Canada is wallowing in its history and its complacency. Unable to see past their pointed, bigoted noses, our nation’s politicians blindly maintain the status quo on a system that no longer works. 308 buffoons stand in their own little world, debating useless policies while Canada is in crisis. The economy is in the toilet, by 2050 more people will be retired than working, our environment is collapsing, our main exports are all resources that are rapidly becoming non-existent, and all the while our MPs debate about such meaningless and very expensive things as building more prisons, and expanding our military, that is perpetually in the shadow of our Southern neighbour’s behemoth of a force. We need leadership that will stand up for us when the crises come, and political systems that help us weather the approaching storm. In the end, Darwin was right, adapt or die.

            Our government needs an over haul and the first thing I would do is put an axe to the Monarchy and reform the senate. Away with the king and queen, away with the appointed senators and their seemingly contagious disease of “sober-second-thought-itis”. In our constitution we allow the right for appointed bodies to reject the decisions of elected ones. Why the (censored) would we do that! We are a democracy. But the problem is, the Governor General and the senate know deep down in their prickly and aging hearts, that Canada is a democracy too, and if ever they should do something against the wishes of Canadians, it wouldn't just be me writing a report like this. We'd have a full blown revolution. So they all sit in glass boxes, separated from the real world, waving as the world goes by, unable to do anything about it. The instant the Governor General and the Senate ever become important, they'll be abolished. Even so, the Senate still likes to make its tiny, little, insignificant changes to our bills, meaning that nothing gets done on Parliament Hill unless a few old, appointed, bible thumping, rule following, white people agree with a few hundred energetic, elected, and rambunctious monkeys. Now, I agree with having sober second thought, I just wish that it could be done by people we like. The Senate as it stands is simply a place for the Prime Minister to stuff a few of his unpopular friends like sardines in a can, into a big red carpeted room, with comfy chairs and polished furniture. The Senate's a retirement home! It's about time we elected all of our officials. I'm not a republican, I love our queen; I sing a song about her every Remembrance Day. What I don't like is the cost that goes with her. Not only do we need to pay for all trips, maintaining residences, renting stadiums destined to be empty, security for non-existent crowds, but we also have to do the same for her representative, the Governor General. Not that their jobs are meaningless, I can't think of any real person who would be happy cutting big red ribbons to small buildings, and handing out awards for mediocre performances. So, we throw away our useless awards and ribbons with the Monarchs, it's that simple. In a time when each government is being asked to make five percent cuts, the Monarchy is a clear thing to slice.

            Next, it's time to reform our election system. First-past-the-post never worked before, and it's certainly not working any better now. In this system, each riding has its own mini-election and all the votes cast for the candidates that lost, don't count for anything. Manipulating this, smart politicians like Stephen Harper and Jean Chretien, have had the parties on the opposite spectrum to them split the votes in individual ridings, and have therefore allowed for their parties to come up in the middle. This way, a person can become a majority leader without the majority of the votes. In the current system, Stephen Harper could get fifty-three percent of the seats in the House of Commons, and rule Canada for at least four years, unquestioned, when he got less than forty percent of the popular vote. Now take into effect that only half of eligible Canadians voted, and eighteen percent of Canadians can't vote, it means that Harper can hold all of Canada in his hands, when only sixteen percent of Canadians actually voted for him. That's democracy in action for you! Don't despair though, don't pack your bags and move to Germany, there's an easy solution. Get rid of our election system. Switch to percentage voting. Delete the idea of ridings altogether and make our system dependant on popular vote. A party should get the amount of seats compared the amount of votes they received. That way a party could choose their best people and not be left with just the popular baboons that they are comprised of now. And laws could be made to make quotas on how many men, women, African, native, Asian, and other groups had to be represented, that way inequality in government would be tackled too! Currently we also have a first-past-the-post system and the lowest voter turnout since Confederation. We had higher voter turn-out when you had to be male and wealthy to pick your leaders, and there's a good reason. People who could vote did so because voting was a privilege, not a right. We have to change the system to do this again. Don't misinterpret my message by saying we should decide who can vote based on race, gender, or wealth, those days are behind us. We should base who gets to vote on intelligence. Have people be given a test on Canada's political system, those who pass can vote and those who fail can't.  That way our system wouldn't rely on people's age, but what they have between their ears. People don't get any smarter because they've collected more birthday candles. Beside the point, the stupid people who fail the test probably wouldn't even vote anyway in our system. Finally, once the politicians have been elected, we change the way governments are set up. Cabinet ministers shouldn't have to be MPs or Senators. If you do this, then cabinets are comprised of the government's friends and popular faces rather than people who know what they are doing. America has always done this, their cabinet is made up of business magnates and a few the absolute best and brightest members of the ruling party. Their cabinet is almost a third the size of ours and they run a nation ten times the size of ours. Again, in times of economic stress, trimming the fat off the cabinet can't hurt.

