If you look at the inanity of most of the bills they vote on in Parliament it seems like gov't in Canada is mostly a make-work project. Value for taxes seems low to me. As for the "politeness", that always seemed relatively benign because there are so few of us, but the last two years revealed that the # of people who are happy to be/support the Stasi is quite large. Underneath the politeness I assumed an independence and resilience, but it is lacking. Perhaps too many people simply work for or are dependent on the gov't now. I blame the education system, but I'll leave that for when I write my own substack...