It’s become impossible to ignore that the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre are staking a claim to the term “common sense.” The party has lately branded itself so hard with that overworked political slogan that you can practically hear the hissing of hot iron on flesh. Every statement to the media, every bit of messaging on social media, is “Common Sense Conservatives” this, “Common Sense Conservatives” that.
It’s a smart trademark for the Conservatives to grab. In an election-bound country set adrift by an affordability crisis, a housing crisis, foreign interference and global uncertainty, and which is governed by a tired Liberal Party that seems equally at sea, the possibility that “sound judgment in practical matters,” as one dictionary defines common sense, is around the corner has its charm.
It is also, of course, complete bunk. All political slogans are. The Liberals have fought three elections on behalf of “the middle class and people working hard to join it,” but in 2020 its then-minister of middle class prosperity, Mona Fortier, couldn’t define what the middle class was. Unsurprisingly, that cabinet portfolio no longer exists.
The NDP’s “In it for you” and “Ready for better” are so weak that they seem to exist only because a party is supposed to have a slogan, and “Slightly lefter” was too on the nose.
“Common sense” is a little more difficult to dismiss outright. It has been around in politics for centuries – think of Thomas Paine’s famous 1776 pamphlet in favour of American independence, titled simply “Common Sense.” It is a slogan as empty as any other, but it is also hard to ignore, because it comes from something real that is missing in Canada right now.
Tagging yourself as the party of common sense is nothing more than a dodge. In that way, it is the same as the Liberal Party claim that its values are the true values of Canadians. It says that your positions and policies are beyond reproach or debate, because they come from a mythical place where life is so simple that the answer to every problem is self-evident to the right-minded person.
That’s garbage, of course. Common sense, especially when applied to partisan politics, is nothing more than “the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18,” as Albert Einstein put it. Liberal common sense and Conservative common sense may share a name but they are not the same thing. Just look at fiscal policy, or the necessity of a carbon price to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Those are issues that are meant to be up for debate, not beyond debate. Insisting that your position is based on something indisputable, like “common sense” or “Liberal values,” is toxic. It sorts people into camps that can’t talk to each other, a polarization that is becoming increasingly apparent in Canada, and which is being exploited by political leaders.
Canadians don’t much like it. A striking new report from Angus Reid based on 50 years of polling data found that the country’s three main political leaders have never been less popular. Mr. Poilievre, Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh all have negative ratings, with the Prime Minister lying at the bottom of the barrel.
And yet common sense is a real thing. It’s knowing to come in out of the rain, or not to pet a rattlesnake, but it is also rooted in the idea that there are shared truths that can form the basis of a common identity.
What Canadians lack right now, what they aren’t being given by their political leaders, is a common “sense” of themselves and their country.
Canada is faced with problems, no question, but it ought to be self-evident that it is one of the best countries in the world, with many advantages. It is a country of rule of law, with a stable democratic government, enviable resources and an educated and growing population that is attractive to immigrants from around the world.
But our political leaders rarely tell us about the good stuff, or talk glowingly of what binds us as a nation. If they stop to say Canada is great, they are referring only to the part that votes for them. This infernal partisanship has led to a noticeable breakdown in civility – the convention that, in a democracy, you are not always right, and that you have to compromise in order to progress.
Canada doesn’t need so-called common sense from any politician or party to be its best self. It needs common ground, but no one in Ottawa is brave enough to offer it.