America was supposed to be a truly decentralized bottom-up republic designed to defend the rights and liberties of its citizens (and their local communities!) from tyranny in all its forms. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, what the Founding Fathers created was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Yet the entire 250-year history of the United States is one long slow erosion of that idea as America evolves to become an increasingly top-down, centrally-controlled, quasi-imperial state. America might still have an elected president, but by many measures it has long since become even more burdensome to live under Washington’s current thumb that it was to live under King George III on the eve of the American Revolution.
By contrast, our Canadian parliamentary system has long since been quasi-imperial in the structure of its constitution — and has been from its founding. The colonial governments of British North America that banded together to create the Dominion of Canada — much like Britain itself — were terrified of the “dangerous” republican ideas flourishing in America that sought to turn control of the government over to the people. And so, after losing its thirteen rebellious colonies during the American Revolution, the remainder of British North America set about designing a system that provided some illusion of democracy to its subjects while custom-crafting it to ensure that our “governors” would retain their free hand to shape our country and harness our men and our resources according to their will. Elite rule.
Canada’s seemingly benign constitutional motto “peace, order, and good governance” reflects that top-down vision that keeps the voices of its citizens at arm’s length from the levers of power. From day one, government in Canada has always been a top-down enterprise. For all intents and purposes, Canada is merely the natural home-grown successor state of King George III’s colonial government in both purpose and design.
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