Why Isn't Canada in Revolt?

RB Bennett

Someone asks recently online why, in the face of populist electoral rebellions in the US under Trump, in the UK under Farage and now Lowe, in Italy under Meloni, in the Netherlands under Wilders, in Germany, in France, in Scandinavia, Canada seems quiescent and content with the woke status quo.

I suspect this is mostly accidental. In 2021, Canada was leading the developed world in protest with the Freedom Convoy. The brutal and illegal crushing of that protest did much to cow opposition since; but that must mean it is simmering under the surface. Two years ago, it looked as though the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre were about to sweep into power, humiliating the woke Liberals. Poilievre had impressive rhetorical skills, like Farage or Trump, and talked a relatively hard line. It looked as though Canada was, in Canadian fashion, going to manage a relatively orderly transition to the populist right.

But then the Liberals benefitted from being able to run against the USA and Trump instead of Poilievre—forcing the electorate to rally round the flag. Carney looked like an apolitical technocrat who might be able to manage the crisis. And the Liberal government perhaps benefitted even more from the collapse of the NDP, the party theoretically to their left. A double stroke of luck for them, unlikely to be repeated. And this made the election actually in large part a rejection of the left. It is just that the electorate blamed the NDP, and saw Carney as something new.

In the prior two elections, under Justin Trudeau, 2019 and 2021, the Conservatives actually outpolled the Liberals; the appearance of support for wokeness was an anomaly of the Canadian electoral map.

Now there is a push in Alberta for separation—that is hardly quiescence.

It is true, and disturbing, that current federal polling shows the Liberals well ahead of the Conservatives. I can only account for this as a continuation of the “rally around the flag” impulse in continuing crisis. But unless the Liberals can come through soon with some solid solutions, that support is likely to evaporate. Just as it has evaporated for Keir Starmer in the UK after a landslide election win; just as it evaporated for Boris Johnson and the Tories before him. And just as it evaporated for RB Bennet after he won the 1930 election in the first throes of the Great Depression. Elected as a steady business mind to deal with the crisis, and failing to make a dent, he was crushed in 1935. And has been blamed for the suffering ever since.

I expect Carney to ultimately be such a figure. The bad news is, we in Canada are likely to go through some suffering first. Possibly Canada’s impoverishment, possibly its collap

How to Fix Democracy

The franchise is too broad.

Someone once said that democracy works only so long as people don’t realize they can just vote themselves money.

And that, sadly, seems to be where we are headed.

There is a simple solution, and it is what our ancestors did: nobody paid by government gets to vote. This would include people on welfare, pensioners, the disabled, students on government scholarships. It seems a small sacrifice in exchange for a living, and would prevent this conflict of interest. 

And it would include civil servants, public school teachers, the police, the military. Employees should not vote on their own employment terms or rate of pay—otherwise, we have a ruling class.

In the same vein, corporations or individuals receiving government subsidies or government contracts should be prohibited from making any political donations for a set term—say ten years.

If this rule were imposed, it would probably cause the Liberal and New Democratic parties to collapse; the Democrats to collapse in the US. 

Which seems to me to show they are corrupt.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

 

What these temptations really mean. Read it in our SubStack feed.

Lord North's Mistake

 

He lost America

Surely one of the worst policy failures in modern history was Lord North’s loss of the 13 colonies in the American War of Independence. And the solution seems so simple. They objected to taxation without representation; so give them representation, as Edmund Burke urged at the time. What’s the problem? Give them seats proportional to population at Westminster.

Had this been done, Canada and the Caribbean would presumably also still be a part of a British Federation. United, it would probably have been a force powerful enough to have prevented the two World Wars and all the suffering they produced. European or “Western” civilization would not be in the funk it is in now.

It is not too late to fix this historic error. There is still no reason for Britain, America, Canada, and Australia to be independent countries, despite their common language, common interests, and common culture. Forget worries about Trump annexing Canada; why resist? It is an outcome devoutly to be wished. 

For one thing, in case it has slipped the reader’s notice, the US economy has been thundering past those of Canada or Britain, or anyone else. This is because the US is the centre of the high-tech boom, or rather, the intensifying series of high-tech booms. We should all want to be a part of this prosperity. We non-Americans are losing out.

And these booms happen in the US largely because of its large free market, which allows for niche testing and rapid expansion of new products. It is no accident that the US’s most successful competitor is China, who has even more of this advantage: triple the population, an even bigger market in terms of raw consumers, if with less purchasing power.

And so, if we do not want to see China and its authoritarian government gain world ascendancy and become able to dictate to the rest of us, we need to expand the US market and US power. We need to expand to include Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean. 

Let’s fix Lord North’s blunder. 

The Atheists of X

 

And why Christians are largely to blame.

On the Spirit of Han

 

Why do Koreans and Irish love to be sad?

Read it and weep.

I'd Rather Have a Paper Doll to Call My Own...

 

Elon Musk says that curiosity must be built into AI to ensure that it does not turn against humans. If curious, it will value humans because they are interesting.

Curiosity also seems to be motivating for humans. We prefer cats or dogs as pets to goldfish or turtles, because they are more intelligent and therefore more interesting.

Elon Musk also says that very soon, AI will be more intelligent than humans. Much more.

If all these premises are true, doesn’t this mean that soon, men will find any lifelike AI robot girlfriend much more interesting and desirable than a human woman? Or at least, the most intelligent men will, those able to appreciate the difference. And I suppose the same for very intelligent women?

This might become an issue... so much for human reproduction.