Canada has a representative democracy where citizens elect candidates to represent them in government. This system has worked well for Canada's needs and the people are generally satisfied with it. An authoritarian government would not be suitable for Canada as it goes against Canadian values of restricting single individuals' power. Authoritarian systems also fail to account for diverse public opinions and do not last as societies' needs change over time. As Canadians are currently content with the representative democracy, it remains the best system for meeting Canada's current needs.

1. Democracy or Authoritarianism <br />Mica Pettibone<br />Canada is currently a representative Democracy where we elect candidates to represent us, each area of Canada has a designated amount of candidates very loosely based on population density. At the present time this Democratic system is what we are content with, and doesn’t need change. <br />Canada cannot consider any form of authoritarianism as an effective government; it goes against what we stand for. If we were to end up with a form of Authoritarian government it would not be long before the safety measures we have in place to restrict the power of single individuals would remove the governing body. Authoritarian governments in theory have certain promise, the ability to get things done in a fast manner because of the lack of red tape. The problem arises that no single individual can account for the opinions of everyone, and without compromise to account for other opinions it won’t take long for a population to become dissatisfied with the system at which point it will slowly, or quickly, start to fail. Authoritarian governments have never lasted, no form of government has ever lasted. <br />This is because as times change so do our needs, in Europe, who some might suggest is ahead of us as far as development of countries, a Proportional representative system is very popular. This suggests that perhaps in future as our needs and opinions change we might adopt this sort of system, or create a new one. However we have not adopted this style of democracy because of the impact it would have on the amount of seats parties would hold, evening out the playing field more and making coalitions much more probable. Coalitions are something we view as bad, simply because we believe that parties with relatively different ideals would be ineffective working together. Either way any form of government is never constant, it works so long as it suits the needs of its people, but the moment it stops adapting to the peoples will it fails, and is replaced. <br />This is why our current system is working; thus far it has adapted to fit our needs, making changes in order to meet the needs of our population, which means that we do not have a reason to change it. The very fact that a system is in place and stable says that it is functioning and the people are content with it, which means there is no better system suited to those peoples needs at that time. Either this or there is another system that would have the same amount of positives and faults for that population as the system in place. Following this logic, as Canadians are mostly satisfied with our form of government a Representative/Parliamentary Democracy is what works best for us. <br />