Opinion: Oh say, can you see? Canadian politics takes on an American flavour

Over breakfast last week, an American guest bemoaned her country’s politics.

She ceased to recognize them any more, she said. They had careened off on some crazy trajectory — the ricochets of too many trigger fingers. U.S. politics, she said, was so out there, had become so bizarre, it filled her with alarm.

I, Canadian, typically both envious and disdainful of the American experience, commiserated. A little too sanctimoniously. Tsk tsk. What are you people doing to each other down there? The smug, middle-way Canadian looks southward and sees, to his reassurance that everything is still right where he lives, a country filled with wing nuts.

Breakfast ended. But soon so did the air of self-satisfaction.

Back at the office, news arrived of the latest howler out of Ottawa. Conservative MP Vic Toews, head of the Orwellian-named Public Safety Canada, was again frothing at the mouth.

This time, he was the injured. Someone posted on Twitter the sordid details of his divorce.

I would have called it news except for the fact it wasn’t: Toews had been outed as an extramarital fornicator as early as four years ago by several newspapers.

The Hidden Casualty of the Debt Deal

Most of the endless rehashing of the debt deal has correctly focused on the fact that corporate interests and Tea Party politics have prevailed again, at the expense of the middle class, children in poverty, students and the elderly. But in understanding the long-term impact of this drawn-out debate, too little attention has been paid to the blow it has dealt to the foundational principles of our democracy.

A CNN poll conducted after the deal shows that a whopping 77 percent of Americans believe that elected officials acted like “spoiled children.” The yawning gap between the mindset of decision-makers in Washington and the daily reality of most Americans is a grave threat to what organizers call “little-d democracy.” This is about neither the Democratic Party nor the procedural machinery by which our nominally democratic government operates. “Little-d democracy” is the basic idea that ordinary Americans, regardless of rank or stature, can have a voice in shaping our own destiny.

When all is said and done, the process that created the deal may end up being as destructive as the deal’s effects. While the country watched helplessly, each new turn and every talking head in the seemingly endless saga demonstrated that ordinary people had no real part to play. Unless we employ an army of lobbyists or have a key to the Congressional washroom, it seemed there was no reconciling the debate on the Hill with the needs and desires of those most affected by the final deal.