I’m sad to say you may find the grass is always greener on the other side - government corruption exists everywhere that government exists.
The US is at the point where 30-40% of the country would drink bleach and shoot their neighbor at the presidents command while probably similar numbers are functionally illiterate. Not to say the democracy has been functioning, but you can't have a functional one with these preconditions.
And its structurally intentional. This is all a product of decades of machination and effort to craft this cultural zeitgeist of zealotry and active war against one another while robber barons pillage the commons.
It sounds like you may have succumbed to some of that disinformation yourself
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/09/17/forced-sterilization-ice...
The only way the entire world gets through this is an equal amount of intelligent, thrifty democratic zealotry and luck. If we fall, it's only a matter of time until the entire world goes with.
We have minority rule in this country, and many people don't realize how small the minority is. Both political parties are hugely unpopular (even with their own members sometimes) and fail to represent the majority.
I've said, and I'll say it again, from 1776 to 2020, the US was never really a democracy. The power was not in the hands of the people.
I left seven years ago and now live in a terrible third-world dictatorship actually. It's not that America is so bad to live in (if you have some money), but that things should be much better for young people especially and the justifications for why it can't be better are so deeply warped.
Except when the solution is war.
Of course it's possible for the US to have the same social systems as European nations, but every American would have to pay a lot more taxes. I understand "it's impossible" to mean "it's impossible to do in this configuration". You can build a sky scraper instead of a single family home, but it's impossible to do on the same budget.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/what-cult-ruth-...
If he did have courage we would have had Merrick Garland. It wouldn’t have been easy but it would have been worth the fight. If you’re saying that he was powerless against the Republicans then what’s the point in a president?
Edit: The clusterfuck that was Brexit was pretty bad though.
We just had our Finance Minister quit because he was taking money from a non-profit that gets most of it’s money from the Federal gov’t. Oh and his daughter got a cushy job there too. Completely based on merit no doubt.
Trudeau says “oh we’re sorry about that”. And that’s it. No harm no foul.
US can't even manage to forceably remove major bad actors
And which bad actors are you referring to? There are plenty of US politicians who have been guilty of corruption who have gone to prison.
As another Canadian, it is much different.
Though Trudeau et al have done two serious problems (SNC-Lavalin, We), they do not hold a candle to the grifting and absolute corruption that is Trump and GOP.
Further, the much vaunted "checks and balances" of the US system have been shown to be a complete sham given the enabling that McConnell has allowed, the court packing that went on with the Supreme Court and this is happening with the lower courts. And that's not even getting into the impeachment trial.
At least with the Westminster system the electorate can throw out bums and have a clean slate where the new party can sweep away the more terrible stuff of the previous administration. The Liberals were able to backtrack on some of worse things the previous Tories, and implement some important policies relatively quickly (e.g., climate change).
If the CPC manages to get in, at the very least they'll probably cancel the completely useless Order in Council regarding firearms, and perhaps at least implement more useful gun violence policies (like reducing inequality). Of course if they continue to reject carbon pricing (or perhaps at least move toward cap-and-trade) then their chances of getting in are slim giving the general public's view toward climate change.
Not to mention the Canadian senate just rubber stamps everything.
I think the corruption is much better hidden in Canada and plus the lower level of political engagement, you end up with a seemingly better system, that is in fact no better.
And SNC-Lavalin was a mockery of the separation of powers. The PM tried to pressure the minister of justice to go easy on a company that was also a big fundraiser. Jesus, the US has seen that blatant amount of corruption since Nixon (maybe the Iran-Contra).
How are those "checks and balances" working out in the US?
At least in a Parliamentary system and major issues can be fixed with the next majority of the Opposition. In the US system it is hard to get anything passed (even when it is important), and if something bad is rammed through, good luck trying to reverse it. Unless you delegate to the Executive branch.
Trudeau made a calculated political decision - Moreau could hurt the chances of the Liberals staying in office, so he had to go. It also avoided a separate inquiry into Morneau, but at least we'll see what the inquiry finds about the charity overall.
And beyond the Conservative party, nobody in Canada seems to really care.
And at the time they did have a new cluster of locally-transmitted cases.
Of course I will have zero surprise if the right wingers now start pointing back to it as if it was a bad thing, because blind opposition to everything is just what they do. But at the time everyone was calling for it.