Most would consider that Canada has been a democracy since 1867 — in the very beginning — yet I am looking at these ten indicators of democracy that you have here now, and many of those issues would not have applied through the years of Canada, from the rights, to women not having the vote. One of the difficulties that we have been seeing is perhaps we are trying to define democracy too tightly. What we should be doing, rather, is trying to define “democratic improvement”, as opposed to some idealistic example of what a democracy is. As long as there is democratic improvement, that is the real goal.
On February 13th, 2007. See this statement in context.