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“The problem with democracy is not that people think too little, but that they think feelingly.” — C.H.
Canada is a sorry sight — a northern Dominion where citizens shuffle to the polls with all the discernment of a raccoon choosing between two shiny garbage can lids: eager, twitchy, and blissfully unaware that whichever one they pry open, it’s the same old trash inside.
Every four years, or less, we perform our national sacrament of democratic confusion — an electorate armed with smartphones but unacquainted with synapses, pressing the ballot button as if it were a “like” on Instagram. The founders, if they could see this pageant, would surely groan that they gave us responsible government, not roulette.
And yet roulette is what we have made of it. Canada has become a country of vibe voters — people who choose their leaders the way they choose their yoghurt, by the colour of the label and the tone of the slogan. “An economy that works for everyone.” “Diversity is our strength.” “For the middle class and those working hard to join it.” These phrases drift down from Ottawa like snowflakes in April, briefly admired, then forgotten in the slush. Our politics is now an aesthetic exercise: we vote not for policy but for posture, not for argument but for aura. When the prime minister smiles, half the country feels morally moisturised. When he frowns, they assume it must be the climate’s fault.
Click on the button below to take the voting quiz.
This is no cheap jibe. The empirical evidence is mortifying. In the United States, roughly seventy percent of adults fail a basic civics test. In Britain, fewer than one in three can define inflation. Here at home, fewer than one in four Canadians can accurately explain what a deficit is, and almost half think it is the same thing as the national debt.
According to the OECD, one in five of us struggles with basic literacy and numeracy — a troubling handicap for people entrusted with choosing who steers a trillion-dollar economy.
These are not citizens in the classical sense; they are consumers auditioning for a reality show. We have mistaken self-expression for civic duty, confusing our feelings with our faculties.
And so, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift — who once proposed that the Irish eat their babies as a solution to famine1 — I offer a less culinary, but equally necessary, cure for our moral malnutrition: a Voter Literacy Test.
Picture the civility of it. No guillotines, no book burnings, merely a short and dignified quiz at every polling station. Twenty questions, half on civics, half on economics. Pass with seventy percent, and your vote counts. Fail, and your ballot, like so many political promises, quietly evaporates into the ether without ceremony or fuss. The ignorant are spared embarrassment; the informed are spared their consequences.
This is not disenfranchisement — it is a form of public hygiene.
Predictably, the outrage would be instantaneous. Canadians who cannot define GDP will nonetheless appear on television to explain why testing for it is “unfair.” Civil libertarians would call it elitism. Activists would march beneath signs reading Knowledge Is Violence.
Editorials would declare that asking an adult to name the Governor General is tantamount to voter suppression. Yet this modest proposal discriminates only against ignorance, which remains the most egalitarian affliction on earth. It would not punish poverty or race or creed, only stupidity — the last prejudice still considered impolite to name.
Of course, someone would have to write the questions, and that would instantly become a national scandal. The Conservatives would demand, “What is socialism?” and mark every answer wrong. The New Democrats would ask, “How do you feel about wealth redistribution?” and award full marks for sincerity of tears. The Liberals would pose the question, “Do you identify as informed?” and hand out participation stickers.
But even that would be progress, since at least we’d be quarrelling about facts again rather than hashtags. At present, our political vocabulary has been replaced by a series of mood boards. We no longer discuss policy; we curate it. We have replaced the parliamentary debate with the moral selfie.
If all of this sounds cruel, then let me offer an even gentler reform. On the electronic ballot, beside the party logos, a small checkbox: “I do not have enough information to make an informed decision.” Tick it, and Ottawa sends you ten dollars for your honesty — perhaps twenty if you do it before lunch.
Think of it as a civic refund, a modest payment for not wrecking the nation. At last, a federal program that rewards truth rather than ignorance. For the first time, the government would pay people to admit what they do not know, essentially encouraging them to tell the truth.
But let us linger a moment longer in fantasy and imagine the examination itself, that quiet reckoning between the voter and the facts. You are asked who Canada’s head of state is. You are asked when the country became a nation. You are asked to define GDP, inflation, and the purpose of the Bank of Canada. And then, as a final act of mercy, you are asked: “If you could go for a beer with one political leader, who would it be?”
The only acceptable answer is that it’s irrelevant. If you pick anyone, your ballot is shredded. The test would continue in this vein, growing more savage with each question. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” If you answer “influencer,” your Wi-Fi is permanently disconnected. “Who would you rather date, the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader?” If you take the question seriously, you are escorted from the premises. The purpose is not cruelty; it is calibration. Democracy requires a certain threshold of seriousness, and ours has fallen below the minimum operating standard.
