Canada’s democratic deficit can no longer be ignored

Declining trust, economic inequality, and institutional failures have left the door open to reactionary anti-system politics

This is an excerpt of the full piece— available for free at this link.

Politics in the United Kingdom has been upended by the rise of a right-wing populist force that now stands as a serious contender for power. From our two overlapping yet distinct perspectives—a political science professor who studies parties and elections and an independent journalist seeking to hold politicians to account—we recognize many of the same currents propelling the UK’s populist insurgency at work here in Canada as well.

This is largely a result of the failures of the political establishment to grasp and address our deepening democratic deficit. Canada faces many of the same problems, and those in power appear equally asleep at the wheel.

We recently caught a glimpse at what might lie ahead for Canada. Reform UK, the right-wing populist party helmed by Nigel Farage, held its annual conference on September 5 and 6 in Birmingham’s National Exhibition Arena. This was a conference of a party ready for power, flush with close to 250,000 members and sitting pretty at the top of opinion polls. If they can maintain it, Reform’s current share of stated voter intention places Farage’s outfit in pole position to form government, based on a recent projection by YouGov.

The Reform faithful who packed the convention floor may have been surprised that a guest of honour from Canada was on the agenda. Preston Manning, founder of the namesake Reform Party of Canada, was given prime podium time on the Friday evening of the conference to bestow his blessing upon Farage’s movement.

Manning’s career in federal politics, and the rise of Canada’s Reform Party in general, is typically understood today to be a defining episode in the now generations-old matter of “western alienation.” Indeed, the party was founded in 1987 by interest groups and activists estranged from the Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto axis of political and cultural power in Canada. “The West Want In,” went the famous rallying cry.

Yet “The West” meant more than simply a geographical region and its concomitant economic interests. It signalled the populist style of politics that has deep historical and cultural roots in Canada, from the Prairies to the Pacific Ocean. Just think of the United Farmers, the Progressives, the CCF, and Social Credit.

This populist politics was a critical component of Reform’s appeal. It turns on a pervasive critique of the failures of the eastern establishment—that is, the “elites,” or Canada’s two “natural” governing parties—to build meaningfully democratic institutions that live up to its self-professed standards of representation, responsiveness, accountability, and transparency.

Manning’s populist ideological orientation was an important driver of the party’s move from fringe regionalist outsiders in 1987 to strong electoral performances in 1993 and 1997. The Reform Party tapped into the raw appeal of proposals to rectify blatant democratic deficiencies during its rise in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The party’s manifesto from 1992 highlights a range of policies that address perceived gaps in the democratic character of Canada.

Entitled 56 Reasons Why You Should Support the Reform Party of Canada, the manifesto has plenty of talking points and policies derived from social conservatism and western alienation that remain familiar to politicos today. It also, however, contains a series of robust proposals to meaningfully reform the institutions of democracy in Canada to address failures in government responsiveness and representation. Proposals for a Triple-E (equal, effective and elected) Senate, more referendums and citizens initiatives, a commitment to combat and root out patronage, and institutional changes to decrease stifling party discipline in Parliament all strike at major areas of democratic and representative deficiency that linger still in Canadian democracy.

READ THE FULL PIECE FOR FREE HERE

Thank you to Dónal Gill for inviting me to work on this with him.