Dog-whistle blown on Tory xenophobia

The phrase “dog-whistle politics” is most often associated with the right, but Justin Trudeau has been using his own coded language to reach his political base.

The now infamous video of him being heckled at an open-air rally in Quebec could scarcely have been orchestrated to better effect if the woman shouting questions about immigration had been an actor hired by the Liberals to play an intolerant racist.

Trudeau was perfectly within his rights to respond to the questions bellowed at him by the woman in the crowd, just as she was within her democratic rights to ask about his policies. (She was later identified on social media as Diane Blain, a member of the Front Patriotique du Québec, a group that doesn’t like Islam or immigration. Blain made the papers in 2015, when she refused to be served by a Muslim woman at a dental clinic in Montreal.)

The prime minister, like most politicians, probably welcomed the chance to ditch a stump speech so dull birds were in danger of falling out of the sky. Margaret Thatcher once said she took a mental jump for joy when she was heckled, on the grounds it gave her something (or someone) to get her teeth into, and her audience loved it.

After he left the podium, Trudeau could be seen on the video walking in the direction of Blain, clearly relishing the prospect of another round of questions on immigration and on his treatment of the Québecois. This was the point he said “racism has no place” in Canada.

And why not? It is political gold for Trudeau at this point in the cycle. At a news conference on Monday, he defended his treatment of Blain, saying hate speech and the politics of division were a “dangerous path” for Canada. He said he fears a rise in extreme populism and polarization in political discourse, particularly around immigration, and he intends to continue to call out such behaviour.

The rhetoric was not too dissimilar to comments made at his own nomination meeting in Montreal on Sunday, where he turned the minds of the faithful to next year’s election and said it would be a contest between a Liberal Party that promoted a cleaner environment and less inequality and a Conservative Party ready to exploit divisions created by global populism.

Do you see what he did in his Monday press conference? Using some subtle political ultrasonics, he equated the behaviour of a notorious swivel-eyed bigot with the Conservative Party of Canada. For good measure, he threw in the hobgoblin of global populism, evoking the image, if not the name, of Donald J. Trump.

It would all be perfectly outrageous but for certain members of the Conservative caucus, who seem intent on validating Trudeau’s charge that they are stoking the politics of “fear and division.”

The Washington Post carried an article by columnist David Moscrop detailing the “mini-meltdown” being experienced by Canada’s Conservatives. He noted Sen. Denise Batters questioning the politics of Liberal Omar Alghabra, based on his birthplace in Saudi Arabia; the labelling of the same MP as an “overt Islamist” by Conservative Blaine Calkins; the criticism of the appointment to the federal bench of one of Omar Khadr’s former lawyers by MP Shannon Stubbs; and (the grand-daddy of them all) the broadside at Trudeau’s “cult of diversity” and his promotion of “extreme multiculturalism” by professional gadfly Maxime Bernier.

Moscrop’s conclusion was that Andrew Scheer is leading a party that lacks discipline and direction; one that is cultivating a “xenophobic throw-back image.” He feared that the “low tide for good sense” had not yet been reached.

That strikes me as a fair comment from a U.S. newspaper, written by an academic from British Columbia about a party that is about to hold its convention in Nova Scotia.

Scheer and his caucus have the ideal opportunity to course-correct this week — and all signs are they are going to. Patience has expired for Bernier, who is liked personally but who is accused of making not so much repeated power plays, as ego plays. The Liberals revealed this week that Bernier’s musings enabled them to raise 77 per cent more than on previous issues-based campaigns and increase the number of registered Liberal supporters by 1,000.

Scheer cannot expel him from caucus unilaterally, but his colleagues can — and they may well do so when they meet Thursday.

The leader is likely to make it clear in his keynote speech that he disapproves of the stance of Trudeau’s heckler (even if he defends to the death her right to question government policy). Scheer will likely say there is no place for identity politics in his party and that his underlying vision is of a party of the centre-right that appeals to disaffected Liberal voters.

There are regional differences across Canada when it comes to issues, but new demographic data suggests the fastest-growing parts of the country are suburban areas where people rely on their cars to get to work. The Conservative message on taxes, particularly carbon taxes, is likely to play well with such voters.

But that message must be tailored. Two-thirds of Canadians now live in the suburbs, and many of them are recent immigrants.

Any party that has a whiff of xenophobia will lose their support. Hence Trudeau’s use of the dog-whistle and the potential ejection from the Conservative caucus this week of the man who almost became its leader.