How does Plato apply to Canada today, its future?

Erik, as the late American philosopher Russell Kirk put it, we never learn anything new. We simply relearn. It seems each generation, some more than others, must relearn the lessons of reality. Today, your professor burdened his wife with an application of Plato's "cycles of government" from his classic study The Laws. Simply, Plato observed that self-control is always better than external controls. When people lose self-control because they abandon time-tested values, society reaches a point where it has a choice: collapse into anarchy and risk conquest, or restore order good and hard through a dictatorship. If we continue to unravel, degenerate, we risk reaching this fork in the road: collapse or dictatorship. Plato noted that external control is always of poorer quality than internal self-control. Sadly, the Macedonians conquered Greece shortly after Plato's death; Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, became the tutor of the future Alexander the Great! Aristotle "went with the flow" and accepted the end of his country's independence. Greece did not recover its independence until the 1800's almost 2,000 years later. It can happen. How does Plato's analysis help us to better understand present trends and where they may be taking us? Are we following his model, scenario?

Canada did not follow insane American deregulation of financial institutions

Canada, to its great credit, did not join the American stampede to deregulate financial institutions.  This is why the banks of Canada today are solid, not "zombie" American banks, which are "dead but still walking."  Sadly, the American people have not yet grasped they have "zombie" institutions.

Shaun, your humble servant here just read The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant, a husband and wife team of historians, who are "giants" of 20th-century historiography. Their "Lessons" - published in 1968 - sums up what they learned about history and human behavior because of their 11-volume historical study of Western civilization that leads up to their "Lessons," the twelfth, final book in their definitive study of the history of Western civilization. Here is what the have observed. When government regulation of bad behavior is lax, non-existant, look for a growth in the emphasis in society on ethics and religions to fill this vacuum. Boomo, bango, bingo! This is exactly what has happend in the USA. We have stopped enforcing laws against economic terrorism; as a result, we have a renewed interest in ethics as a way to "fight back." It is amazing to see how acurate the Durants are with their assessment of human behaviors; trend forecasters would say, yes, their model is a valid, reliable way to test current trends today. Trend forecasting does utilize historical models as ways to test current trends and project probable, possible future scenarios. When "ethics" and religion do not do the job, we can look for a swing back to governmental reuglation, maybe even law enforcement and punishment of business vampires and their zombie political allies. Durants suggest this could be the pattern in the future, for it has been the pattern in the past.