The Harper Tories often play dirty, and on just these sorts of issues. Their exploitation of the niqab issue is one Coyne,
Harper’s Tories have often played dirty, but common sense must be applied
If you missed the leaders’ debate on the economy last week — and really, who would pass on that kind of excitement? — perhaps you were wondering what they talked about. Maybe taxes, or deficits, or the need to improve Canadian productivity in the face of an aging population?
Well, yeah, they did, but who cares about any of that? The only thing anyone wanted to talk about afterward were two words Stephen Harper said in the course of the debate. Two words, out of roughly 20,000 spoken.
Those two words, of course, were “old stock.” The Conservative leader was making the point that his contentious policy with regard to health care for refugee applicants — failed claimants are not eligible for the supplemental benefits and prescription drugs that refugees generally are — far from being anti-refugee or antiimmigrant, as it is often portrayed, is supported by “new Canadians” themselves.
That could well be true. The policy may be unduly harsh (it applies also to claimants from countries considered “safe”), but recent immigrants are often among the most supportive of measures to deter those they consider queuejumpers. But Harper didn’t leave it at that. “We do not offer them a better health-care plan than the ordinary Canadian can receive. I think that is something that most new” — and here the Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau started talking over him — “and existing and, and old stock Canadians agree with.” The debate continued, without either of the other leaders remarking on it at any point.
In the wilds of the Twittersphere, however, it was a different story. What did he say, a thousand online warriors demanded to know? He’s dividing Canadians into groups! He’s saying one class of Canadians are better than another! Well, no, he’s not saying it, as such, but it’s the way he’s not saying it. It’s a code word. It’s a dog whistle. I’ve never been so offended by anything this evening ...
By the time the leaders had returned to their handlers, they were prepped to seek advantage. Trudeau demanded Harper explain what he meant. Which the next morning he did. It meant “Canadians who have been the descendants of immigrants for one or more generations.” Whaddayaknow.
What, honestly, was he supposed to say? If you watch the clip, you can see him catch himself after the unlovely “existing.” It’s clearly inadequate, as a companion to “new”: don’t new Canadians also exist? “Old Canadians” wouldn’t have done, either, unless the discussion were about the elderly. So as he groped for something better than “existing” (“and, and”) he fell on “old stock.”
Code word! Dog whistle! The most that anyone would give him credit for was awkward wording, so unusual as to invite suspicion. Really? It took but a few minutes of searching for others to unearth several instances of the same phrase.
Among the examples: Stéphane Dion, in Parliament, complaining of the difficulties of interesting those who are not “old-stock French-Canadians or EnglishCanadians” in hunting and fishing; the Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee, making much the same point as the prime minister about immigrant attitudes to multiculturalism (“this isn’t a backlash from old-stock Canadians”); the journalist Althia Raj, referring to “the stereotypes old-stock Canadians” continue to hold; and, gloriously, a writer on the online forum Rabble.ca, on the “social and class assumptions that old-stock English- and FrenchCanadians bring to their encounters with other cultures.”
Were all these people also speaking in code? Were they also sowing divisions, appealing to hidden resentments, exalting one race above another? Or were they using a reasonable shorthand for “folks whose families have been here a while.”
Yes, but context matters, doesn’t it? A phrase that might be innocuous in one setting can take on a more sinister hue in another. Many recalled Jacques Parizeau, the night of the referendum, blaming the loss on “money and the ethnic vote.” Well, yes, let’s talk about context: that was the leader of a party explicitly devoted to exalting the interests of the province’s Francophone majority, not talking in code at all but inviting that same majority to refer to themselves without shame as “nous,” and to console themselves that “we” hadn’t really lost the vote at all: we’d only been cheated out of victory by … you know.
What, by contrast, was the context of Harper’s remarks? Far from appealing to ethnic or other divisions, he was stressing how similar the views of Canadians were, new and old. But never mind that. Be as cynical as you like about Harper’s motives. Does it make any sense that, in the course of a single passing remark in a debate, he would upend the whole thrust of Tory political strategy for the past 10 years: namely, to win support among immigrant voters? My, that Lynton Crosby has pull.
Look, the Harper Tories often play dirty, and on just these sorts of issues. Their exploitation of the niqab issue is one case: even if you sincerely find such religious face-covering disturbing, they have quite deliberately raised the temperature on the issue, rather than lowering it. Or take what was very nearly the next sentence Harper uttered in that debate, when he claimed that the other parties would have let “hundreds of thousands” of Syrian refugees in “without any kind of security check or documentation.” This is false, and recklessly so. Yet no one talked about that afterward.
The point, then, isn’t to defend Harper, or the Tories. This is about how we think and talk about these kinds of issues generally; there’s more than one way to exploit divisions. “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” Trudeau piously asserted afterward. Of course! Who would ever have dreamed of classifying Canadians according to when they got here before this? Unless, of course, you wish to refer to First Nations, the acme of correct usage. Or, as progressives have been taught to say for decades, the Founding Nations of English and French. Or, indeed, New Canadians. But still — what was Harper thinking?
The most that anyone would give him credit for was awkward wording, so unusual as to invite suspicion. Really? It took but a few minutes of searching for others to unearth several instances of the same phrase. Andrew Coyne If you watch the clip, you can see him catch himself after the unlovely ‘existing.’