Canadians love flattering comparisons to the US. As a Canadian, however, this pandemic mostly revealed how dangerously incompetent most levels of government are in this country.

Canada has had some of the longest, most evidence-free lockdowns of any Western country. Our vaccine acquisition strategy was a disaster, saved only by the near miraculous ramp-up in manufacturing capacity by two American pharmaceutical companies: Moderna and Pfizer. None of those vaccines were manufactured in Canada.

The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately. Small businesses like restaurants and gyms remained closed or severely restricted in much of the country for well over a year, while large foreign businesses like Costco and Amazon thrived. Only in the last month have things started to open up again.

Provinces instituted draconian restrictions, up to an including a months-long 8PM curfew in the province of Quebec. Movement between provinces, a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, was severely curtailed - roadblocks with police presence were often set up to prevent "non-essential" travel within the country.

All manner of restrictions on fundamental freedoms were reaffirmed by the courts, relying heavily one Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as its escape clause: "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

Translation: fundamental rights can be abrogated by government whenever it's convenient to do so.

The minority federal government used the pandemic opportunistically, shutting down legitimate investigations into misuse of government funds and ramming through legislation that was unrelated to the pandemic - draconian gun control legislation, massive increases in carbon taxes, regulation of social media, "hate speech" laws that aim to severely curtail freedom of expression, the list goes on. Any criticism of these bills was met with cries of "Now is not the time for criticism, this is a pandemic!".

With a useless senate, captive courts, and weak opposition parties, our government has shown itself to be a rather authoritarian one. And with no term limits, it's quite possible we could be under the thumb of incompetent authoritarianism-lite for the next decade.

The worst part is that few Canadians seem to be bothered by this.