Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks as Parliament's Question Period resumes, a day after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was ejected from the House of Commons, in Ottawa on May 1.Blair Gable/Reuters
The mainstream U.S. media are generally slow on the uptake when it comes to Canada. So, it took them a while to catch on that it is no longer 2015 in the Great White North and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not just unpopular at home but facing political oblivion.
This unexpected (by them) state of affairs has got them nonplussed, and suddenly curious. “Is Canada really poised to be the next Western country to fall to the far-right populist global wave?” Vox asked last week after Mr. Trudeau was interviewed on its daily podcast.
A Sunday New York Times op-ed by Canadian journalist Stephen Marche laid out the unvarnished truth for the broadsheet’s progressive audience. “Political careers often end in failure,” Mr. Marche noted. “Justin Trudeau, one of the world’s great progressive leaders, may be heading toward that moment.”
No doubt more than a few Brooklynite Times subscribers choked on their skinny chai lattes on learning the news. What is at stake, Mr. Marche warned, is “something that matters more than one politician’s career: Canada’s contemporary liberal and multicultural society, which just happens to be the legacy of the Prime Minister’s father.”
Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, who deconstructed Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for American readers, comes to a less alarmist conclusion. Where Mr. Marche sees a threat to Canada’s “liberal and multicultural society,” Mr. Beauchamp cites Mr. Poilievre’s support for immigration as the clearest evidence distinguishing him from right-wing radicals elsewhere. “His populism is primarily rhetorical – rather than system-threatening – because the Canadian system for limiting extremism is still basically intact.”
Until this week, I might have agreed with that conclusion. Now, I’m not so sure. The events of the past few days do suggest that Canada has finally joined peer democracies in entering a postliberal age in which the left and the right no longer agree on even the basics of liberal democracy.
The capital “l” Liberal embrace of identity politics and the capital “c” Conservative contempt for “ivory tower elites” has led both parties to abandon long-held consensus views about what constitutes the public good. The antipathy between Trudeau Grits and Poilievre Tories has gone beyond mere partisanship. It is toxic to the body politic.
Last week, a video popped up of Mr. Poilievre expressing his support to anti-carbon-tax protesters who had set up camp at the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border. “People believed his lies,” Mr. Poilievre is heard telling the protesters, referring to Mr. Trudeau and within view of the that flag, the one with the PM’s name and an expletive. “Everything he said was bullshit, from top to bottom.” Mr. Poilievre is seen exiting a trailer with a symbol resembling that of the far-right extremist group Diagolon sketched on its door.
It would be naive to believe any aspect of this was accidental. If the Poilievre Conservatives are good at anything, it’s posting dog-whistle videos that stoke Pavlovian responses on both the left and right. The Liberals were only too happy to play along, with Liberal House Leader Steven MacKinnon rising in the Commons on Monday to accuse Mr. Poilievre of “once again [encouraging] supporters of white supremacy, anarchy and misogyny.”
The spectacle that unfolded in the House on Tuesday, as Mr. Trudeau blasted Mr. Poilievre for “showing us exactly what shameful, spineless leadership looks like” by flirting with “white nationalists,” could not be chalked up to spring fever on the Rideau. The Tory Leader’s characterization of the federal exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that paved the way for British Columbia’s decriminalization experiment as “wacko policy by this wacko Prime Minister” got him expelled from the House for only a day. But its corrosive impact on our politics will resonate for months to come.
“Wacko” is what you call your political opponents when you have no respect for them or the norms and institutions that underscore our democracy. Unsurprisingly, it is one of Donald Trump’s favourite words. He has used it to describe political adversaries and Democrats in general. He often substitutes it with “wack job” and “nut job” to show off his vocabulary.
According to the Merriam-Webster definition, “wacko” means “having or showing a very abnormal or sick state of mind.” There may be instances when voters need to be alerted to the dangers of madmen or madwomen seeking elected office. That is not the case in Canada – yet. But the degeneration of our political discourse is leading us to a place where it may become the case.
A self-satisfied Mr. Trudeau dismisses vast numbers of Canadians who feel left behind in a postliberal world as white nationalists and misogynists. A shamelessly base Mr. Poilievre exploits their grievances to fan hate (the word is not too strong) toward those who fail to legitimize their sense of exclusion.
Our leaders are failing us. We must not let them take us down with them.