The nice thing about Canada is that our political system makes sense. We roughly know what we’re voting for every time we go to the polls. The Conservatives are conservative, the Liberals are liberal and the NDP is the only party that doesn’t outright state their position in their name – hanging out to the left of the Liberals, they still have a pretty clear and predictable point of view.
I’ve been basking in the pleasant predictability of Canadian politics because we are in the midst of an American election year, and I’ve got to confess, their parties make no sense to me.
Right now, we’re in the midst of their primary season, where the Democratic Party is selecting between various candidates who seem to represent the points of view of everyone on the Canadian political spectrum. Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg could probably run for the Conservatives here, Elizabeth Warren would be comfortable in the Liberal Party and Bernie Sanders would decked out in NDP orange. And yet, somehow, they’re all running for the same party. It’s very confusing to an outside observer.
And that’s one party. The other, the Republicans, lead by Donald Trump, are roughly equivalent to a wild fringe party in Canada, like Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party. But nobody actually voted for the People’s Party in Canada, while the Republicans are currently leading the country in the US.
And the history of American politics is even more convoluted, as at one point the Republican Party and the Democratic Party had complete opposite positions to their current standings, which has lead to some bizarre debate points and the general idea that their system is a convoluted mess. It’s very convenient that in Canada a party’s position and point of view is baked right into their name, we don’t have to worry about them radically changing what they stand for since that would require an extensive rebranding.
Add to that the eternity that they take to actually select a leader. I mean, how on earth could anyone think that the primary system they use is a good idea? Multiple little elections, divided by state, on different dates and times, and the voters in one state are going to be essentially irrelevant if they’re too early or too late in the process, since they could be voting for someone who dropped out of the race later or in a contest where the race is decided. It’s unnecessarily convoluted and expensive, a giant mess, and much worse than how Canada selects party leaders, as everyone uses a sensible voting system and does it only once for everyone in the country.
Canada’s political system is far from perfect, and no political system is, but when I look south of the border, I’m grateful that I live here and not there. Our parties have clear points of view, our leaders are selected in a reasonable manner, and in general there’s a measure of sanity to the way we do things. Canada’s system could be better, and there are naturally plenty of people who wish the results were different, but in the angry chaos of an American election year, it’s easy to see that it could be much, much worse.
