It is disturbing to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seeking to create a wedge issue out of legitimate opposition concerns for the safety and integrity of Canadian elections. He does a grave injustice to our system of democracy by doing so.
The role of the opposition is to hold the government’s feet to the fire, not so that they can get warm and toasty, but so they can feel the heat of parliamentary scrutiny.
“Parliament exists not only to transact the business of state, but to provide a forum in which all legitimate points of view can be expressed,” reads an official Government of Canada publication on the role of the opposition in Parliament. “The government has a right and duty to govern. The opposition’s right and duty, if it believes the public interest is at stake, is to oppose the government’s policies and actions by every legitimate parliamentary means.”
However, Trudeau and senior Liberals have characterized opposition questions about China interfering in Canada’s elections as “partisanship.” Since this line of attack has been persistently and loudly vocalized, it is obviously a deliberate tactic.
Coupled with other aggressive speeches from the Liberals against the Conservatives, it is clear they are intent on marking the opposition out as dissidents spreading discord and agitation in their wake. In other words, the Liberals are engaged in a practice, which social scientists call “political sectarianism.”
“A poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion and moralization poses a threat to democracy,” warned a paper in the journal Science in 2020.
The paper concentrated on the political scene in the United States, but acknowledged there were sobering lessons for democracies throughout the world.
Political sectarianism, the authors outlined, has three ingredients. “Othering,” the tendency to view the opposition as alien or different; “aversion,” disliking opponents, and “moralizing,” where the opposition is regarded as morally bankrupt.
The Liberals have exhibited all three tendencies in their polemical attacks on the opposition.
Othering: Trudeau has sought to portray the Liberals as the fair-minded party of rational thought. Whereas the Conservatives are not to be trusted: “There are politicians out there who think that the best way to solve this very serious problem and this concern that Canadians have is by amping up the level of partisanship and political attacks,” he said.
Aversion: This aspect has been on display by many Liberals, but one prime example was Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull portraying the Conservatives as being in the pocket of Beijing and working against Canadian interests. “By Conservative members making this a partisan activity they are playing into the hands of our foreign adversaries,” he said, part of the Liberal filibuster to prevent Trudeau’s chief of staff from testifying. “They are essentially sowing seeds of mistrust in our democratic institutions by doing that.”
Moralizing: Labelling the Conservatives as “Alt-right” and “hate-filled” is guaranteed to sow discord and paint the opposition as morally bankrupt, and Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell seems happy to be the one doing it. O’Connell’s divisive views were on full display during the filibuster when she portrayed Conservatives as revolutionary Trumpers, accused them of fomenting anarchy in Canada by adopting “Stop the Steal” rhetoric and berated them for hypocrisy.
“I know that there are probably members in the Conservative party who feel very uncomfortable with this Alt-right, hate-filled turn,” she said on Tuesday.
It does not matter to the Liberals that the Opposition has not actually suggested the outcomes of the previous two elections are in question.
Last month, the prime minister seemed to accept he had sown discord in the country when he said he regretted calling members of the “Freedom Convoy” protest a “small fringe minority of people” with “unacceptable views.”
And yet still he descends into hyper partisanship.
The polarization between parties can increase the divide between their supporters. According to the Science paper “Opposing partisans” are now less likely to date or marry; they are wary of living near each other, or working together, they discriminate more against their opponents.
This growing division is founded on the “moral correctness and superiority of one’s sect,” the paper added. The description could not be more apt of the Liberal party today.
However convinced the Liberals are of the rightness of their position, the Opposition clearly has an important role to play. “The best guarantee of good government is still the vigilance of an effective parliamentary opposition,” said the official Government of Canada document.
And it can not be repeated often enough, foreign election interference puts our very democracy at stake, as the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians warned in a 2019 report.
“The threat is real, if often hidden,” noted NSICOP. “If it is not addressed in a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach, foreign interference will slowly erode the foundations of our fundamental institutions, including our system of democracy itself.”
The Liberals are at best misguided, and at worse imperious, in seeking to demonize the Opposition using the very partisanship and rhetoric they denounce.
Serious leadership is needed to combat the threat election interference poses. Unfortunately, no such leadership is on offer.
National Post
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