Jack Layton is standing in front of the doors to the House of Commons, his rump of a caucus behind him, proclaiming that Stephen Harper has “put a lock on the door on the House of Commons.” Media swirled around. Canadians clicked their tongues and nodded approvingly at home.

Jack and his caucus shuffle off. Michael Ignatieff and his then-sizeable official opposition strut over.

“The situation we’re in here is we’ve got a prime minister who doesn’t respect the rules,” he tells the press pool, pulling the same optics stunt.

Protests sprung up. Canada was in open revolt. The people dared defy the dictator who had stolen their democracy, like some two-bit grinch.

Parliament came back. The opposition fumed for a while, then got over it. Yet, Harper pulled the same stunt again in 2010. Tempers flared.

Layton introduced a motion before the House: “the Prime Minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons.”

The yay’s had it. The opposition cheered. Democracy was restored. Everybody got cake.

That motion was swiftly ignored by the government. We went back to the status quo. Our democracy was as sick as ever.

In the past several weeks, we’ve seen more and more indicators that our democracy’s condition might be getting worse.

Aaron Wherry points to a particularly uninspired recital between Harold Albrecht and Ted Menzies, highlighting the government’s track record, and blasting the NDP’s fabled job-killing, baby-punting, kitten-boiling carbon tax. Rick Mercer, backed up by Paul Wells, pointed to Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page’s unceremonious shove through swinging double doors at the hands of a less-than-friendly Prime Minister. Philippe Lagassé warned us that the Tory plan to clarify the laws of royal succession could set us up for more constitutional consternation, and jeopardizes the (apparently, very real) Canadian Crown. The Globe & Mail considered the worrying impact of the three stoogey legislators with a complete lack of legal understanding who wrote a letter to the RCMP, asking them to arrest women who’ve had abortions. Rex Murphy, in his usual didactic manner, tells us that it’s a lack of civility  — but, more specifically, the pretension of it ever existing  —  that has damned the House to be a pit of unredeemable despair. (Also: Twitter is dangerous.)

And then there’s that crooked Conrad Black who was complaining about women. But we just probably stop listening to Conrad Black about anything.

But, hallelujah, January was a month of answers. Our democratic doctors had answers. Endless answers.

To the eternal question of senate reform, the Conservatives have finally gotten off the sofa and trudged to the Supreme Court to seek their opinion on changing  —  or abolishing  —  the upper chamber, albeit just a week after appointing a spate of unelected senators. Andrew Coyne and Elizabeth May pondered, each in their own style, how electoral cooperation on the left could benefit democracy. The government told us that changes to royal succession are nice. Philip Cross at the Financial Post rejected the idea that Kevin Page was the hero we make him out to be, and soon the Tories’ PBO will finally be the independent watchdog we always wanted. The NDP started the Civility Project, an attempt to calm down those rat-faced whores constantly yelling at each other in Parliament. The Liberal Leadership contenders bent over backwards to see which of the nine could come out in more full-throated support for electoral reform.

Lipstick on a pig, I say.

The Tories will never move forward with substantive senate reform so long as it presents a bigger challenge than the mild public frustration that comes along with stacking the upper chamber with incompetent yes-men rubes. The NDP/Greens/Liberals will never agree on a cooperation pact so long as the prideful bunch current party elites stay in place, and any footsey over the idea will come apart at the seems the moment questions of leadership arise. The PBO, no matter who staffs it, will always have its efforts relegated to being a watchdog with much bark and little bite. Civility will prove an elusive green fairy envisioned infrequently by adorable idealists like Nathan Cullen break into the party’s emergency supply of Absinthe. An electoral reform, or at least the random assortment of half-baked theories we refer to as such, has a thorny path forward so long as a nation-wide referendum is a requirement.

No, there is a systemic illness that is turning our democracy a pale shade of green. And I’m unconvinced that any one, or all, of these supposedly reform-minded ideas will do more than rearrange deck chairs.

From Layton’s simple attempt to reform prorogation to the laundry list of ideas in Democratizing the Constitution, it feels as though the incrementalist approach is simultaneously insufficient, and, ironically, not moving at all.

Not that the ideas are bad, but they should be part of a much, much broader package of changes. Ones that strike to the heart of the issue.

In our efforts to fix individual aspects of our democracy, we’ve come to a rather important consensus: our democracy is sick, sick, sick. Yet rather than agree and move forward with overarching reform, we’ve gotten bogged down in the merits and drawbacks of each individual idea. In those microdebates, we’ve managed to prolong the status quo.

That’s disconcerting.

Here’s an idea: strike an independent commission of no more than a dozen representatives, and have them examine every possible alteration that could be made to the Senate, House of Commons, and our electoral system. Give them a year, and ensure that the eventual result is at least five questions of democratic reform that will be brought to the Canadian population  —  after the House has review them  —  in the form of detailed, yet clear and simple, referendum questions.

It would be nice if our system were not so dysfunctional that so as not to require a handful of technocrats to come and solve our problems.

But it is.

And we do.