If you thought that democracy was failing in America...

Most people probably have a general feeling that the Trump administration has been gradually rolling back democracy in the United States over the last year or more. Such a thing is hard to quantify, but some people have been doing just that: quantifying how much democracy has been dismantled in the US under Trump 2.0.

No fewer than three separate reports published this month indicate that democracy in the USA has been eroded at record speed under Trump. The Swedish V-Dem institute shows the US falling from 20th to 51st position out of 179 in the global democracy rankings, leaving it somewhere between Slovakia and Greece. The Bright Line Watch now puts America's political system about midway between liberal democracy and dictatorship. And the US-based democracy think-tank Freedom House concludes that three countries, USA, Bulgaria and Italy, have recorded the sharpest declines in political rights and civil liberties last year.

Among the evidence: the administration's concentration of power, the undermining of checks and balances on executive power, the overstepping of laws, the circumvention of Congress, the regular attacks on news media and freedom of speech, the erosion of the country's democratic standing overseas, and the absence of criticism of (and even support for) democratic declines abroad.

It is, as V-Dem's founding director says, "The most rapid decline ever in the history of the United States and one of the most rapid in the world. He says that the Trump administration has rolled back democracy as much in one year as Modi in India and Erdogan in Turkey managed in ten years, and as much as Orbán in Hungary did in four.

In the dismissive style typical of the whole Trump administration, a White House spokesperson dismissed this as "a ridiculous claim made by an irrelevant, blatantly biased organization", calling Trump a champion for freedom and democracy and the most transparent and accessible president ever. How do these people live with themselves?

These democracy monitors note, though, that the US has not yet passed the point of no return, and that the Trump effect is not necessarily permanent. Another presidential election in less than three years time, and even the upcoming mid-term elections later this year, could put substantial limits on Trump's slide towards authoritarianism. Gods, let's hope so!

A head-scratcher of a Liberal budget

Mark Carney and his Liberal government have brought down a distinctly Conservative-style budget. As always, there are winners and losers, but which departments gain and which are being cut shows a distinct change of emphasis from the past. And the fact that there are more cuts than increases also marks a break with the Liberals' free-spending past.

All in all, there are $31 billion in cuts and just $23 billion in new spending for 2026-7, so a pretty substantial net $8 billion cut in overall spending. 

The biggest losers are the Canada Revenue Agency ($4.3 billion, or nearly 41% of its old budget), Department of Fisheries and Oceans ($4.3 billion, or nearly 70% of its budget), Department of Indigenous Services ($3.0 billion, or 11%), Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs ($2.6 billion, or 18%), Global Affairs ($2.1.billion, or 23%), and Canada Post ($2.0 billion, or 99%). 

There are some huge surprises there. Wait for some significant push-back, although probably not from Conservatives. It's a brave (or foolish) man who cuts money for the Indigenous people these days, and "sunsetting" overseas programs smacks of Trumpism. And almost comletely cutting loose Canada Post suggests that they have completey given up on the Crown corporation, so don't expect any Christmas cards in the mail next December.

The main winners in the budget are the Department of Finance (with a whopping $8.5 billion increase, or nearly 6%% of its original budget), Department of Employment and Social Development ($5.7 billion, or 5.4%), Department of National Defence ($5.3 billion, or 12%), and  Department of Housing Infrastructure and Communities ($1.4 billion of 15%). 

Injections of cash into defence and housing align with recent rhetoric, and a shot in the arm of Employment and Social Development perhaps makes sense in these times of tariffs and layoffs. But what is the finance department going to do with an additional $8 billion? (A bit of research suggests that this includes accelerated investments to counter the effects of US tariffs, affordability measures like the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, investment in Build Canada Strong projects, including housing, investment in a new financial crimes and anti-fraud agency, and financial support for built-in-Canada defence and infrastructure projects.) 

No doubt all will become clearer in the coming days, but so far it seems like a bit of a head-scratcher of a budget. As a Liberal budget it is - that word again! - unprecedented. I can't help but think that some of this stuff will come back to bite them later.

