I’ve always admired the parliamentary tradition of having to drag a new speaker of the house to their chair. Reluctance to have and to use power is such an important, admirable quality.

That said, I do believe our Canadian system is much better than the US one in one particular respect: parliamentary accountability. The leader of the executive, the prime minister, cannot remain in power if they lose the confidence of their own party. We witnessed this most recently with the resignation of Justin Trudeau after he had lost the confidence of his party.

In the US, the president has a lot more power simply because he is insulated from his own party by the separation of powers within the system. Trump is fully engaged in his destructive tariff campaign despite any opposition within his party because of this. The Republican Party, as bad as they are, are never as bad (or as good) as any individual within their ranks. This moderating effect does not extend to the White House due to the aforementioned insulation effect.