Election shows U.S. politics similar to Canadian system
Published 1:30 am Friday, November 18, 2022
American partisan politics are not unlike those of Canada. For example, one party having control over Canada’s House of Commons doesn’t translate into individual elected members actually representing their specific electorate. They basically represent their party and its ideology thus policy.
Even then, our elected leaders and governments are increasingly becoming symbolically “in charge,” beneath the most power-entrenched and saturated national/corporate interests and institutions.
Most notably, powerful business interests can debilitate high-level elected officials through implicit or explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate “requests” are not accommodated.
Lobbyists will even write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time.
It’s a political crippling that’s worsened by a blaring news media that’s permitted to be naturally critical of incumbent governments, especially in regard to job and capital transfers and economic weakening.
Apparently, politically potent and focused big business interests get catered-to regardless of which of our two largest parties governs.
To quote “Calamity” Jane Bodine in the film “Our Brand Is Crisis,” “If voting changed anything, they’d have made it illegal.”
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, B.C.
