Democracy or Authoritarianism

Mica Pettibone

Canada is currently a representative Democracy where we elect candidates to represent us,

each area of Canada has a designated amount of candidates very loosely based on

population density. At the present time this Democratic system is what we are content with,

and doesn’t need change.

Canada cannot consider any form of authoritarianism as an effective government; it goes

against what we stand for. If we were to end up with a form of Authoritarian government it

would not be long before the safety measures we have in place to restrict the power of

single individuals would remove the governing body. Authoritarian governments in theory

have certain promise, the ability to get things done in a fast manner because of the lack of

red tape. The problem arises that no single individual can account for the opinions of

everyone, and without compromise to account for other opinions it won’t take long for a

population to become dissatisfied with the system at which point it will slowly, or quickly,

start to fail. Authoritarian governments have never lasted, no form of government has ever

lasted.

This is because as times change so do our needs, in Europe, who some might suggest is

ahead of us as far as development of countries, a Proportional representative system is very

popular. This suggests that perhaps in future as our needs and opinions change we might

adopt this sort of system, or create a new one. However we have not adopted this style of

democracy because of the impact it would have on the amount of seats parties would hold,

evening out the playing field more and making coalitions much more probable. Coalitions

are something we view as bad, simply because we believe that parties with relatively

different ideals would be ineffective working together. Either way any form of government

is never constant, it works so long as it suits the needs of its people, but the moment it stops

adapting to the peoples will it fails, and is replaced.

This is why our current system is working; thus far it has adapted to fit our needs, making

changes in order to meet the needs of our population, which means that we do not have a

reason to change it. The very fact that a system is in place and stable says that it is

functioning and the people are content with it, which means there is no better system suited

to those peoples needs at that time. Either this or there is another system that would have

the same amount of positives and faults for that population as the system in place.

Following this logic, as Canadians are mostly satisfied with our form of government a

Representative/Parliamentary Democracy is what works best for us.