Weaponized public opinion here and beyond

Siding with the majority is a narcotic for too many politicians

Public opinion has been used to justify any number of atrocities and overindulgences, from internment to environmental degradation to the scapegoating of religious minorities. Being on the side of a given majority — a demographic, jurisdiction or country — is a narcotic for too many politicians, in large part because it is amnesia-inducing. History’s cruelties mean little to anyone relying on the loudest voices for support.

It is the reason why America is putting children in cages in abandoned Walmarts. It is why that country, especially, is so slow in tackling or even acknowledging the problem of climate change. It’s why this province is heading toward another divisive election fought largely on identity issues. And it is why people like Lynn Beyak continue to have a pulpit despite what tumbles from her mouth.

In the spring of 2017, the honourable member from Ontario began posting “letters of support” to her pet causes, the whitewashing of Canada’s residential school system and assimilation of 1.6 million Indigenous people into the country’s allegedly welcoming bosom. “Lazy,” “backward-looking mentality,” “chronic whining,” “blackmail in it’s purest form” are a few choice epithets from the 100 or so missives.

Shocked by these “racist” letters and Beyak’s refusal to remove them, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer punted her from caucus last January. This prompted pangs of self-martyrdom from Beyak — she was a bulwark for “freedom of speech,” a victim of “political correctness” — which lasted until this week, whereupon she reverted to boilerplate demagoguery.

Citing a recent Angus Reid poll, which suggested a majority of Canadians believe they spend “too much time” apologizing for residential schools, Beyak proclaimed herself correct. “It’s refreshing to read an unbiased article and poll that truly reflects what Canadians believe will help our whole country move forward and prosper,” she wrote. It was time to “trade your status card for a Canadian citizenship,” she wrote last year.

Clearly, Beyak is no student of history — and not only because the Senator somehow forgot that Indigenous Canadians are, in fact, Canadian citizens. Beginning in 1941, or about 75 years before Beyak waxed nostalgic about residential schools, this country systematically uprooted more than 20,000 Japanese, sending them to internment camps. Most were Canadian citizens. Nevertheless, prime minister Mackenzie King felt empowered by the collective fears of his voting public, resulting in “a cheap and needless capitulation to popular prejudice fanned by political bigotry or ambition or both,” as historian Hugh Keenleyside later put it.

More recently, Quebec’s political landscape was witness to the effects of weaponized public opinion. In 2013, girding itself for the looming election, the Parti Québécois introduced the socalled Quebec values charter, which sought to remove “conspicuous” religious symbols from the bodies of the province’s public servants.

Again, there was little motivation for the legislation beyond fear; in this case, Quebecers’ very legitimate worries of losing their language and culture. That the PQ lost its cynical gambit is a testament to the enduring wisdom of this province’s electorate.

Yet similar baiting language is seeping out of the Coalition Avenir Québec in the month’s leading up to the provincial election in October. If elected, CAQ leader François Legault promises to institute a “values test” for all incoming immigrants. “They can go home” if they twice fail the test, Legault mused in March. “You know, if you live in Quebec, women are equal to men,” he added in another interview. The inference is obvious: immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants, necessarily don’t believe it. Not coincidentally, this unfounded assertion is echoed in successive public opinion polls.

Beyak is running a similar hustle. Only the most dedicated of demagogues could think Canada’s Indigenous people, over-represented in Canada’s jails and under-represented in its schools, “seem to have the upper hand,” to quote one of her letters of support. But she must be right. After all, she has the weight of public opinion behind her.