Now, of course, such a test will never happen. It would violate the Charter, horrify the press, and cause a run on fainting couches in every faculty lounge from Victoria to St. John’s. But that is precisely why it should be imagined — because satire can still say what sincerity no longer dares. In Canada, every scandal is survivable except boredom.
We forgive corruption, incompetence, and waste, but never tedium. Trudeau survives not because he governs well but because he emotes beautifully. His successors will survive the same way, by performing responsibility rather than exercising it. Carney will sell the illusion of competence with the same smug fluency that Trudeau sells charm. Each will flatter the electorate’s vanity, assuring us that we are decent people in a decent country, even as the numbers collapse. Our GDP per capita is falling, our productivity is stagnant, and our young cannot afford homes — but we are “inclusive,” and that’s apparently what counts.
The truth, of course, is that our democracy has not been hijacked by the corrupt but hollowed out by the credulous. Politicians lie because it works, and it works because we do not know enough to catch them. We have built a civic religion of good feelings in which every slogan must be affirming, every policy a mood. We vote by vibe and are governed by gesture. And when someone suggests that citizens might need to understand the system they command, we react with horror, as if literacy were an act of oppression. Our ancestors fought for the franchise; we’ve turned it into a game show.
I know this proposal is absurd. It is supposed to be. Satire has always been the last refuge of the rationalist. Swift’s cannibalism was never about hunger, and this literacy test is not about exclusion. It is about the moral collapse of a citizenry that mistakes sincerity for truth and feeling for thought. To point this out is now considered rude — the only unforgivable sin in modern Canada. But rudeness is often the first step back to reality.
So no, I am not proposing to sterilise voters or revoke Wi-Fi privileges. I merely wish to restore the faint link between intellect and influence. If you vote by mood, you will be governed by marketing. If you choose your leaders as you choose your playlists, expect the country to sound like static.
The literacy test will never be implemented, but its ghost will hover over every election, whispering: “Do you know what you’re doing?” And if you bristle at the question, then you’ve already failed it.
It is a sorry sight in this northern Dominion to watch one’s fellow citizens shuffle to the polls with all the discernment of a raccoon choosing between two shiny garbage can lids.
Every four years, or less, we perform our national sacrament of democratic confusion — an electorate armed with smartphones but unacquainted with synapses, pressing the ballot button as if it were a “like” on Instagram. The founders, if they could see this pageant, would surely groan that they gave us responsible government, not roulette.
And yet roulette is what we have made of it. Canada has become a country of vibe voters — people who choose their leaders the way they choose their yoghurt, by the colour of the label and the tone of the slogan. “An economy that works for everyone.” “Diversity is our strength.” “For the middle class and those working hard to join it.” These phrases drift down from Ottawa like snowflakes in April, briefly admired, then forgotten in the slush. Our politics is now an aesthetic exercise: we vote not for policy but for posture, not for argument but for aura. When the prime minister smiles, half the country feels morally moisturised. When he frowns, they assume it must be the climate’s fault.
Click on the button below to take the voting quiz.
This is no cheap jibe. The empirical evidence is mortifying. In the United States, roughly seventy percent of adults fail a basic civics test. In Britain, fewer than one in three can define inflation. Here at home, fewer than one in four Canadians can accurately explain what a deficit is, and almost half think it is the same thing as the national debt.
According to the OECD, one in five of us struggles with basic literacy and numeracy — a troubling handicap for people entrusted with choosing who steers a trillion-dollar economy.
These are not citizens in the classical sense; they are consumers auditioning for a reality show. We have mistaken self-expression for civic duty, confusing our feelings with our faculties.
And so, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift — who once proposed that the Irish eat their babies as a solution to famine1 — I offer a less culinary, but equally necessary, cure for our moral malnutrition: a Voter Literacy Test.
Picture the civility of it. No guillotines, no book burnings, merely a short and dignified quiz at every polling station. Twenty questions, half on civics, half on economics. Pass with seventy percent, and your vote counts. Fail, and your ballot, like so many political promises, quietly evaporates into the ether without ceremony or fuss. The ignorant are spared embarrassment; the informed are spared their consequences.
This is not disenfranchisement — it is a form of public hygiene.
Predictably, the outrage would be instantaneous. Canadians who cannot define GDP will nonetheless appear on television to explain why testing for it is “unfair.” Civil libertarians would call it elitism. Activists would march beneath signs reading Knowledge Is Violence.
