Demokratie ist keine Dinnerparty

Canadians aren’t cringing at an adversarial system, they’re cringing at a failed one. If question period led to substantive answers to the questions of the day that would be great but all to often metaphorically speaking the opposition asks the government to chose a number between 1 and 10 and the government responds that they like butter tarts. This is not productive, and the adversarial nature of the useless exchange does not make it productive. It’s also worth noting that we are the only country that is unserious enough that a substantial portion of the population will not only accept this nonsense but celebrate it as a properly working democracy. Even the UK speaker will kick out an MP for not substantively answering a question. Even the US which is mocked by everyone, I can still watch congressional testimony from CEOs or high ranking bureaucrats and have an understanding that two sides are communicating in a comprehensible way. In Canada? Forget it, politicians here take pride in one upping each other with gibberish.