Over in merry olde England, Prime Minister Cameron (enlightened progressive that he is) has been pushing hard with this idea that princesses with brothers should be allowed to become queen, and that monarchs should be permitted to marry Catholics. Not our problem, right? But ah, here's where you're wrong.

The fact that Canada has spent a decade creating nothing comparable to House of Cards, Game Change and many more political dramas is a shame, but hardly surprising. We're a plucky lot -- and certainly no slackers in the world of entertainment -- but this is one realm where we're hopelessly out-gunned. There's never been (and never will be) a compelling Canadian political drama for one simple reason: Canadian politics is not interesting. "Yes sir, we'll get right on that, sir" isn't the sort of dialogue from which compelling scripts are made.

It's unfair to judge an entire country by its worst failing. Brazeau might not be the Senate's most representative member, but in a nation whose potential for success remains perennially suppressed by the tyranny of timid ambition, the Senate is surely our most representative problem.

The belief that American politics are so fundamentally right-wing, and Canadian politics so impossibly, incompatibly liberal by comparison, is one of the most well-rehearsed lines in the preening party game that is modern Canuck nationalism. As Tabatha Southey writes in the Globe, however, this uncritically accepted thesis is becoming harder and harder to defend in the age of Obama and Harper. Even if you believe a Canadian Tory is only as conservative as America's most liberal Democrat, you gotta concede there's a point where even slow-mo conservatism begins to pile up.

On Tuesday, the Harper government announced the creation of the Canadian Office of Religious Freedom, tasked with the humble goal of "promoting freedom of religion or belief around the world." It says something about the obsessively, nervously secular character of Canadian politics that it's possible to stir up religious controversy merely by acknowledging religion exists. Regardless of how often we good, secular Canadians do it, exercising freedom of religion is also the world's ultimate calibration test of all other freedoms.

C'mon, give Justin Trudeau a break. Sure, he's overrated, but overrated-ness cuts as hard as it coddles; pricks as much as it praises. As a result, J-Tru gets not only the gushy fawning of fans but also the exaggerated disdain of critics. Justin's bloodline is one asset in his arsenal, but he deserves to (and will) sink or swim on more than that. To tie his prime ministerial suitability to his surname exploitation, or to presume that all his strengths, handicaps, quirks, and annoyances flow from it, is to excuse a lack of deeper introspection from a party that could really use some.

Is Stephen Harper's government legitimate? Welcome to the question that's preoccupied the folks running the media outlets. Said folks, who live disproportionately around the St. Lawrence, are supposedly trapped in a "Laurentian Consensus" of closed-minded self-righteousness.