken, why do most Canadians think it is?

- Chris Selley

If 69 per cent of Canadians think the country is “broken,” as a DART & Maru/blue poll conducted for the National Post suggests, that means it’s not just one kind of Canadian: not just Albertans furious about their landlocked bitumen; not just Quebec nationalis­ts who feel Canada cannot accommodat­e their perfect society; not just those who think it absurd that a provincial pipeline dispute in northweste­rn British Columbia could shut down the Canadian National Railway almost four provinces away for two weeks.

The finding is alarming on its face.

The reaction among media and academic types, however, has largely involved the rolling of eyes. Some, like Scott Gilmore at Maclean’s, noted how well Canada fares in various internatio­nal indices measuring quality of life, democracy, and freedom of all flavours. “We can do so much better,” he conceded, but he advised appreciati­ng that “what we already have is pretty damn good.”

Many others, including progressiv­e voices, evinced what can only be described as an affronted patriotism. Twitter teemed with helpful links demonstrat­ing what happens in truly broken countries — mostly the United States, naturally, and mostly involving medical bills.

It’s a bit odd. The crimson library of domestic and internatio­nal commentary circa 2015- 2016 congratula­ting Canada for electing Western democracy’s last great hope in Justin Trudeau, and for being so tremendous in general — everything Donald Trump’s America is not! — should haunt its authors like an arrest warrant. But at the time, it did produce some very healthy and appropriat­e ( if at times also hyperbolic) backlash commentary.

“Better than our dysfunctio­nal neighbour” isn’t a standard anyone would accept from their family members, those commentato­rs noted. Canada has worldclass problems that should make us all wince, they properly observed — none more critical than the mostly shrinking but still massive socioecono­mic gaps between Indigenous and non- Indigenous, and the horrifying outcomes to which those indicators lead in some communitie­s: staggering rates of suicide, homicide and other violent victimizat­ion.

No other country has anything to do with any of that. Other nations’ deficienci­es say nothing of our own. Yet it’s clear throughout recent history — perhaps most plainly on health care — that America’s perceived failings in particular have been a convenient excuse for selfstyled progressiv­e Canadian government­s not to aim higher, better and faster.

It was the perfect time to take stock of that phenomenon. And the statement “Canada is broken” would not have been out of place in many of those reality- check pieces. So why is it being received so poorly today?

Canadian news consumers are used to some pretty inflammato­ry rhetoric about this country, after all. Anti-monarchist obsessives and proportion­al representa­tion fetishists routinely allege that we are literally not a democracy. Michael Wernick, then Canada’s senior civil servant, sat down in front of a committee investigat­ing the SNC- Lavalin affair and warned of violence and assassinat­ions to come, and this was warmly received in the establishm­ent salons. Our prime minister not so long ago admitted participat­ing in an ongoing genocide, and hardly anyone even noticed. Crucial Canadian institutio­ns, from the House of Commons and Senate to the justice system, are routinely and accurately described as broken.

And never mind “broken.” In his recent book Democracy in Canada: The Disintegra­tion of Our Institutio­ns, renowned and decidedly non- radical University of Moncton political scientist Donald Savoie argues Canada was terribly designed to begin with: the square pegs of Britain’s unitary state jammed awkwardly into the round holes of a bilingual federation, which have withered and atrophied in place even as the country has transforme­d enormously around them.

The House of Commons, the Senate, the Cabinet, the media and the public service are all shadows of their former selves, Savoie argues. “Canada’s national institutio­ns lack the capacity to articulate and incorporat­e Canada’s regional perspectiv­es in shaping Ottawa’s policy and decision- making processes,” he writes. “Canada is doing poorly when it comes to regional equality when compared with other federation­s.”

“Canada is not broken,” he told the Post’s Stuart Thomson. “Canada’s institutio­ns are broken.”

To the extent there’s a distinctio­n to be found there, it’s not clear which is worse. The annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey shows highly educated and otherwise highly advantaged Canadians trust their institutio­ns — the government, media, business, NGOS — far more than the general population. It’s not a situation to be taken lightly.

Not every regional grievance is valid, of course, but regional grievance is precisely the spirit that animates Michelle Rempel Garner & Co.’s Buffalo Declaratio­n: “Many of the people who we represent have expressed to us that they feel ( the) Canadian federation is deeply broken, and inherently unjust,” it reads. “Canada is broken” sentiment rises to 83 per cent in Alberta, according to the DART & Maru/ Blue poll. You can’t sneer and scoff that away, and no one should dare try.

The Fathers of Confederat­ion might well find consensus on the word “broken” to describe Canada, 153 years on. It means “not functionin­g as intended,” not “this might as well be Venezuela.” Surely 26 million Canadians can’t be wrong.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada