Our democracy needs fixing
If there was an election-related news item in the past week that should make every Canadian pause and think, surely it’s the one involving 18-year-old Maddison Yetman.
She’s the Winnipeg student who learned just over a week ago that she has terminal cancer. She was told she has only days or weeks to live.
And as what may well be her final public gesture, Yetman voted. A mobile polling station was brought into the hospital and she cast her ballot.
Then, it being 2019, she posted a video on social media with the poignant message: “If I can find the time to vote, you can find the time to vote.”
For anyone thinking of skipping the whole voting thing, ponder that. Then find the half hour or so it’ll take to cast a ballot at one of the advance polls open this weekend, or on Monday, the official election day. Just do it.
Every election is important, and it’s always right to exercise your most fundamental democratic right. But at the same time, we’re genuinely sorry that Maddison Yetman didn’t get to vote in an election more worthy of her admirable commitment to democracy.
Because there’s no getting around it: This has been a dirty, low-down campaign. It may not be the worst we’ve ever had; historians can reach back for examples of violence and hatemongering from long-ago election battles. But it surely is the nastiest in recent memory.
Suddenly, the words of Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the Privy Council who warned a Commons committee last March about the state of public discourse, seem more prescient than ever. Wernick sounded the alarm about a “rising tide of incitement to violence, where people use words like treason and traitor in open discussion … these are words that lead to assassination.”
And indeed last Saturday many were shocked to learn that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was forced to appear at a campaign rally wearing a bullet-proof vest and surrounded by RCMP guards because of a security threat.
This has always been a country where political leaders mingle freely with citizens, whether they’re in campaign mode or not, with minimal security. If that changes, we’re heading down a very dangerous road.
Who’s responsible? Naturally, the parties are pointing fingers at one another, claiming they’re taking the high road while the others are in the gutter. And there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Alot of it is the usual partisan truth-twisting. Liberals distort Conservative positions, and vice versa. Even the New Democrats and Greens are at it in areas where they’re fishing in the same vote pool, with the Greens claiming the NDP is lying about their positions.
This falls well short of the high-minded debate on ideas we’d ideally like to see in elections. But it’s nothing new, and no cause for panic.
What is relatively new, and genuine cause for concern, is the hyper-polarization that has infected debate on some key issues like climate change, energy, immigration and so-called “identity” issues such as same-sex marriage.
Most voters are still open to hearing other points of view. But surveys show a sizable minority (perhaps a quarter) are so committed to their political tribe that they literally hate their opponents and see compromise with the other side as betrayal. Increasingly, it’s this super-partisan, polarized minority that sets the tone of public debate (certainly that’s true on social media).
And so we see the vitriol directed at some political leaders, particularly those identified with progressive values, far out of proportion to what could be considered legitimate criticism. It goes way beyond attacking their positions on particular issues; it targets their very person and threatens their safety. Kathleen Wynne suffered those kind of attacks, as did Rachel Notley in Alberta.
In this campaign it’s Trudeau who has faced the brunt of such hatred. Of course Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has come in for his share of criticism, often for his personal positions on abortion and same-sex marriage. By now he must be thoroughly sick of explaining that a Scheer government wouldn’t touch those third-rail issues.
But that doesn’t come close to the type of abuse hurled at Trudeau, as much for who he is as for his positions on specific hot-button questions like pipelines and climate change. It’s a disturbing sign that far-right populism is a real force in this country.
The good news on that front is that Maxime Bernier’s effort to harness that feeling in his People’s Party of Canada seems to be heading nowhere. If the polls prove accurate, he may not even win his own seat. He will not be missed.
We’ve already made clear our preference in this campaign. This week, we wrote that Trudeau and the Liberals are, overall, the best choice for Canada. They’ve made their share of mistakes over the past four years, but they got it right on the key issues — making sure prosperity is more widely shared, defending Canada’s interests, and addressing climate change. They’re promising to continue that work if they win another mandate on Monday.
But regardless of Monday’s outcome, we must stop the slide toward campaigns dominated by the kind of hateful rhetoric that made this one so repellent.
If a dying woman can reaffirm her faith in democracy, so can the rest of us. She, and all other Canadians, deserve much better than they got over the past five weeks.