Canadians fix their democracy - by adding more politicians

God bless Canada's political elite for not resting on their laurels. Fresh off freeing the people of Libya, our paragons of freedom and virtue took a good hard look in the mirror and realized that even though we are a light unto the nations and a beacon of hope for the huddled masses, even we can do better.

And so they could. Canadian elections struggle to interest even half the eligible voters enough to get them to vote. Why? My own theory is that the big issues facing most Canadians are never reflected in the electioneering of the major parties. Nobody talks about First Nation kids having a suicide rate eight times the national average. Nobody talks about university graduates coming out of school with 30 or 40 thousand dollars of debt, only to find themselves working at Tim Hortons. Nobody talks about why we import welders from Hungary and Romania to take 40 dollar an hour welding jobs in Alberta when we could be training unemployed Canadians to do the work.

So the dorkwads in Ottawa took a good hard look at our system and realized that what we really really need in this country is more politicians. That's right; more Canadians will feel enfranchised if only we could lengthen the trough in the House of Commons and make room for a few new faces.

Thirty new faces is the number they came up with. That's almost a 10 % increase. That should do the trick! That'll improve voter turnout. That will shift the agenda... Of course it will!

So there will be some new faces. They will be running for the same old parties, unfortunately. The same old parties who in unison proclaim that we are a light unto the nations, that our model is a model for the world, and that we are so over-archingly virtuous that even when we are lighting up Libya with bombing sorties what we are really doing is projecting our democratic values.

Our new and improved democracy won't come cheap. Between salaries, expense accounts, office allowances, car allowances, allowance allowances, our new parliamentarians will cost the taxpayers a half million bucks. Each. Per year.

I'm a taxpayer and I don't recall being consulted on this. Or on the Libya war. Or on the F-35 purchase. Or on the free trade agreements with Columbia and Honduras. What kind of democracy is this anyway?

Who knows, but at least there'll be thirty smug new faces telling us what's good for the country.