In writing a scathing article that comes out and accuses the Conservative Government of having lied to Parliament and then to the Canadian people with regard to the costs of procuring the F-35 jet fighters, Andrew Coyne ends his piece with an interesting observation: "it is about whether we live in a functioning Parliamentary democracy, or want to."
Well, elsewhere people would be morally outraged that an election was first precipitated and then fought on the basis of the government willfully withholding information concerning the largest purchase ever.
Not so in Canada.
In fact, the support for the Conservatives in the polls has hardly budged, which indicates to me that Canadians are profoundly disinterested in the manner in which they are governed. They would rather watch hockey.
After all, democracy requires engaged citizens who keep themselves informed and are prepared to hold their elected representatives accountable for their actions.
But this requires concerted effort and Canadians are notoriously lazy.
As long as we are left alone to lead our little lives, we don't care about how we are governed.
Go Leafs Go!
I think a considerable percentage, perhaps a majority, of the population has become politically disengaged. How else to account for the Prince of Darkness remaining so high in the polls?
ReplyDeleteI suspect it will be a matter of two generations at the outside, mine and yours, before we see democracy becoming a faint shadow of what it once was.
Consider our right of privacy which is said to be the one right on which all others hang. Not only are our governments, our institutions and our corporations daily shredding our privacy but, instead of fighting back, we actually surrender our privacy freely and almost unthinkingly through portals into our intimate lives such as social networking.
At least this tide of change allows me to have many fond memories of the 60s.