Dealing with the latter, many would argue that government is for some people, particularly those who are wealthy and well connected. In recent years there has been extensive coverage of “the 1%,” whose combined wealth is greater than the wealth of the remaining 99% of the population. Governments, including the current Liberal Government in Ottawa, promise to introduce a wealth tax on the superrich, but never follow through. In addition, many people over the past century have felt excluded from government and public participation because of discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, gender, and – more recently – sexual orientation.
It is even more apparent that we don’t have government BY the people because of a combination of apathy and ignorance. Barely two-thirds of eligible voters bother to participate in most federal and provincial elections and the turnout was far lower (44.5%) in the 2021 federal election and only 43.5% in the 2022 Ontario election. Only about one-third of those who were eligible voted in the last municipal election in Ontario and the result was much lower for a number of the larger municipalities in the province. As noted in a previous blog (Richard Tindal Blog - Tindal on Government (weebly.com), only 29% voted in the Toronto election, 27% in Brantford, 25% in London, 21% in Mississauga, and 20% in Kitchener.
It is also troubling that far too many people don’t appear to have much understanding of government and how it works or any inclination to address this issue. In the annual survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the 2022 results found that fewer than half of Americans could name all three branches of government and 25% could not name any branches. Canadian confusion about how their governments work is also widespread. Indeed, the truckers laying siege to the federal government made several demands about health care without any apparent awareness that this is a provincial responsibility.
Not With a Bang but a Whimper
This is the way the world will end according to T. S. Eliot in his 1925 poem “The Hollow Men” and I would argue that if democracy ends it will also be in this fashion. This might seem unlikely, given the violent confrontations that are increasingly prevalent, including the civil insurrections against the national governments in Canada and the U.S. in the previous two years. But democracy’s survival depends upon informed participation by the public. At the moment we have far too little participation and far too many citizens who are ill-informed about government and the issues of the day.
To combat these twin liabilities we need to start with our educational systems and ensure that all students get a solid grounding in civics. I am not talking about a partisan curriculum, which would be altered every time there was a change in the party in power. I am talking about a course on fundamentals – how our governments are organized and how they operate – and on major public policy issues of the day. The objective would NOT be to advocate for any particular approach but to examine major issues facing society and to discuss varying ways that these issues might be addressed. If we can graduate students proficient in science, business, languages, and other subjects, there is no reason why these graduates cannot also acquire an understanding of democratic government and the informed participation that it needs to survive.