Can the political class please calm down.
Oh my. It seems they’re manning the barricades at Queen’s Park, with human rights in their final death agonies beneath the black and shiny hooves of Doug Ford’s dark steed. Can our democracy survive such stuff ?
No, no, not Doug Ford. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea but he’s not a smoking mug of hemlock either. What I’m worried about is over-the-top rhetoric.
We live in famously polarized political times, with the Trumpization of Canada lurking behind every bush not occupied by Ford’s alt-right minions. But if a rush toward demonization and oversimplification truly is menacing us, it might be a bad time join in.
The Ontario NDP seems to feel this sort of vitriolic rhetoric assists their fundraising efforts. By “vitriolic rhetoric” I mean five sulphurous blasts over the weekend filled with terms like “bully,” “stomp on our fundamental rights,” “over-ride the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” “our democracy is under attack from Doug Ford’s government,” “When the courts said that Ford had violated people’s Charter rights, Ford just removed their rights” and “Doug Ford is behaving like a dictator.” The last desperate call to arms claiming “we need to organize our opposition in the streets” was signed by the party leader herself.
Person the barricades! Remember Guernica! It’s 1968 out there … or 1938.
Bosh.
Reasonable people can differ both about shrinking city council, which I oppose, and invoking that part of our Charter rights known as the notwithstanding clause, whose valid purpose is to protect legislative prerogative against judicial usurpation. But reasonable people cannot believe Doug Ford is trampling our rights and our democracy.
The Tories are simply rushing an arguably ill-advised initiative through an elected legislature. Nobody is threatening the NDP’s right, or yours, to speak out against the measure in newspapers, in conversation, in the legislature and indeed in the streets. Or rather, if someone is, it’s the NDP themselves.
Politics is in more than customary disrepute these days, which frankly takes some doing. But the politicians and activists are up to the task. When people go off the deep end and call Doug Ford a “dictator,” or rave about Trudeau being a “traitor” who is “destroying Canada,” the manifest air of unreason about such claims polarizes politics while driving away normal people.
You might fairly ask what an opinion writer would know about normalcy. Especially one whose penchant for unyielding adherence to principle could be mistaken for extremism. But here’s the thing.
There’s a phrase so old it was first expressed in Latin back when schools taught such things rather than just “minuere, reutitor, redivive.” Which is better, no? But I’m thinking of “suaviter in modo, fortiter in re,” advice from the 16th-century Jesuit Superior General Claudio Acquaviva meaning “pleasant in manner but firm on substance.” And if again you object that my modo is not always suaviter, I’ll quote Ben Franklin that he who’s aground knows where the shoal lies.
The problem is not just that these claims of dictatorship and treason are bizarre. It’s that the people making them seem to revel in the bizarreness, to be pleased to have found an excuse or at least opportunity to lash themselves into a collective frenzy.
Some might claim I’m more concerned with the NDP’s “re” than its “modo," that I don’t denounce Ford because I like what he’s doing. But as noted, I oppose shrinking city council. And I’m also not a huge fan of the notwithstanding clause though I wonder pointedly why people so melodramatically concerned about our rights don’t worry far more about the Charter’s Section 1 mace than its Notwithstanding feather duster.
I think we should have rights the state cannot take away even if it wants to, which evidently makes me extreme on substance. But it doesn’t mean I have to go rhetorically nuts and compare Ford or Trudeau to Franco or Stalin. Or that I want to.
On the other hand, it does mean I have to make some effort to substantiate my claims. I have to talk about the substance of the issue rather than hurling abuse at some convenient person.
Likewise, if the Ontario NDP has something coherent to say about the virtues of judicial activism, or its absence here, or about the importance of a large city council, or why the federal power of disallowance of provincial legislation should be revived in principle, they should say it. Not shriek it, howl it or snarl it. Just say it.
If they won’t or can’t, their fundraising and mobilization are dead ends and rightly so. But in that case they hurt us as well as themselves.
So let me say, as calmly as I can, that when the political class as a whole loses its marbles our democracy really is endangered.
THESE CLAIMS OF DICTATORSHIP AND TREASON ARE BIZARRE.