Lots of philosophical fallacies here. I shall address some of them.
First off, Canada more or less inherited the Westminster system of governance in 1867. We did not have a founding convention to fix what seemed to be wrong with the British model.
Legally speaking, most Canadians do not vote for the prime minister. Only the people in the prime minister's riding can vote for the PM. Practically speaking, many Canadians cast their vote mostly based on the quality of the party leaders. These voters take a look at their ballot, look for the party name of their favorite leader, and put their X there. So--in an indirect way--many Canadians are voting for their prime minister.
Legally speaking, most Americans are also not voting for the party leaders. They are voting for their electors, a democratic invention concocted by the founding father. Then the electors meet in the state legislature to cast their vote for the president. Practically speaking, there has been a lot of legal manipulation to give the appearance of a direct election to the president--but still keep with the FF's intention that the president election should be an indirect election.
If the American presidential election was indeed a direct election, then there would not have been an opening to storm to storm Congress to stop the certification of the electoral college. We Canadians do not need 2.5 months for a transition. A few days at most.
This then leads to the intent of the founding fathers. The House was regarded as a populist institution. The Senate and President were regarded as "wise" institution, mostly to stall the House when it got a little too populist crazy. Today, all three institutions are--practically speaking--populist elected, which is against the intention of the founding fathers.
What this discussion should be asking is: "Should political leaders be directly or indirectly elected?" This article assumes that direct elections are much better. But the article offers no proof of that, other than "Mom and Apple Pie" logic.
Having spent some time in party politics, the electoral commissions are fairly neutral. Paid civil servants draw out the boundaries such that most ridings have the same number of people. Do the governing parties interfere with this commission to gain a little advantage in the next election? My answer: sometimes. And boundaries are sometimes redrawn if citizens raise concerns.
But generally speaking, most riding boundaries seem to be drawn based on the math, not a political edge. There is almost always some logic to the weirder shaped ridings (I am living in a provincial riding like that). But we seldom have boundaries that look like the gerrymandered districts of the USA where boundaries follow highway ditches to join two neighborhoods who have nothnig to do with each other.
Both David Frum and Jordan Peterson are far from being censured in Canada. There are quite a few right-wing talk radio shows in Canada.
Yes, the Queen is the Head of State in Canada. She, through her representative--the Governor General, still has the power to veto a bill from Parliament. But that veto has not been used in 151 years. It has no bearing on how legislation is constructed in Canada.
Rather than debate philosophical points on the finer points of democracy, we should be looking at the results emanating from our electoral systems. By all international studies, Canadians score higher than Americans on any happiness measurement. Is not the contentment of the citizens a good goal to attain--rather than implementing the finer point of a supposed better democracy?
Contrary to the socialism rhetoric of down south, nearly all able-bodied Canadian look for jobs rather collect government money for most of their lives. We are not a welfare state.
But if the finer points of a better democracy are the goal, what I see, looking south, is a country that is slowly descending into some kind of civil war. And a one-party rule is a likely result of that civil war. The American example no longer inspires the rest of the world that it is the best example of democracy .
