It was from one of these breathless reports that we learned Paul Martin had declared the coming election to be the most important in the country's history. At the time this was put down to the usual mix of hyperbole and grandiloquence that is the Prime Minister's habitual speaking mode, on whatever occasion ("Now is the time to grasp the buttered toast!").

On further reflection, however, I think Mr. Martin may have a point. Most important or not, this will surely be a historic election. By our votes, we will be deciding not simply who will govern us for the next several years, but whether Canada can really be called a democracy. Yes, it has come to that.

The crisis in Canadian democracy has many sources, and has been building for several years. But events of recent months, weeks, and even days have brought it inexorably to a head. It isn't only our democratic institutions -- Parliament, the parties, the election laws -- that have reached a state of terminal disrepair. It is the political culture, the norms and expectations that underly them. And the event that marks the perfect fusion of institutional failure and cynical politics is the Prime Minister's imminent decision to plunge the country into an election, just three-and-a-half years since the last.

It is of course preposterous that one party in an election should have the power to decide its timing, to the precise astrological calculations of its pollsters. But merely because it can does not mean it must. Mr. Martin did not have to call yet another snap election, the fourth in a little over 10 years, with the major opposition party barely coalescent. That he chose to do so speaks to his sincerity as a democratic reformer. That he did so in the middle of the biggest political scandal in modern Canadian history, with most of the major questions still up in the air and having played a not insignificant part himself in keeping them there, marks this election not as an exercise in democracy, but an assault upon it.

But that he has every prospect of getting away with it is the worst indictment of all. Such a thing simply could not happen in any other modern democracy. It could only happen here because Canadian voters have been educated by long experience to expect nothing more of those they elect. Successive Canadian political leaders have done incalculable damage to the nation's political culture, enacting policies that they had not merely failed to mention in the preceding election, but campaigned vigorously against: from Pierre Trudeau (wage and price controls in 1974, gas taxes in 1980) to Brian Mulroney (free trade) to Jean Chretien (NAFTA, the GST, spending cuts, etc. etc.) -- to Dalton McGuinty. Again, Mr. Martin did not have to endorse the Ontario Premier's breathtaking double-cross on taxes. He could have denounced it for what it was: electoral fraud, which by rights ought to mean the voiding of the last election, if not civil proceedings. Sadly, predictably, he did not.

But that only begins to describe the disgraceful state of Canadian politics. Consider first how democracy is supposed to function. Without undue idealization, it would look something like this: The members of each party nominate a candidate in each riding, and a leader for the party as a whole, by a process roughly resembling a general election. Each party then presents its platform in an election held under rules that are fair to all, the winner receiving a mandate to enact its program -- after all, majority rules -- but checked by a vigilant Parliament.

Now consider how the process actually works in Canada. Nomination contests are decided by who can raise the most funds, with which to purchase and distribute memberships in bulk. Election laws favour the governing party over the opposition (see snap elections, above), large parties over small (the current formula for public funding is a small example), and parties over everyone else. Indeed, the combination of public funding and last week's Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on independent election spending produces the following remarkable result: You are required by law to pay for the parties' advertising, but are forbidden by law to pay for your own.

In the campaigns, platforms and programs are discarded in favour of a ceaseless bombardment of attack ads, with the occasional wildly misleading news story thrown in to clear up any remaining lack of confusion, at the end of which one party emerges with a "majority" on the strength of something like 37% of the vote. It proceeds to break every promise on which it was elected, and to entrench itself in office by whatever means are at hand. All power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office. Parliament is worse than useless. Ethical standards, in the absence of any system of accountability, are about what you'd expect.