Canadians find their political fervour
Elite Singles — a dating website that sounds like it was designed specifically for Stephen Harper’s top staffers — recently tried to determine whether it’s taboo to discuss politics on a first date.
In order to do this, the website conducted a survey of 500 single people from different nationalities around the world. The result was 65 per cent said they’d “be happy to discuss politics on a first date.” But more than any other nationality surveyed, Canadians were the least resistant to the idea. According to the study, “not one Canadian single thought political chat should be off the table” on a first date.
This result is refreshing for two reasons. The first is that it helps dispel the popular myth that we are a rigidly non-confrontational people; Canadians might be unfailingly polite, but politeness does not equal timidity in the face of conflict. The second is that it might suggest our nation’s bent towards political apathy — especially among youth — is changing. And it’s about time it did.
The Conservatives have been in office for 11 years, which, no matter a government’s political leaning or record, is an uncomfortably long time. Harper won his first term in 2006, the year Hannah Montana debuted on the Disney Channel, and he won his second term in 2011, the year that show was cancelled (its leading lady, Miley Cyrus, having embarked on a perilous quest to find herself ). In other words, our prime minister has been around so long he has served through every stage of Cyrus’s metamorphosis, from Disney princess, to briefly engaged rom-com actress, to (most recently) gyrating dreadlocked weirdo.
Perhaps Canadians are more inclined to talk politics where they normally wouldn’t, not because they’re more civic-minded than other nationalities but because it has suddenly dawned on them that the only constant in their lives besides bad weather is Stephen Harper. It’s unnerving when the world around you changes, but the guy in charge doesn’t.
Harper was never popular with non-Conservatives or young people, who tend to reject conservative values no matter who is spouting them. But he wasn’t always markedly hated the way he is now. Anecdotally, I have seen my Facebook news- feed go from a mostly apolitical forum — cat videos, party invitations, recaps of Breaking Bad — to a stridently partisan and dogmatic one. Friends I know who couldn’t tell the difference between Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton in 2011 are now posting daily tributes to Thomas Mulcair in the lead-up to the federal election. The mood is different this time around and there is no stronger proof, I would argue, of newfound Canadian political fervour than the recent uptick in painfully earnest protest songs. In Sep- tember, Canadian country rock band Blue Rodeo released “Stealin’ All My Dreams,” a staunchly antiHarper song about among other things, the government’s record on the environment: “Your pipeline will spill its disease/you shut down all the research libraries/and you muzzled all the white coats in your laboratories/then you set your sights on the CBC.” And this week, Canadian indie bands Hey Rosetta and Yukon Blonde released the considerably more mellow antiHarper ditty, “Land You Love:” “When I was a child/I sang the anthem with pride/it stood for justice, peace and human rights/It stood for the holy rolling hills and a home for all walks of life/and I must again, for my children, and theirs.”
As far as traditional protest songs go, neither one is “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” but the songs’ popularity (both of them trended on social media alongside news about Selena Gomez, NFL football and Kim Kardashian) indicates they weren’t composed in vain. Nor were they the subject of widespread mocking and derision, as so many things are these days.
It seems in addition to politics at the first-date dinner table, we might have developed an appetite for political earnestness, too.
The question is: have we developed an appetite for voting?
In 2011, less than 40 per cent of eligible 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the federal election, a pretty dismal turnout, even compared to the unexceptional overall average of 61 per cent.
So while we may talk — or sing — up a storm over dinner, the word is still out on who will be serving in the prime minister’s office during the next unsettling phase of Miley Cyrus’s inevitable metamorphosis.