We need to safeguard democracy

By Lethbridge Herald on July 15, 2021.

It is beginning to feel like life is returning to some semblance of normal again – albeit a new “normal” where we are all going to have to rethink our approach to life.
We have turned several corners, and there is no going back. If the COVID-19 pandemic (which is not over yet, by the way) has taught us anything, it is how fragile the social systems we have constructed our way of life around are.
First lesson: we have to start living more sustainably. The vast emptiness of our city landscapes witnessed at the height of the pandemic last year, even as wild animals roamed our streets in some instances, testifies to the fact human activity is too busy, too energy-consuming and too sprawling. We need to start focusing on creating a smaller footprint for human society and a less intensive future not only for the sake of Mother Earth, but also for human sanity.
Second lesson: public health is a must – not a budgetary inconvenience. Governments around the world learned this lesson the hard way in many instances last year as the pandemic ran rampant, with far more fatal results, through countries with insufficient public healthcare infrastructure.
Efficiency is one thing, but if a government does not have the capacity to respond to future public health emergencies then the “cost” to that society will be far greater than any investment of public dollars outlayed as part of the normal budgetary process.
It’s a lesson hopefully Alberta, in particular, learned as the UCP seeks to privatize more aspects of public health care. Whatever changes are made must ensure there is capacity for any possible future pandemics or public health emergencies. Seeing the mass graves put down in some U.S. cities last year where the system failed so egregiously is a sobering reminder of what happens when a medical care system puts profit before people. Let’s make sure Alberta never goes there.
Third lesson: we have to start appreciating democracy for the miracle it is, and recommit ourselves to its processes. We have seen nominally democratic nations around the world moving to an increasing fascist beat over the past five years. Most frighteningly, our neighbours to the south have begun to lose perspective on this issue under an increasingly bipartisan conflict which, shockingly, saw a defeated U.S. president seek to cling to power by the use of mob violence instead of ensuring a peaceful transition to a new administration as all his successors have done in the past.
Thankfully, American democracy proved resilient and the institutions put in place to safeguard democracy functioned as they were supposed to amid the crisis; barely.
We are not immune in Canada, and in the increasingly bipartisan landscape of Alberta politics we should keep the troubles south of the border strongly in mind as a precautionary tale about keeping decorum and respecting the function of democracy as the two polarizing parties here throw political vitriol and rhetoric at each other.
Democracy allows every eligible citizen to vote and have a say in who they want to govern them.
As we head into local election season this fall, and potentially a federal election season as well, please exercise this right and do your part to help safeguard democracy in Canada and around the world.