The rise of so-called cancel culture, new and evolving questions about the regulation of speech and expression, and a growing sense that there’s a narrowing scope for intellectual and moral diversity in the public square should alarm Canadians.

There’s plenty of reason to think that whenever we eventually have a federal election campaign, it will be fought primarily on the grounds of the government’s pandemic response and competing visions of the post-pandemic recovery. But a secondary point of contention may be a set of issues that can be broadly characterized as the future of Canadian pluralism.

“Pluralism” is one of those lofty words that one typically finds in newspaper columns. It can feel a bit abstract and disconnected from our everyday lives. Yet the basic idea — that people of different beliefs, interests and values can peacefully coexist through a combination of democratic compromise and a civic commitment to civility and respect — is fundamental in a large and increasingly diverse society. It’s ultimately how we live together and get along.

There’s reason to believe that Canadian pluralism is under strain in the current moment. The rise of so-called cancel culture, new and evolving questions about the regulation of speech and expression, and a growing sense that there’s a narrowing scope for intellectual and moral diversity in the public square should alarm Canadians.

A shrinking of our pluralistic impulse is a direct challenge to the modern Canadian experiment. We cannot flourish in a heterogeneous society that’s stuck in a homogeneous world. A renewed commitment to pluralism is ultimately the key ingredient that will help us transition from one to the other as our country becomes more and more diverse.

The Conservative party has rightly been critical of some of these trends. Conservative Leader erin O’Toole, for instance, has spoken out against “cancel culture” and in favour of free expression. The party has also consistently called out the worst excesses of anti-pluralism in corporations, the media, on campuses and so on.

It’s understandable, of course, that Conservatives (and small-c conservatives) have been at the forefront of these issues. Although anti-pluralism can manifest itself in different forms (including abhorrent ones that should be universally rejected), these days it seems to mostly reflect a progressive insistence on intellectual and political uniformity on questions that are fundamentally values-based.

This progressive impulse doesn’t express itself as intolerance, per se. That would be too self-consciously anti-progressive. Instead, it tends to be discussed in terms of equity, fairness and the expression of progressive values. The Liberal party’s ban on candidates who don’t support the legal status quo on abortion is one example. Cases of newsrooms rebelling in response to the publication of contestable yet mainstream opinions is another.

This growing impulse reflects a world view that presumes that anyone who disagrees on a range of complex questions about the economy, culture or society must necessarily be acting out of ignorance or bad faith. The best solution is to exclude such ideas and voices from the public debate.

But because the arbitrators are usually uniformly progressive, it tends to be conservatives who run the risk of being marginalized from mainstream discourse. Principled conservative views on complex moral and philosophical issues such as abortion, religious expression and the balance between modernism and traditionalism are lost in the process. These are, according to the narrowly circumscribed political orthodoxy, by definition, the perspectives of nutters and cranks.

The problem, of course, is that if we exclude goodfaith conservatives from the public square, the only ones left are the real nutters and cranks. We’ll end up with a mainstream culture that’s uniformly progressive and a dissident one that’s marginalized, agitated and increasingly reactionary.

Here’s where the Conservative party has both an opportunity and an imperative to push back against these trends. There’s a sizable constituency — including some old-style liberals — who would respond positively to a principle-based challenge to the forces of intellectual uniformity and intolerance.

But this must done be carefully and thoughtfully. It can’t simply be about responding to the most egregious cases of cancel culture or being purposefully provocative to “own the libs.” O’Toole must articulate a broader vision for why pluralism is so crucial if we’re to manage the inherent tensions of a diverse society.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered his own version of such a speech in the lead-up to the 2015 election campaign. His remarks, which were billed at the time as the future prime minister’s views on liberty and inclusion, are no doubt flawed in certain areas, but they generally reflect a sincere attempt to grapple with these challenging questions about pluralism and minority rights in modern society.

O’Toole would be wise to deliver a pre-election speech that’s in dialogue with Trudeau’s previous remarks. It would ostensibly critique the gap between the prime minister’s aspirations and his actual record, including, for instance, the sacking of cabinet ministers and members of Parliament who had the audacity to disagree with him.

More fundamentally, however, it would lay out a philosophical basis for O’Toole and the Conservative party to challenge the rise of anti-pluralism and instead articulate a genuine pluralism that creates space for different beliefs, interests and values in our society.

We don’t need to agree with one another, but we do need to live amongst one another. Pluralism is the answer to how we can do that. The Conservative party should be its champion.