[paule89]

Easy answer. Three things: * Money * Lobbyism * Job security

We party of Merkel is great for "stability". But this stability also means everything bad will stay bad and stuff like policing lobbyism is not a priority for those politicians, because they are good enough to hide it and profit from it so much, that they don't want it to change at all. Worse, we even have one party FDP which is really small, but openly pushes against policing lobbyism and they are the second or third largest benefactor of huge lobby donations.

The powerful want to stay powerful. If you ask the normal citizen they would want things to change at least to make everything more right.

The third point is also quite critical. The biggest industry in Germany is car manufacturing. And because of this every change here might disrupt millions of people, potential voters, and harm the industry. The reason germany did not come up with a great Tesla competitor or even Tesla itself is because of that. Everything moves so slow in these companies, they depend on so many other companies to get you some part of your car and then in the end assemble it all, that any change will disrupt too much and gets killed before it can bud.

[3pt14159]

What makes Germany so different than Canada? Sheer population?

In both countries there is a marked willingness to do the right thing, but I'm struggling to remember corruption anywhere close to the size of what goes on there.

[willcipriano]

Greater ability to detect corruption? I always presume that for every case that makes headlines there are dozens that don't get reported, that ratio may be higher in Canada.