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John Ibbitson looks at the likely-pending Canadian federal election and asks:

• Four elections.  Six years.  Is Canada broken? (Globe and Mail)

As evidence that the country’s in deep trouble, Ibbitson relates the following:

A political system designed to produce majority governments or, at the least, stable minority governments, has malfunctioned, throwing up instead a succession of regimes so fragile that the campaign for the next election begins with the first Speech from the Throne.

[...]

From 1969 to 1973, Parliament sat, on average, 163 days a year. From 2004 to 2008, it was down to 105.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, 96 per cent of legislation introduced into Parliament became law. In Lester B Pearson’s minority governments, the figure was 91 per cent. Brian Mulroney only got 73 per cent of his agenda through Parliament; for Stephen Harper, the figure is 48 per cent. Most of what gets introduced into Parliament now never becomes enshrined in law.

[...]

Few would deny that the chickens released in the 1990s have come home to roost today. To rid itself of deficits, Jean Chretien’s government offloaded to the provinces increased responsibilities for running health care, education, welfare, environmental policies and a plethora of other duties, without providing sufficient funding.

The provinces, once they stopped howling, set about raising revenue and taking on their new mandates. Today, Canada is a nation of strong provinces with a weak federal government, hobbled by minority Parliaments and uncertain of its own relevance.

Those aren’t bugs, they’re features.  Canada is doing fairly well:

While the United States claws its way out of vicious economic crisis, Canada is recovering nicely from a reasonably mild recession, thanks to the federal government’s sound fiscal and monetary policies. Most Canadians have good jobs and receive excellent government services, from education to health care. Most people are content.

Given how well Canadians live, thanks in no small measure to their governments, Prof. French asks, “what justifies this terrible, dark view of the country that Canadian intellectuals constantly indulge in?”

Fair question.

And one that Ibbitson never quite manages to answer, at that.  The rest of the article presents a set of circumstances — regionalized parties, growing disaffection with the federal government, and lack of the “Parliamentary productivity” that characterized previous minority governments — as if they’re obvious evidence that something’s amiss, but never manages to produce any bad shit that can be attributed to them.

The gleaming edifice of Canadian federal politics may be in trouble, but the government is not the country.