Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Is Today's Canada a True Democracy?
Some people allege that Canada is a democracy. Let us look more closely.
• Canada has an unelected Head of State who is a foreign Monarch, named for life. That sounds very much like the Middle ages, doesn't it?
• Just as in the U.K., Canada also has an unelected 'Chamber of Lords', called the 'Senate' in Canada, where the oligarchy that rules Canada from Toronto and Ottawa places the servants of the system to oversee the elected House of Commons and amend or reject laws it doesn't approve of.
• The Canadian government can function after only receiving some 20 percent of support from the electorate, as is the case with the current minority liberal government, and still contend that it has a 'mandate' to change Canada profoundly.
• The Canadian confederation has been substantially centralized since the fundamental changes made to the Canadian Constitution by politicians—without a referendum—in 1982. Canadian provincial governments, which previously had exclusive rights in the 1867 Constitution, such as the Quebec government regarding language, culture and education, have been forcefully placed under the tutelage of unelected judges named and paid solely by the federal government.
• Indeed, to complete this pyramid of power, Canada has a Supreme Court and other federal courts, filled with lawyers, among whom some have donated or rendered services to the party in power. These courts can not only revise the form of laws, but also change them substantially, or annul laws that have been democratically voted by governments, especially by provincial governments.
• And to top it all off, the Canadian federal government owns and operates its own radio and TV networks, in French and in English, which can spew out government propaganda at will.
A democracy? Canada's system of government is, at best, closer to being an oligarchic form of government, in which ordinary citizens do not have much to say, because the pyramid of power is inverted with the ultimate political power at the top, and not at the level of the sovereign people. We are far from a system of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", in which the supreme political power in society rests with the citizens.
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P.S. We could add that the Canadian federal government has access to its own central bank, which can print money at will and impose a stealth inflation tax on the people.
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ADDENDUM
Friday February 3, 2023
The Canadian political system and democracy in Canada
The Canadian federal system is based on the Constitutional Act of 1982, which, along with the Constitutional Act of 1867, forms the Canadian constitution.
These two fundamental laws were acts of the British Parliament, before being applied to Canada. Since 1867, Canada is a political federation formed initially by four founding British colonies (Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) and called 'The Confederation of Canada'. Nowadays, the Canadian federation includes ten provinces and three territories.
The 'Constitutional Act of 1982' was adopted by the British Parliament, in 1982, and by the Canadian Federal Parliament and by nine provincial parliaments thereafter, but not by the Parliament of Quebec.
The 1982 constitutional law was not submitted directly to the population for approval. It does not mention the word "democracy", and its Preamble states that the Canadian political system recognizes the "supremacy of God".
Accordingly, the Canadian political system is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
The Head of State is an unelected monarch, as well as being the head of the Anglican Church. The House of Commons is elected by popular vote, but the Canadian Senate is unelected and its members are appointed by the government of the day.
Referendums can be submitted to the people, but they are only consultative.
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emeritus professor of economics,
Université de Montréal