Should I be concerned rhat Canada's happiness is slipping?

There's a World Happiness Report published every year - I've mentioned it from time to time in this blog: it seems like an interesting idea, a fun but functional concept.

This year, as always, Finland is top of the list, followed by all the other Scandinavian and near-Scandinavian countries (and, interestingly, Costa Rica). This year's Index has generated more attention that usual here in Canada, though, because Canada has fallen precipitously from 6th to 25th.

Scandal! Horrors!

Why Canada's happiness rating has fallen more than any other country is unclear. Social media, weakened family ties, a crumbling welfare state, and several other factors have all been mooted. But other countries are also living under the threat of  tariffs, dire climate change, even existential violation. Other countries use social media at least as much as we do. Why are Canadians more upset about everything than the denizens of other countries?

Actually, that's not the point of my entry.

What I found out this year is that the Global Happiness Index is actually based on a sample population's response to just a single "life evaluation" question. So, people are self-reporting how they feel at a particular point time, which doesn't sound very scientific somehow. Maybe the Canadians were sampled on the day Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and car exports, or the day Trump reiterated his threat to make us the 51st US state? Maybe the Finns are the most delusional people, not actually the happiest? (Finland used to have the highest suicide rate in the world and, although it has improved that statistic impressively in recent years, its suicide rate is still worse than average. How happy can they really be?) And anyway, what happened to Bhutan, the self-styled "kingdom of happiness", with its famous Gross National Happiness metric? (It's not on the list at all!)

So, should I be concerned about the mental state of Canadians? Well, maybe, although perhaps 25th out of 147 is not all that bad. But surely we can do a better job of measuring happiness than a simplistic question.

Once again, Ford makes inappropriate noises about the judiciary

Doug Ford again, I'm afraid. I'm getting tired of complaining about him, but he seems to have been opening his mouth without engaging his brain more and more just recently, as I have reported here several times in the last month or two.

Yesterday, in addition to his controversial comments about a trigger-happy homeowner, he parroted the Toronto Police Association's and Chief of Police's (dubious) assertion that veteran Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy should apologize to three Toronto Police officers after an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) investigation found no evidence of perjury or collusion in their evidence at the trial of Umar Zameer, a man accused of fatally running over one of their colleagues. 

For the record, Zameer was found not guilty back in 2024; that part at least is not at issue. So, in the end, the police officers' testimony - truth or lies - did not actually change the verdict.

In his usual over-the-top, overwrought way, Ford stated that the judge "should apologize for accusing them of everything under the sun". The OPP report did indeed exonerate the three police officers, despite the fact that their testimonies were remarkably similar to each other, and totally at odds with the security video and the testimony of two expert witnesses. 

It was this inconsistency with the other evidence, and the similarity of their own contributions, that led Justice Molloy to suggest that there was some collusion and perhaps even some untruths, in what was a case that was very close to home for them. Her comments were a reasonable conclusion, as many legal experts have averred. In fact, the OPP's report conclusions came as a surprise to many, and some have alleged a possible cover-up, particularly as the publicly-available report was severely redacted and, it is argued, the OPP is not the right body anyway to be reviewing the actions of its own membership. There have been calls for a public inquiry into the matter, or at the very least the release of the full report.

Either way, it is entirely inappropriate for Doug Ford to be commenting publicly on the report, and especially inappropriate for him to be questioning the competence and independence of a senior Ontario judge, just because he happens to disagree with them. But then, "inappropriate" is Ford's middle name these days. I'm sure he see what is happening south of the border, and concludes that he can get away with such nonsense too.

Confusion on what US National Intelligence is for

So many MAGA people are so completely in thrall to Trump that they seem not able to think for themselves, or at least daren't voice any kind of dissent because their jobs are on the line. 

Take, for example, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who maintained under questioning by a congressional committee that: "The only person that can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the President". Er, no, that's exactly what National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Centre (and a bunch of other similar-sounding agencies) are for. They are supposed to advise the President, because the President is not an expert in these matters (and this President in particular needs more guidance than most).

