Gaining Confidence?

You might expect the leader of Canada's Green party to write little more than a book on how the government has failed on the issue of climate change. After all, the misconception that the Greens build their platform solely off one specific niche issue does persist today, as is evinced by dismal election results.

But in Losing Confidence: Power, Politics, and the Crisis in Canadian Democracy, Elizabeth May inadvertently quashes that assumption. Her book conveys considerable knowledge of the mechanics of the Canadian political system in drawing attention to the dangerous path Canada is headed down.

Although her message is hardly alarmist, she does spell out in concise and accessible prose a number of signs that the quality of our democracy is in sharp decline: the lack of respect among parliamentarians, the prevalence of blindly partisan attack ads, the shrinkage of Canadian media, declining political literacy and voter turnout, and others. At times, the opening and closing of each chapter reminds me of essay structure we learned back in grade twelve; in other words, May opens the odd chapter telling the reader something she already made crystal clear on the previous page. To her favour though, this structure does make it easy to read each chapter in isolation from the others. What this comes down to, as far as I'm concerned, is accessibility at the slight expense of style.

To May's credit though, her arguments about the decline of transparent democracy in favour of partisanship and buzz-language supersede stylistic concerns a bit. If Canadians have become the victims of the silver-tongued partisans, clarity is a priority first and foremost. She draws on the knowledge of politicians, officials, insiders, and columnists from all political persuasions to make a strong case for the crisis in democracy, one that holds in store praise and blame for members of all different federal parties.

I hope that, given the accessibility of this book, more people will read it, and, if not take Elizabeth May more seriously as a politician, at least become more aware of some of the issues at stake in democracy. The 40.1% of Canadians who did not vote in the previous election could have made a significant difference in the way in which government has been run for the past two years. Losing Confidence is on to something, and though its writer may never be prime minister, her message has the potential to open Canadians' eyes to the political world we live in.