Marilyn's Photos - Mar 26 2026 - Notwithstanding...
Wake Up on the Bright Side
Donald Trump's Country. Isn't that quite the expression? The headline is 10 reasons not to travel to Donald Trump's country. What a seismic shift this headline reveals. Whenever I see a headline with such consequences I go looking for the trigger. Could this report be the trigger? V-Dem Institute's 2026 Democracy Report titled "Unraveling the Democratic Era", published March 17th 2026. It is the 10th edition and tracks democracy across the globe on 600 measures in 5 core indices. HERE is the link.
"Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025. Involving over 4,200 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures over 600 different attributes of democracy."
The highlight of the report is the steep decline in democracy in the U.S, losing its status as a liberal democracy for the first time in over 50 years. Overall, democracy is back to 1978 levels for the average global citizen.
In the V-Dem report, Canada is not ranked as a liberal democracy, but the next level down - the electoral democracy. A liberal democracy has free elections, protection of individual liberties, rule of law, and minority rights, limiting government power. It focuses on how power is used. Electoral democracy focuses primarily on competitive free, and fair elections to choose leaders but lacks robust protections for civil liberties or independent institutions. It focuses on how leaders are chosen, relying on majority rule. An electoral democracy can become illiberal if elected leaders use their mandate to erode checks and balances, diminish rights, or control the media, resulting in a system where voting exists but freedoms are restricted.
We have a case before the Supreme Court right now that is exactly in this space between liberal and elected democracy. Quebec's Bill 21 (religious symbols ban) has put the spotlight on the nothwithstanding clause in the Charter. For opponents of the bill, repealing it would restore a truer liberal democracy by upholding individual rights against state-mandated secularism.
The report says that in the U.S. under Trump's presidency, democracy has fallen back to the same level as 1965, but not because of Civil Rights. It is because of "a rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency." The report says that "the speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history." Both the U.S. and the U.K. are on the list of autocratizers, with the U.K. starting in 2020 and the U.S. in 2023.
We in Canada await our Supreme Court's ruling on the notwithstanding clause. It is considered the most consequential case of our generation, and challenges whether political power can override fundamental freedoms.
It is only a few weeks away to the Tulip Festival. This is from last year.
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