Editorials would declare that asking an adult to name the Governor General is tantamount to voter suppression. Yet this modest proposal discriminates only against ignorance, which remains the most egalitarian affliction on earth. It would not punish poverty or race or creed, only stupidity — the last prejudice still considered impolite to name.
Of course, someone would have to write the questions, and that would instantly become a national scandal. The Conservatives would demand, “What is socialism?” and mark every answer wrong. The New Democrats would ask, “How do you feel about wealth redistribution?” and award full marks for sincerity of tears. The Liberals would pose the question, “Do you identify as informed?” and hand out participation stickers.
But even that would be progress, since at least we’d be quarrelling about facts again rather than hashtags. At present, our political vocabulary has been replaced by a series of mood boards. We no longer discuss policy; we curate it. We have replaced the parliamentary debate with the moral selfie.
If all of this sounds cruel, then let me offer an even gentler reform. On the electronic ballot, beside the party logos, a small checkbox: “I do not have enough information to make an informed decision.” Tick it, and Ottawa sends you ten dollars for your honesty — perhaps twenty if you do it before lunch.
Think of it as a civic refund, a modest payment for not wrecking the nation. At last, a federal program that rewards truth rather than ignorance. For the first time, the government would pay people to admit what they do not know, essentially encouraging them to tell the truth.
But let us linger a moment longer in fantasy and imagine the examination itself, that quiet reckoning between the voter and the facts. You are asked who Canada’s head of state is. You are asked when the country became a nation. You are asked to define GDP, inflation, and the purpose of the Bank of Canada. And then, as a final act of mercy, you are asked: “If you could go for a beer with one political leader, who would it be?”
The only acceptable answer is that it’s irrelevant. If you pick anyone, your ballot is shredded. The test would continue in this vein, growing more savage with each question. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” If you answer “influencer,” your Wi-Fi is permanently disconnected. “Who would you rather date, the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader?” If you take the question seriously, you are escorted from the premises. The purpose is not cruelty; it is calibration. Democracy requires a certain threshold of seriousness, and ours has fallen below the minimum operating standard.
Now, of course, such a test will never happen. It would violate the Charter, horrify the press, and cause a run on fainting couches in every faculty lounge from Victoria to St. John’s. But that is precisely why it should be imagined — because satire can still say what sincerity no longer dares. In Canada, every scandal is survivable except boredom.
We forgive corruption, incompetence, and waste, but never tedium. Trudeau survives not because he governs well but because he emotes beautifully. His successors will survive the same way, by performing responsibility rather than exercising it. Carney will sell the illusion of competence with the same smug fluency that Trudeau sells charm. Each will flatter the electorate’s vanity, assuring us that we are decent people in a decent country, even as the numbers collapse. Our GDP per capita is falling, our productivity is stagnant, and our young cannot afford homes — but we are “inclusive,” and that’s apparently what counts.
The truth, of course, is that our democracy has not been hijacked by the corrupt but hollowed out by the credulous. Politicians lie because it works, and it works because we do not know enough to catch them. We have built a civic religion of good feelings in which every slogan must be affirming, every policy a mood. We vote by vibe and are governed by gesture. And when someone suggests that citizens might need to understand the system they command, we react with horror, as if literacy were an act of oppression. Our ancestors fought for the franchise; we’ve turned it into a game show.
I know this proposal is absurd. It is supposed to be. Satire has always been the last refuge of the rationalist. Swift’s cannibalism was never about hunger, and this literacy test is not about exclusion. It is about the moral collapse of a citizenry that mistakes sincerity for truth and feeling for thought. To point this out is now considered rude — the only unforgivable sin in modern Canada. But rudeness is often the first step back to reality.
So no, I am not proposing to sterilise voters or revoke Wi-Fi privileges. I merely wish to restore the faint link between intellect and influence. If you vote by mood, you will be governed by marketing. If you choose your leaders as you choose your playlists, expect the country to sound like static.
The literacy test will never be implemented, but its ghost will hover over every election, whispering: “Do you know what you’re doing?” And if you bristle at the question, then you’ve already failed it.
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Again, a nice satirical piece. I've stated the same about Canada and voters often. In another time that ignorant voter was me. I voted Trudeau 1.0 a few times without understanding why. Now I realize he was the most destructive force ever leashed on Canada. Maybe there should be a minimum age - 40?
OMG!!! Snorted coffee out my nose with your very first paragraph! My friend, you are a truth teller!