Mudslinging muscles out essential policy debate
Already, the campaign has been reduced to a personality contest between leaders
It is unfortunate that the amount of news devoted to real policy in an election already mired in gutter-sniping will shrink following the surfacing of old brownface photos.
Even before the pictures of a 29-year-old Justin Trudeau covered in dark makeup were splattered across media websites on Wednesday night, little had been offered by either the Liberals or the Conservatives in terms of substantial proposals for governing the country.
The campaign had come down to a personality contest between the party leaders. Now we will see whether Trudeau can ride out the blackface debacle, or if left-leaning voters will be so incensed by his behaviour that they flee to the NDP or the Greens and give Conservative leader Andrew Scheer a victorious ride to the finish.
But as respective war rooms chortle with delight or recoil in horror at this latest twist in the election narrative, it has become even more difficult for voters to wade through the slime and make the important decisions about how they will cast their ballot.
There is still time for the two leading parties to release substantive policy. But we have yet to hear much talk about matters such as the creation of a national pharmacare program, and the deficits Canada has been running in years of relative plenty.
Canadians have not been offered any real insight as to what Trudeau and Scheer intend to do about this country’s difficult relationship with China, or how they plan to deal with Donald Trump. Discussions about climate change have taken place only in the margins of the campaign.
Yes, we have seen Scheer propose a tax break that would put a few bucks back into the pockets of some Canadians, and Trudeau has offered older people something extra in old age security. And we have heard promises of some tax break for new parents. But, overall, there has been a void of big new ideas. And elections do not sustain vacuums.
There are too many pages of newspapers and hours of television broadcasts to fill. Small policy announcements are not interesting enough to earn much press.
So the political camps have been filling the gap by providing reporters with dirt on poorly vetted candidates and by digging up old sound bites that attribute sinister ambitions to the opposing leader.
This is not new. It happens in every election. It is easy to think back to the character assassinations of Liberal leaders Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.
But it seems, in the early days of this campaign, that the mudslinging is occupying an extraordinary amount of public space.
Canadians are being led to believe they have a choice between a socially conservative religious zealot who would make abortion illegal and repeal gay marriage, and an arrogant and feckless liberal who enjoys mocking other races and cultures. Neither characterization is accurate or fair.
A government led by Scheer is not going to bring in an abortion law or prevent men from marrying men and women from marrying women.
Scheer’s ideas about gay marriage may have evolved significantly in the 14 years that have passed since the video of him denouncing it was released in August by the Liberals. But, even if they haven’t, he knows those measures will not fly.
And, as important as the stories about SNC-Lavalin have been, no politician, that we know of, benefited personally from the scandal.
Nor is Justin Trudeau a racist. The multiple pictures now made public of him dressed in blackface, or brownface, suggest that, at times, he has been a bit of an idiot. But no one who has watched him in action over the past few years could believe he would discriminate on the basis of skin colour.
Sure, much of this is the media’s fault. We jump at salacious objects.
This kind of reporting may
The thing to consider when assessing the leaders is not the political dirt ...
not be helpful to voters who are trying to make a serious and important decision about who to support next month. It muddies the already dank waters. But it is what we do.
I, too, would have written the story about the brownface pictures, had I been presented with them. I, too, would have written about the Scheer video had it been released to me. But big news is not always important news.
The thing to consider when assessing the leaders is not the political dirt that is sticking to their clothes. It is the actions they will take if elected to office.
It is time for the big ideas to be unrolled — and for policy to push aside personality.
Gloria Galloway is a freelance journalist who has covered federal politics for more than 20 years.