It was two years ago that a convoy of truckers, conspiracy theorists, and other conservative activists gathered in Ottawa. Depending on who you asked, they were either there to overthrow the government, protest pandemic restrictions that were mostly the purview of Ontario’s provincial government, or simply honk their horns and have a good time. In comments he later said he regrets, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau referred to them as a “small fringe minority of people” with “unacceptable views.”
For some Canadians, this was the turning point for the man who had risen to power on the strength of his “sunny ways.” In far-right media, both in Canada and abroad, he was suddenly portrayed as a “dictator” or “tyrant,” willing to divide Canadians in the name of retaining political power. As Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre said recently on social media, “Trudeau divides to conquer. I will unite Canadians for freedom.”
Poilievre’s comments reflect his two-dimensional view of how our rights and freedoms actually work in Canada and ignore the fact that we couldn’t even unite around something as simple as getting vaccinated against a dangerous virus. But it unintentionally raises a broader point: Is “divisiveness” necessarily a bad thing in our politics?
Most of our proudest achievements as a country, from our flag to the repatriation of the Constitution and creation of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, were deeply divisive at the time they were first proposed. Universal suffrage? Divisive. Abolishing capital punishment? Divisive. Legalizing same-sex marriage? Divisive. You get the idea.
Even now, no-brainer issues like the science around climate change or advancing the rights of the LGBTQ community are incredibly “divisive” among more conservative parts of the population. Albertans may think federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry are “divisive,” but that’s a reflection of their own priorities rather than Canada’s. Divisiveness, in other words, is in the eye of the beholder.
So it was with the vaccine mandates that animated the Ottawa convoy and helped topple Alberta's former premier, Jason Kenney. The January 2022 edition of the COVID-19 monitor study, a running poll that captured data from more than 100,000 respondents over the course of the pandemic, showed four in five Canadians supported mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers. In the same poll, three quarters of respondents backed vaccine requirements for public employees and politicians and 70 per cent supported them for anyone over 18 years old. It was only within certain parts of the conservative political universe where opposition to these measures approached anything resembling a majority of the population.
The same is true for climate policy today. Alberta conservative columnists like Lorne Gunter might describe Trudeau and Guilbeault as “cultish fanatics” who are “hellbent on destroying one part of the country (Alberta and Saskatchewan) to maintain their power base in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle,” but most Canadians don’t see it that way.
A November 2023 Abacus Data poll showed 90 per cent of Canadians think the clean energy sector — the one Trudeau and Guilbeault are trying to support — is “important to the Canadian economy,” with half describing it as “very important.” And while more than two-thirds of respondents support solar, wind and hydro as sources of electricity that Guilbeault’s much-maligned Clean Electricity Regulations are designed to encourage, only 25 per cent support fossil gas.
It’s a safe bet almost everyone who supported fossil gas in that poll also votes Conservative. A 2021 Abacus poll showed that while 77 per cent of Liberal and NDP voters thought Canada should do more to emphasize policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions (come on down, Clean Electricity Regulations and the federal oil sands emissions cap!), only 44 per cent of Conservatives felt the same. In contrast, 24 per cent said Canada should be doing less. As Stewart Prest wrote in a piece for The Line back then, “if Conservative politicians seem particularly concerned about divisions in the country, it might be because they're the ones experiencing them most directly.”
That’s why it’s important to distinguish between policies that might upset people and politics intended to divide them — and no, the former doesn’t automatically point to the latter. Much as some Albertan pundits and politicians would like to pretend otherwise, Guilbeault and Trudeau aren’t trying to “destroy” their province. If they were, buying and building the first new oil pipeline to Pacific tidewater in more than 50 years would be a very weird way to do it. In reality, they’re just trying to govern the country in the best interests of the largest number of people. That’s the opposite of being divisive, as far as I can tell.
What Conservatives like Poilievre really mean when they complain about “divisiveness” is that they’re not getting what they want: inaction on climate change, a doubling down on fossil fuel development, and other Conservative priorities. It’s no different than his predecessors complaining about the Charter, the flag, or other progressive policies and priorities that their supporters couldn’t abide. In time, of course, those “divisive” ideas ended up uniting and redefining the country. Maybe that’s what they’re most afraid of here, as well.
In praise of tough decisions
9
1
30.01.2024
It was two years ago that a convoy of truckers, conspiracy theorists, and other conservative activists gathered in Ottawa. Depending on who you asked, they were either there to overthrow the government, protest pandemic restrictions that were mostly the purview of Ontario’s provincial government, or simply honk their horns and have a good time. In comments he later said he regrets, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau referred to them as a “small fringe minority of people” with “unacceptable views.”
For some Canadians, this was the turning point for the man who had risen to power on the strength of his “sunny ways.” In far-right media, both in Canada and abroad, he was suddenly portrayed as a “dictator” or “tyrant,” willing to divide Canadians in the name of retaining political power. As Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre said recently on social media, “Trudeau divides to conquer. I will unite Canadians for freedom.”
Poilievre’s comments reflect his two-dimensional view of how our rights and freedoms actually work in Canada and ignore the fact that we couldn’t even unite around something as simple as getting vaccinated against a dangerous virus. But it unintentionally raises a broader point: Is “divisiveness” necessarily a bad thing in our politics?
Most of our proudest achievements as a country, from our flag to the........
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