THEY SHARE A CONTINENT, a similar heritage and a common language, and both see themselves as democratic. Yet they currently are on divergent paths.

In Canada, we have a parliamentary system and a minority government elected by a minority of voters, which hypothetically would have to compromise with opposition parties, yet in reality has governed successfully for four years as if it had majority support in both the House of Commons and the electorate. Its indirectly elected prime minister has exercised power some see as virtually dictatorial.

In the United States, meanwhile, we see a presidential democracy in which the incumbent won office with the support of a large majority of voters, and “control” of both houses of Congress, yet has been unable to accomplish hardly anything of what he set out to do. Although immensely popular in Canada and just about everywhere else, both he and his popularity are seemingly in a free-fall.

Ironically, while the two political systems were both designed to have “checks and balances,” ours seems today to have none and those in the U.S. have proven capable of emasculating the presidency.

Although it has never been codified in Canada, both countries supposedly have checks and balances among the governments’ administrations, the legislatures and the judiciaries. But today the reality is that even a minority government in Canada can pretty much do as its leader pleases, even to the point of silencing Parliament for months at a time through use of the tool of prorogation when it will serve to benefit the prime minister’s party.

There surely is little doubt that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s appointment of another five party faithful to our Senate has given him far more power over the legislative branch of government than President Barack Obama enjoyed in theirs, even before the Democrats’ devastating loss in the Massachusetts special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

As we see it, the thus-far untold story about the failings of the Obama administration is the growing potency of lobbies in general, and the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies in particular, aided and abetted by the five Republican party faithful who masquerade as judges on the U.S. Supreme Supreme Court.

That court has now allowed the same powerful lobbies that have made most Americans dread ever having universal, publicly run health insurance to spend whatever they like to let the Republicans regain control of Congress and leave President Obama virtually powerless.

That scenario would be almost impossible to imagine ever happening here.

For one thing, we have a virtually “colourless” Supreme Court of Canada, where the judges have seldom, if ever, been politically active, the court doesn’t routinely divide ideologically and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin was appointed to the court in 1989 by a Conservative government and elevated to chief justice in 2000 by a Liberal regime.

But far more important, we have something that’s sadly missing in the U.S.: party discipline.

Even the immense personal popularity Mr. Obama enjoyed in his first months in office was not accompanied by an ability to discipline the Democrats who rode into office on his coattails.

In a parliamentary system of government, a election promise of health-care reform by a party leader who then formed a government would have been quickly converted into a government bill that would be submitted and passed fairly quickly, particularly if the winning party had a majority of seats, and almost as quickly if it garnered the support of an opposition party. The last thing you’d expect is the chaos that ensured in Washington, with Congress and the Senate debating for months before passing radically different pieces of proposed legislation, neither of which is likely to become law unless the House Democrats are willing to accept the Senate bill as better than nothing.

Contrast that with the situation here, where Mr. Harper has a neutral judiciary, a compliant Senate and a Commons in which none of the three opposition parties is pushing for an election!

As for the power to prorogue, it clearly should be both codified and qualified. A Prorogation Act ought to recognize the supremacy of Parliament by permitting the governor-general to order prorogation only with the prior consent of the Commons, except when it is for the purpose of a general election.

Such a statute should also make it possible for committees to continue their work, including work on bills the government planned to re-introduce at the new parliamentary session.

We think such legislation ought to be introduced as a private member’s bill and enjoy all-party support, if only because such changes would be merely symbolic when a government enjoys majority in the Commons and Mr. Harper would see his personal support as defusing the issue, once and for all.