Making a drama out of a farce
MAY THE LEADERS' UNITED FRONT MARK AN END TO THIS FAKE WAR OVER VACCINATION
Over the long weekend, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh authored perhaps the finest moment of the federal election campaign thus far — not a high bar, but beggars can't be choosers. The ridiculous fake war over small differences between the Liberals' and Conservatives' stances on “mandatory” vaccination continues to suck up far too much oxygen. Singh popped that balloon with a letter to his Liberal, Conservative, Bloc Québécois and Green Party counterparts suggesting they all present a united front.
“We cannot risk turning vaccination into an issue that people define by partisanship,” Singh wrote. “As federal leaders, it is our job to lead and unite our country during these challenging times.”
“Vaccines are safe, easy, and necessary,” Singh proposed the leaders jointly tell Canadians. “If you are eligible, you should get vaccinated.”
All four addressees have agreed in principle — an implicit and welcome admission that their agreements on this issue vastly outweigh their disagreements.
Whatever this joint message ends up looking like, it is unlikely to send people stampeding to pharmacies. Pollster Bruce Anderson estimated last month that 85 per cent of roughly 2.1 million “vaccine-hesitant” Canadians (as opposed to outright refusers) “hate government telling (them) what to do,” and 66 per cent “don't trust government in general.”
As Singh says, and despite Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's best efforts in recent weeks, vaccination is not a partisan divide in Canada. “If (the vaccine-hesitant) were voting in a federal election today, 35 per cent would vote Liberal, 25 per cent Conservative, 17 per cent NDP (and) nine per cent Green,” Anderson wrote in Maclean's. Thus a bipartisan appeal might not be all that jolting.
The appeal of Singh's appeal, rather, is that of a third-party adult intervention in a middle-school melodrama being perpetrated almost entirely by the Liberals. Trudeau insists vaccination will be mandatory in areas of federal jurisdiction — public service offices, airplanes, interprovincial trains — with the sole exception of people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole proposes a lighter touch: the unvaccinated could be tested before entering “mandatory-vaccine” environments. Only in Canada could that minor distinction masquerade as a battle between good and evil.
Even if you see a huge difference there, you should not trust a re-elected Liberal government to follow through. We know what the federal government's human resources establishment thinks: “For those who refuse vaccination, we will need to consider alternative measures, such as testing and screening,” a very-briefly-online document explained last month, before it conveniently vanished.
The chances are enormous that a re-elected Liberal government would retreat to a less fractious position, then pretend that it hadn't. It would certainly be a heck of a lot easier.
And lest we forget, until he triggered the election, Trudeau was on the record being “really worried” by the idea of denying freedoms to people who oppose vaccination for religious reasons, or out of “deep convictions.” The timing of his change of heart was transparently disreputable.
There is no excuse for the behaviour Trudeau is encountering from some unhinged protesters. But let's not play dumb: Trudeau deliberately stuck his thumb in their eyes, abandoning his compassionate “it's been a tough year for everyone” message for a nakedly us-versus-them strategy. Those idiots' rage is good for the Liberal campaign.
Liberals, however, want you to believe O'Toole is emboldening dangerous elements by “vying for (or trying to appease) the anti-vax vote,” as Liberal commentator Supriya Dwivedi wrote in the Toronto Star over the weekend. Gerald Butts, formerly Trudeau's principal secretary and an ever-more conspiracy-minded presence on Twitter, has very nearly accused the Conservatives of organizing or co-organizing these protests.
O'Toole is trying to appease the anti-vax vote ... by forcing the unvaccinated to take a COVID test before getting on an airplane or going to dinner? The Tories are happy to see some of the weirdest, angriest people in Canada scream insanity and hurl gravel in Trudeau's general direction ... why? I don't put much stock in the collective wisdom of Canada's political-strategist class, but that would be especially spectacular malpractice.
One of the most common and pernicious side effects of partisanship is an inability to comprehend non-partisanship: If some bug-eyed anti-vaxxer is hurling abuse at Justin Trudeau, well, chances are he's a Conservative. It's easily disprovable in this case: The online forums where the anti-Trudeau protesters communicate and coordinate echo with disdain for many conservative politicians over their embrace of lockdown policies — particularly Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce, but also Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.
For now, these very much seem to be one-issue voters: no vaccines, no lockdowns, no masks. To the extent they have adopted any party, it's the PPC. Ideally, Maxime Bernier's absence from a five-leader appeal to get vaccinated if you haven't already ought to drive that home. If this election is going to be anything other than kabuki theatre, we really need to get past this issue.