Ms. Gabbard even doubled down: "It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determmine what is and is not an imminent threat." She seems a little confused about her job mandate. Her (Democrat) questioner shot back: "It is PRECISELY your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States".

If the President then ignores that advice, then that's on him. Frustrations, even within Trump's so-called supporters, are building; hence the high-profile resignation of National Counterterrorism Center boss Joe Kent yesterday.

I get it that some of these people are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and many of them are completely out of their depths, unqualified and inexperienced in the fields they have been dumped in. But that's hardly an excuse.

Doug Ford hits the controversy button yet again

Not one to be shy of making his opinions known, Doug Ford has been throwing his controversial views around again. It does seem like, just recently, pretty everything he says is contentious or dubious.

After a Vaughan home-owner foiled a home invasion attempt by shooting and injuring one of the would-be burglers, Ford couldn't stop himself from congratulating the trigger-happy home-owner: "W1ell, you know, these guys, they need to be shot. Congratulations for shooting this guy - should have shot him a couple more times as far as I'm concerned". He went on to attack the federal government for "going after legal, law-abiding gun owners" and berated "weak-kneed judges" for letting people out on bail.

The home invader who was shot was actually injured, not killed, but he could easily have been killed, and presumably Ford would have been fine with that too. The injured man was seen in security video footage to be holding a gun, but did not use it. He is now facing charges of robbery with a firearm and "disguise with intent". No charges are being laid against the resident doing the shooting.

Predictably, many people took issue with Ford's outburst. NDP opposition leader Marit Styles called it "very irresponsible nonsense", and Green Party leader Mike Schreiner called it "irresponsible of the Premier to be making comments encouraging violence or celebrating the loss of life". A Liberal critic pointed out that "no-one should be congratulated for shooting another person". 

More than one commentator has observed that this kind of vigilante justice should be discouraged, not praised. Under Canadian law, the use of force is only allowed when "reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances". 

Our ethical decisions may depend on the language they are couched in

Here's an interesting thing. You've probably heard of what's usually referred to as the "trolley problem" of ethics and philosophy. So, people have to decide whether to sacrifice one person in order to save five others who are about to be killed by a hypothetical runaway trolley bus (or tram, or train). There are various formulations and variations, like what if it was a fat person or an old person, or what if you had to actually push a person off a bridge in order to save the five rather than just pull a track switch. 

Generally speaking, a sizeable majority think that it is morally permissible to make the utilitarian choice and pull the lever to save the five at the cost of the one. However, much fewer people would push someone off the bridge to save the five, reflecting the increased "emotional resonance" of such an action. 

More recent studies have looked at what difference the language in which the problem is posed makes to people's moral decison-making. The problem was put to people who spoke more than one language, both in their native language and in their second language. By a substantial margin, more people chose to pull the switch to kill the one person inorder to save the five if the problem was put to them in their second language, rather than in their native language. The difference was even starker for the more emotive problem of having to push someone off a bridge rather than just pull a rail switch at a distance. Furthermore, the poorer people's mastery of the second language, the more marked the effect.

This suggests that a native language holds much more emotional resonance, while a second language maintains more psychological distance for most people. This makes some intuitive sense, I guess, but it's interesting to see it demonstrated in quite such a stark manner.

Joe Kent resignation is a blow for Trump

Trump shrugged it off and (very quickly) moved on to a new question in a media scrum yesterday, but the resignation of Joe Kent - the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center - is a big deal.

Not just because Kent was a Trump appointee and a high-profile MAGA guy (albeit on the non-interventionist wing of the movement). But because he didn't just disappear quietly into the background, but rather defected very publicly, with an open letter explaining his reasons for resigning and the many reasons why Trump's war in Iran is wrong.

"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby." 

Ouch.

Don't get me wrong, Kent is a loose cannon himself and deep into conspiracy theories. But kudos to him for standing up to Trump and telling it like it is. The rift between the interventionist and non-interventionist wings of the MAGA base is becoming deeper and wider every day. Bring it on, I say.