President Joe Biden recently visited Canada for what became a real love-in with his opposite Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister. In his speech to Parliament, Biden frequently related to the close relationship to Canada, including our democratic values and institutions. However, all is not well in both countries. The U.S. had last year’s violent January 6th insurrection at the Capital and Canada had the truckers’ 3-week illegal occupation of streets within Ottawa’s parliamentary precinct. Observers claim that a lot of these events are related to what is perceived by some Americans and Canadians as a lack of trust in police, the courts and government at all levels. What’s worst, in the U.S. you had a former president who refused to accept the results of the last presidential election and today continues to espouse to his followers that the election was stolen.
This past week, President Biden delivered remarks at the second White House-led Summit for Democracy, but at a time when several democracies are under duress of some kind. One can refer to political conditions in so-called significant democratic countries such as Israel, Mexico, India and Brazil. Democratic setbacks have also occurred in West Africa, where there have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years. For example, in Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, experts say that the presidential election last February appeared suspect. At the above noted summit, two notable members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Hungary and Turkey, were excluded in light of fact that their autocratic political systems have grown no less repressive during Mr. Biden’s tenure.
Underlying all this issue is the fact that dictatorships such as Russia and China have been trying to increase their economic and political influence in countries, particularly in Africa and South America. Both the governments of Russia and China have been accused of having meddled in recent American and Canadian electoral processes. Dealing effectively with these countries needs to be done in order to avoid any foreign influence in democratic processes.
In the U.S., even the fundamental right of Americans to vote is being challenged in some states where various forms of new voting restrictions or requirements have being implemented or considered, notably by Republican states. In some cases, such restrictions will especially affect voting by minority groups, college students and marginalized persons.
Unfortunately, much of political turmoil has been the result of extreme divisions within our societies and large amounts of misinformation and disinformation being spread through on-line social media. Mainstream media sources, fundamentally important to supporting democratic processes, are continuously under attack. Journalists themselves have been verbally and physically attacked by extreme politicized groups, both right and left.
Human and civil rights are in danger of being weakened in democratic countries. Many of the important gains achieved by LGBTQ groups in the last couple of decades are increasingly coming under attack, especially by religious right-wing segments of our societies. Organized local protests have even occurred against school boards in both countries, and appear to be gaining strength. Elected school board representatives have increasingly come under attack when it comes to school policies protecting the rights of LGBTQ youth and education regarding sexual orientation.
Generally, trust and confidence in our democratic institutions has to be restored in order to maintain our taken-for-granted freedoms. Civility has to return to how we conduct our affairs and the rule of law has to be strengthened. Otherwise, we will only see more and more serious threats to democracies, either here in Canada, the U.S. or abroad. Words and platitudes are all fine, but actions are now needed.
FROLITICKS 