IN recent weeks, liberal-minded people from across the continent have flocked to America's - and now Canada's - financial capitals to demand, well, something.
It's not entirely clear what the protesters of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Canada movements want, only that they feel the wealthy and powerful are somehow doing something bad. After the 2008 financial crisis, it's hard to disagree with the sentiment, but unless the protest becomes more focused, it's unlikely to make any difference.
Political movements succeed when they demand a specific legislative change. The ragtag group in Zuccotti Park and their Canadian counterparts are far from doing this, instead voicing a plethora of conflicting demands intended, broadly speaking, to address income disparity.
If the activists want improvement, they have to choose a single target.
The obvious candidate is election finance. In the United States, especially, lawmakers are handicapped by a system that allows big companies and even whole industries to bankroll political campaigns to the tune of millions of dollars. Beholden to donors, officials habitually gut legislation that would benefit ordinary people in favour of laws that help the wealthy few - witness their attempt to reign in reckless investment practices after the 2008 crisis.
This is less true in Canada, where unions and corporations can't make donations, but at the provincial level - in British Columbia, anyway - the system is still a free-for-all.
If the protesters who will no doubt appear in Vancouver want change, they should focus their ire there.
