Is Canada drifting toward disaster? Heck no, you may say, we’re rushing toward it. Either way, it’s time to clean up the governmental mess before it becomes overwhelming.
There’s trouble everywhere, from public debt to dilapidated national security to the crumbling rule of law, where we know frank speech on many subjects is forbidden, and pipelines might be, but we aren’t sure whether marijuana is still illegal or how to legalize it if it is.
Imagine a state that can’t figure out how not to ban something. This is not limited government in any sense.
Everywhere you turn there is raging public incompetence at unbearable cost. The politicians’ promises just keep getting more grandiose, but from energy policy to infrastructure, refugees, and justice they run in a tiresome circle where only the bills mount. And when we try to deal with anything fundamental, like the Senate or aboriginal issues, we’re stalemated.
The deepest problem is alienation of citizens from their governments. It’s habitually treated as an odd phenomenon unrelated to the state’s increasingly feeble, unaffordable and arrogant performance. But government in Canada isn’t just big and inept. It’s inept because it’s too big, in ways our traditional constitution was designed to prevent.
Yes, constitution. When problems are this fundamental, so are causes. And right now the relationship between citizens and government in Canada is upside down. We don’t control them, they control us. They have torn loose from their moorings, and we need to strap them down again.
continued at:
John Robson: Our constitution is in dire need of fixing | National Post
There’s trouble everywhere, from public debt to dilapidated national security to the crumbling rule of law, where we know frank speech on many subjects is forbidden, and pipelines might be, but we aren’t sure whether marijuana is still illegal or how to legalize it if it is.
Imagine a state that can’t figure out how not to ban something. This is not limited government in any sense.
Everywhere you turn there is raging public incompetence at unbearable cost. The politicians’ promises just keep getting more grandiose, but from energy policy to infrastructure, refugees, and justice they run in a tiresome circle where only the bills mount. And when we try to deal with anything fundamental, like the Senate or aboriginal issues, we’re stalemated.
The deepest problem is alienation of citizens from their governments. It’s habitually treated as an odd phenomenon unrelated to the state’s increasingly feeble, unaffordable and arrogant performance. But government in Canada isn’t just big and inept. It’s inept because it’s too big, in ways our traditional constitution was designed to prevent.
Yes, constitution. When problems are this fundamental, so are causes. And right now the relationship between citizens and government in Canada is upside down. We don’t control them, they control us. They have torn loose from their moorings, and we need to strap them down again.
continued at:
John Robson: Our constitution is in dire need of fixing | National Post
