During the televised British Columbia Party Leaders’ debate this week, B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad told voters that he had just witnessed a fatal overdose in downtown Vancouver on his way to the television studio. “This is the B.C. that David Eby has created,” he said.
The next day, when faced with a fact check – the person he saw overdosing did not die, it turns out – Mr. Rustad tried to spin his falsehood into some good feels. “I’m overjoyed to hear a life was saved thanks to heroic efforts of first responders.” Whether voters believe that “overjoyed” was what Mr. Rustad felt when confronted with the fact that he had said something untrue during the most publicized moment of the election campaign, they can also see a pileup of problems.
Mr. Rustad had to issue another clarification earlier this week. He had not understood, he explained, when asked back in June, whether he supported what’s known as “Nuremberg 2.0″ – a conspiracy-theory campaign to prosecute public officials over COVID-19 vaccine mandates, à la the post-Second World War trials that saw some Nazis executed. “We would certainly be participating with other jurisdictions as we look at those sorts of issues,” he had said, which he walked back this week with an apology.
Once the leader of a fringe party, Mr. Rustad could become B.C.’s next premier. Polls have shown him running close to Premier David Eby, who leads the NDP. It’s quite the wild rise for someone who was kicked out of the BC Liberal Party (which became BC United and was then disbanded), for his out-there views on climate change.
Much more recently, he rhetorically asked an interviewer (Jordan Peterson – a whole other story): “How is it that we’ve convinced carbon-based beings that carbon is a problem?” He continued, “Taxing people into poverty in some vain attempt to change the weather is absolute lunacy.”
You know what’s bordering on lunacy? That people with beliefs like these can rise to political leadership.
Is it just a nostalgic fog that allows one to recall a time when political leaders were admirable? Didn’t dabble in conspiracy theories or focus on the most trivial of matters (“Paper straws suck,” says Mr. Rustad) in the face of major problems – including a climate catastrophe and an affordability crisis? People who can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetables probably don’t much care what kind of straws they have to use to drink their discount-brand apple beverage. Or has something actually changed in the political ecosystem that now allows the chemtrail crowd to rise to positions of power? (Hi, Alberta.)
In B.C., it feels like we are being surrounded by a triple-whammy of truth-flirts on the precipice of power. Down in the U.S., Donald Trump, when he is not secretly sending COVID tests to Vladimir Putin, sexually abusing women, or offering to autograph a rabbi’s sacred Jewish prayer book (talk about a God complex), said this week as a hurricane was raging toward Florida that the federal government wasn’t helping people with disaster relief in Republican areas, which is untrue.
He has already proven to be a chaotic, unhinged leader. Yet he is running neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris who, while not a perfect candidate, can at least string a sentence together, has not inspired an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and does not trade in schoolyard insults or conspiracy theories.
This week, some MAGA types were claiming that the federal government can control the weather – a roundabout way of blaming hurricanes on Ms. Harris, who is Vice-President.
There is someone else, closer to home, who uses politics to blame the guy in charge at every chance he gets.
“Life is not bad after eight years of [Justin] Trudeau,” Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre posted to social media in March, “if you’re a sadistic murderer.” He was talking about notorious serial killer Paul Bernardo’s prison conditions. “For everyone else, it’s terrible. Trudeau’s not worth the crime or the cost.”
Mr. Poilievre has a penchant for indiscriminately blaming every societal evil and misfortune on Mr. Trudeau. Mr. Rustad was attempting to take a page out of that playbook during the debate when it fell apart on him. Mr. Trump opened the door to this depraved strategy and now here we are, sunk in the mire of debased political discourse full of half-truths and outright lies, which has become the norm. And somehow acceptable.
Yes, things have gotten worse in Canada under the Liberals, and in B.C. under the New Democrats. But these governments have been operating in the context of global crises.
Ask yourself: will the return of plastic straws and getting “government out of the way” fix the housing crisis, the affordability crisis, the drug crisis, the climate crisis? Was that person overdosing in downtown Vancouver mentioned because of empathy, or did they just represent a convenient talking point in a political campaign?
Vote wisely.