            After this, there is no greater time than an economic crisis for a tax revolution. Income taxes have proved to be a bust. They're laughable. Wealthy people pay boat-loads of lawyers piles of cash each year to manipulate the system and pay less tax. The whole income tax system was forced on us as a temporary measure anyways during our rather costly wars, the problem was our government got a little used to the extra funds and stretched the definition of “temporary” by a few decades. In this system, we all have to pay a portion of our income in taxes, and that percentage is decided upon our overall income and many other factors that experts love to exploit for profit. The problem with the system is in its name, it's based on income, and that's an easy figure to dispute. What we need is a system that is based on expenses. If the government changed all taxes to GST, then we would only pay in taxes what we could afford to spend. Then we simply add some hefty tariffs on buying things outside of Canada, and our wealthy pigs are left scratching their heads wondering what they did to be treated like us lowly peasants. And since rich people make more purchases than poor people, they would pay more taxes. Then also, goods would be more expensive, meaning that we wouldn't be able to spend money on the small stuff anymore. Cigarettes, gasoline, chocolate bars, would simply leave the economy because they would be too expensive for young people, their main consumers, to buy. Finally, it would also force us to think into the long term and save money for big purchases instead of borrowing for them, which is what got us into our whole credit crunch in the first place. There can be no doubt about it, an overhaul of the tax system is a scenario with far more wins than losses. Perhaps Brian Mulroney was right when he introduced the GST.

            Finally, it's about time to stop treating native people like they're so special. Assimilation sucks, but it's far more effective and efficient than pretending to be in the Dark Ages on very expensive reserves, that still somehow are perpetually engulfed in Third World conditions. If the natives want to stop being treated like second class citizens, they need to be first class citizens. Their rights should be no different than anyone else's. They've always whined about how we forced our way of government on them, but he did the same thing to millions of immigrants who now make up our nation. The difference is that the immigrants started working with what they had, and didn't pick up the phone to complain. We're all very sorry that our ancestors stole their nation five hundred years ago, but what can we do. We can't give it back! The least the aboriginals could do is bake a nice batch of cookies for their new neighbours, rather than being a thorn in their sides. And if they really hated us and our assimilation so badly, they could take a book out of the page of Al-Queda and the Taliban and start fighting for their country back, that's what I would do if some foreign invaders took my country. Whining never works, it's time for the First Nations to put their money where their mouth is or move on with the rest of world.

            If ever there was an appropriate time to change our system of government, now would be preferable. You think that 144 years of being our own little dominion would have granted us the maturity to make our own choices, but Britain, like a true helicopter parent, has made us keep our hugely inefficient and grossly inefficient systems. But no matter, so long as Canada grows up eventually, we will have a partial victory in history. We need to elect all our officials, make major election reforms, change our tax system, and bring aboriginals to a par with all Canadians. Crises are down the road, we are in order for a major correction. So, I'll ask one question, is our government ready?