Modern parties have evolved into vote-seeking zombies — far more efficient at identifying potential supporters than at higher-level, long-term thinking.
The biggest threat to Canadian democracy isn’t what other countries are doing to us. In my view, it’s what we have done to ourselves. Over decades, Canadian politicians have diminished our capacity to think intelligently about long-term challenges. We’ve trapped ourselves in a world of nasty, short-term politics.
Imagine this scenario. A voter in the upcoming federal election wants to cast an informed ballot. So they look around for a credible, fact-based explanation of problems that Canada is likely to face in the next 30 years, and how those problems might be addressed.
That voter will likely come up empty-handed. Our political parties can’t seem to provide that kind of analysis. It’s like modern parties have evolved into vote-seeking zombies — far more efficient in identifying potential supporters than at higher-level thinking.
However, commissions of this type fell out of fashion after the 1990s. Prime ministers did not like the fact that commissions were independent, and complained that they worked too slowly to be useful within the lifespan of one government.
Politicians also hoped that private organizations would fill the gap in long-term thinking. But no one else in Canada had the resources to do the job properly. We don’t have big think tanks like the United States. Canadian journalism has been gutted by internet behemoths like Google and Meta. Universities emphasize basic research, not educating citizens about long-term challenges.
Politicians took other steps that undermined our ability to focus on the big picture. For example, the prime minister and provincial premiers met regularly from the 1940s through the early 1990s, and one of their aims was to build consensus on long-term priorities.
Finally, our national capacity to address long-term challenges is threatened by the decay of the public sphere. The decline of journalism, the corrosive effects of social media, foreign interference and disinformation, public ignorance about our history and future — these are all facets of a single underlying problem. The capacity of citizens to have an informed and civil conversation about the Canadian project is collapsing. Governmental responses to this core problem have been slow, fragmented, and flawed.
The lack of a long-term view is painfully evident in our national politics. We have no national climate strategy, if that means a generally agreed plan rooted in a shared understanding of how the climate emergency will shape Canada over the next 30 years. Similarly, we have no long-term strategy for economic growth, defence and diplomacy in an increasingly hostile world.
As the federal election approaches, Canadians will experience a particular kind of politics. Sometimes it will be personal and vicious. Sometimes it will be reactive, fixated on problems like housing and immigration that should have been anticipated but weren’t. And when politics does look forward, it will usually be focused on promises to voting blocs that can be fulfilled within the next four years. This kind of politics wasn’t inevitable. We made it this way.
This kind of politics undermines democracy, in the sense that Canadian voters are no longer exercising real control over their country’s future. And in a turbulent world, this kind of politics is dangerous. Countries that don’t take the long view stumble from crisis to crisis, until leaders are completely overwhelmed.