Canada

I would go after non answers first, that's what they do the most during the question period. If the speaker started throwing out MPs who don't answer the questions they're being asked you would see shit start to improve real quick.

Justin Ling recently published a report on polarization in Canada. He has a pretty good interview about it on CBC. What I got out of it:

1. Truth is less important than pack mentality. With polarization, it matters that you're showing you're part of the in-group more than overall truthfulness. So a bell ringing when a lie is told probably wouldn't help.

2. Politicians follow social media trends, because that gets them clicks. That causes showboating in Parliament, since they get to use CPAC clips to their followers. But they don't tend to lead the trends.

3. MPs are under a lot of pressure to fundraise. Since union and corporate donations have been limited, MPs need to mobile their followers to send money. The best way to do that is with polarizing content on social media.

Outgoing Conservative leader Erin O'Toole said similar things in his final address to Parliament: MPs are chasing social media engagement, and that drives polarization.

YES; punished by the electorate. The problem we have is, they don't. In fact, they like to be lied to. The more scared they get, or the more privilege they enjoy, the more they want to be lied to.

We need more independent journalism that's not driven by some large media company with a bias.

And how do you determine the truth, exactly?

There isn't a magical bell that rings when someone lies. Science changes, public consensus changes, new facts surface, and opinions are just opinions.

Of course if an MP makes an easily disproven statement that's one thing, but most things that could be said are complex and very hard to define as either true or false.

I don't necessarily disagree that there should be extra checks for truth in politics, but I don't really think there can be such a thing, objectively.

One issue with this type of system is, who defines what the truth is? If it's the government in power, then it'll flipflop immediately whenever the other side wins. Any sort of "independent bureaucracy" would also gradually be undermined.

This is also ignoring that lying in the house of commons is likely not a major cause of political polarization, given that I imagine very few people actually watch the sessions of parliament. I would attribute the rise of political extremism mainly to decreasing quality of life, which arises from a combination of the housing crisis, heinous wealth inequality, and the looming specter of climate change. After all, if the status quo doesn't work for the average person, they will naturally look for alternatives (or get politically disengaged). The right wing has the edge here, as they have a multi-billion dollar propaganda complex that is very effective at getting their word out, and they have no end of scapegoats to blame. The left has no such network, but we do have the benefit that most people aren't massive racist assholes, and it doesn't hurt that the actual facts back us up.

It is also worth noting that this type of polarization cannot be avoided under the system of capitalism, which broadly pits two groups against each other: the working class and the capitalist class. The working class broadly seek to live comfortably, to receive as much money as possible in pay, and to work no more than is necessary. The interests of the capitalist class run directly counter to this: they seek ever-increasing profits, and would like to pay the working class as little as possible and have them work as long as possible in exchange. This adversarial relationship can be overcome temporarily by a social contract that enacts high taxes on the capitalists to pay for a welfare state (note that even this arrangement does require exporting suffering to the global south through the mechanisms of imperialism, which I'm going to ignore for brevity), but eventually the drive for ever greater profits will drive the capitalists to destroy that social contract. Two relatively obvious examples of this are that wages have become stagnant for the last 50 years despite massive increases in productivity, and the movement to destroy public healthcare.

In sum: if we are to eliminate polarization, we must first eliminate capitalism. 😊

I’m not suggesting that lying should be illegal (in fact, it’s often unintentional) …

By definition lying is stating something that the speaker knows to be untrue (or in case of lying through omission, knowingly saying something that is true, but not the whole story).

So how do you unintentionally lie?

Are you sure you're not confusing "unintentional lie" with "erroneous"?

How do you take into account that someone told what they believed was true at the time although with limited knowledge, which then became false as the situation developed?

Intent is considered in the justice system, although sometimes hard to determine with 100% certainty.

Sometimes you need to make a decision NOW with partial information.

Punishing the breaking of election promises would be a start. Those are not ambiguous or unintentional, and it should be punishable as a breach of contract.

It’s difficult to police, who decides what is right? If Danielle Smith was in charge then anything pro-science would be considered lying. If Polievere was in charge then anything pro-minority would be considered lying

How do you make an impartial committee? Before both sides would approve positions back and fourth to keep others in check but we can see the US Judiciary to see how that no longer works when one side is dishonest

From all the history and current events I've taken in, there's no law that can force politicians to push in a given direction. At the end of the day they can all be rescinded or reinterpreted or ignored. It's a matter of ensuring the system self-corrects faster than anyone tries to tear it down.

At this level known lying should be something like perjury. And by known lying, I mean hypothetically like if Trudeau said he didn't pay his family through that foundation, but there is proof he did, that is just lying and he knows he is. Compared to somebody who might make a mistake and say there is no missing funds in account x, but then later realizes they have an outdated sheet...then that is more like mispeaking error and should not be same level of accountability.