Canada and the failing democracy of the U.S.A.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2025 (231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s time to build a wall on our border. Not an economic wall against the United States of America but a democratic wall against the United States of Autocracy. If we value our form of democracy, we will protect ourselves against theirs.

Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” America under President Donald Trump is testing this view in real time. His serial abuse of democratic processes, institutions, and norms is creating a state of creeping authoritarianism. And it threatens Canada.

The U.S. constitution famously enshrines “certain unalienable rights”, “truths to be self-evident”. But powerful words are powerless if not truly believed. What Americans truly believe is that they are ‘the exceptional nation’, unique and exemplary in the world. This American exceptionalism grew from America’s great enduring experiment. That it cast off a foreign king through revolution and created a sovereign democratic nation based on the rule of law not men.

Trump is bent on creating a new vision of American exceptionalism. One based on the primacy of executive authority — the president — and dismissive of legislative and judicial checks and balances.

Consider what’s happening. Judges are routinely threatened if they do not align with the Trump administration. A sitting senator and judge were arrested for expressing dissent with government policy. A masked militia is dispatched to round up illegal immigrants with questionable due process. Gerrymandering of congressional districts is underway to create a permanent Republican majority. Public officials are forced to submit to loyalty tests including polygraphs. Public universities offside with the government are forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in manufactured fines to retain government grants. Privileged access to government is granted to billionaires and others paying into Trump-supported entities or activities that directly or indirectly benefit him and his family. Criminals supporting the president are routinely pardoned while opponents are threatened with arrest and labelled “enemies of the state”.

Last week, another unprecedented step. The White House fired the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics because the president didn’t like the job numbers her independent agency released, calling them “rigged”. Every government official now knows their livelihood is at risk if they do not toe the line. Institutional independence is dead. Trump is signaling that truth is not based on facts.

Stand back and Trump’s creeping authoritarianism playbook becomes clearer. First, achieve power based on the concept of the all-knowing leader. Second, advance a radical (MAGA) agenda quickly that disrupts society and governing institutions. Third, undermine checks and balances that constrain executive authority particularly in the legislative and judicial branches of government. Fourth, secure personal political power by transforming electoral systems in your favour. Fifth, suppress or limit civil liberties and alternative voices of that would challenge authority. All of these are now occurring in one form or another.

A Swedish democratic institute that tracks the state of democracies announced that for the first time in 20 years, there are more autocracies than democracies in the world, 91 versus 88. Liberal democracies, including Canada, are the rarest of all types of government, with just 29 left and declining. Today, only 12 per cent of the world’s population live in a liberal democracy like ours, compared to 72 per cent that live in a form of autocracy.

Canada traditionally ranks very high on global measurements of democratic performance. All to the good. But this does not make us immune to anti-democratic viruses from within or without. We ranked 25th globally according to that same Swedish report for liberal democracies. The Economist’s Democracy Index, meanwhile, showed a fall from 2019 to 2023 in two of the five categories used to measure democratic performance: functioning of government and, sharply, political culture.

These can be considered as leading indicators of democratic decline. Public trust ebbs when governments function poorly (as they have been) and political culture coarsens and polarizes (as it has been).

The economic influence of America weighs heavily on our prosperity. We are rightly engaged in a test of economic sovereignty and independence against Trump’s tariffs. But our democratic sovereignty and independence is being tested too. Cross-border imports of goods and services from the U.S. is one thing. Cross-border imports of anti-democratic notions, ideas, and values is quite another. In today’s digital world, that is a real threat.

As the U.S. spirals into increasing levels of authoritarianism and autocratic behaviour, we need to think beyond our open border impulses and shared trading history. We need to pronounce our own Canadian exceptionalism. What makes us unique, distinct, and, yes, exemplary.

It’s time to build a big, beautiful democratic wall against America to protect Canadian democracy and our way of life.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.