Another fickle outcome in today’s politics
This article is not about how Canada’s Election 2025 created several Westminster possibilities to keep political pundits talking for weeks. Rather, it is about how Mark Carney might become prime minister of Canada.
This rise is quite fickle.
Fickleness #1
A few months ago, the former central banker seemed to be launching a political career on a sinking ship: the Liberal Party. This party has been governing Canada for a decade and has grown tired. It was doomed to be replaced. The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, were waiting for an easy take over.
Then the United States foiled the Conservative plan. Accompanying the executive orders that were flying around the White House after Inauguration Day were some rather direct threats about annexing Canada into the United States. It seemed the plan was to cripple the Canadian economy so bad that Canadians would beg to join the USA as the 51st state.
Well, we Canadians did not like that idea. We started looking to see which political leader would better stand up to President Trump and his annexation plans. Many Canadians were seeing Mr. Poilievre’s rhetoric as too similar to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric. Some of us thought that maybe Mr. Poilievre would be an enabler of the 51st state idea.
Well, those conclusions were good for the political fortunes of Mr. Carney. While his statesmanship skills seem better than Mr. Poilievre’s, those skills, by themselves, could not have vaulted Mr. Carney to the top Canadian job. If Mr. Trump had not mentioned the 51st state, Mr. Poilievre would be making Canadian history, and Mr. Carney would only be a small footnote.
Fickleness #2
Mr. Carney also owes his job to Justin Trudeau. Somewhere around 2021, the Liberal Party came up with the great idea of allowing many more international students to study at Canadian universities, thus stimulating the Canadian economy. But somehow the party forgot the part about housing these students. With more students looking for housing, Economics 101 would have predicted that a slight shortage would drive up rents, which is want happened. It seems Trudeau, the Liberals, and the civil service forgot those lessons from Econ 101. So many Canadians in the lower classes found it more difficult to find and afford housing. PolySci 101 says voters get annoyed when the basics of life get harder.
Like most governments, the Liberal Party did some good things and some not-so-good things. We Canadians do not expect perfection. But the housing crisis was the straw that shook confidence for the Liberals.
Had the Liberal Party not allowed so many international students into Canada or had been able to foresee a social problem was brewing, they might have found solutions before the crisis flared up. Alas, most political parties are just not this proactive and forward thinking. That could be a matter for another TDG article — and I need to get back on topic.
In other words, Justin Trudeau would have been leading the Liberal Party and probably earned another term — if it were not for the housing crisis.
Fickleness #3
Justin Trudeau became the Liberal leader in 2013. The previous three Liberal leaders were politically outplayed by the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, who I regard as one of Canada’s masterful politicians. After each Liberal loss, the Liberal leader was replaced. Many of us were expecting Mr. Trudeau to be another notch on Mr. Harper’s gun.
Mr. Harper and his Conservatives were high in the polls. He called an early election in 2015 to take advantage of the good feelings. Then something happened.
In my opinion, Mr. Trudeau’s ad agency was that “something.” In the previous three elections, the Conservatives successfully painted each new Liberal leader with horns, tail, and pitchfork. The new Liberal ad agency anticipated a similar strategy — and designed counter ads, with Justin Trudeau walking up an escalator (yes, that political stunt was invented in Canada in 2015, so you Americans can blame us Canadians).
This new ad strategy worked. Many Canadians saw Mr. Trudeau as a viable alternative to Mr. Harper, whose party was getting a little tired.
But without that ad agency making the right call at the right time, Mr. Trudeau would not have been Canada’s prime minister for the last 10 years. He would be back teaching high school history.
American Fickleness
The past 10 years of American politics have also had their own fickleness. Let me briefly mention a few points where the “winner” was chosen arbitrarily.
During the Republican primary of 2016, the American media focused on Donald Trump’s entertainment value, almost hoping he would win this contest. The more reasonable conservatives were not given any oxygen. History would be different if John Kasich or Jeb Bush had won the primary.
Because the buffoon was elected as the Republican leader, the Democrats were confident they could proffer a controversial candidate. So they did.
COVID and George Floyd happened before Election 2020. They showed Mr. Trump’s inability to govern well. This helped drive a few million votes in a Democrat way. Had these events happened after the election, Mr. Trump would have got his second term. And no January 6 to show Americans what he was truly after.
In 2024, Mr. Biden decided to run for a second term. The Democratic Party did not have a proper primary to shape the election. There’s a good chance this primary would have found a firebrand that was not so attached to the quasi-inept Biden administration.
Fickleness in Politics
These examples show how a few arbitrary events decide who is and who is not in political power. I do not know of any other profession that is built on luck more than politics. Yet politics is so important, it should not be lucky.
Let’s take a hockey game as an analogy. We will let this hockey game play for the usual 60 minutes. But we will only count the goals scored in a particular five-minute duration. We won’t tell the players and coaches which five minutes will be counted. We should still have an exciting game, but the winner will be based mostly on luck. BTW, lower quality teams have a better chance of winning in this kind of game.
We could argue that arbitrary events in elections are just a part of politics. If a politician makes the wrong call at the wrong time, they deserve to lose.
But if you are troubled by political winners and political losers being picked by fickle political events, then I have a solution you need to explore.
Tiered Democratic Governance
Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) is a new democracy. A democracy for the 21st century. When this new democracy is implemented, it will be less arbitrary with who is in governance.
To make this point, I will refer to A Glimpse of Our Future Democracy.
This essay uses a hypothetical city of 100,000 people governed by a TDG. I will start with the elections to elect 500 neighborhood representatives.
When this TDG is functioning well, I estimate at least 80% of neighborhood representatives will be re-elected each year. If a representative is doing an OK job, his or her neighbors will vote for the incumbent rather than risk a new person.
This leaves about 20% of neighborhood representatives will be new. Maybe the former representative was not doing a good job. Maybe the former representative moved out of the neighborhood. The exact reason does not matter. Rather an opening has been created for someone else to take the position. So which neighbor gets that position?
At this level, it could be argued that this election is arbitrary when it selects one neighbor over another. Maybe Fred belongs to a certain church and there are enough members of that church who live in that neighborhood. Or maybe Francine is a teacher at the elementary school and has had positive school interactions with parents living in the neighborhood. Both Fred and Francine have built rapport with some of their neighbors. Fred gets 40 votes; Francine gets 44 votes; five other contenders get less than 25 each; Francine becomes the neighborhood representative. Why did Francine get four more votes than Fred? We can speculate on the reasons, and these reasons might seem arbitrary.
But after Francine assumes the position, any arbitrariness goes away. Francine will become better known in her neighborhood. If Francine does a reasonable job, she will likely be elected again because she is a proven incumbent. If she does not do a reasonable job, the neighborhood will find someone else in the next election. There is nothing arbitrary about neighbors making their voting decision based on Francine’s performance.
If Francine has some flair for TDG governance, she might rise higher. If she becomes a district representative, she did so on her own merit when interacting with other neighborhood representatives. She showed her consultative nature, and these voters moved her to a higher place in the TDG.
Likewise, if Francine moves into the third tier, the Council, she did so because of her great TDG work at the district tier. She did not get this position by joining the right political party, a clever campaign message, a faltering TDG representative, or an external force outside the TDG.
Conclusion
TDG elections take a lot of arbitrariness of selecting people for governance. Representatives of the top tiers are capable representatives because they have proven their skills at the lower tiers.
In contrast, today’s systems put lower quality yet ambitious political players into governance. These players depend on arbitrariness to find their positions.
Published on Medium & Substack 2025
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