This year I officially became a nonvoter.
The last couple elections I dutifully crossed the street to the local seniors’ centre and stood in line for the privilege of spoiling my ballot. I don’t claim this chore was terribly onerous, but it brought me neither pleasure nor reward, and I wondered why I bothered.
Last time, I considered scribbling a penis or a bunny rabbit on my ballot, to at least provide a moment of levity to the poor schmuck tallying the votes. But the line-up, while brisk, was lengthy enough that I felt guilty lingering behind the partition to doodle, and after a brief hesitation I simply refolded the ballot unmarked.
So this year I skipped it. It was raining anyway.
An NDP-supporting friend encouraged me to vote, vote for anyone – even the Conservatives – just so long as I registered my opposition to “the Christian party”, by which I gathered she meant the ex-Tory Maxime Bernier’s reified fit of pique, the People’s Party of Canada.
I didn’t bother explaining that I have about as much or little enthusiasm for the dreaded Bernier as I have for the other leaders; and that if my vote amounted to a die roll, one name was as likely to come up as another; and that if a single vote for the PPC mattered so much to her she should prefer, to be on the safe side, that I abstain. I just grunted and changed the subject.
***
In an earlier essay I advanced a theory of what I might call, if I were a lefty academic, a systemic bias favouring conservative parties:
Young journalists, freshly escaped from the progressivist petri dishes of the North American higher education system, might sincerely intend to give conservatives a fair shake; but they unconsciously communicate their disdain and disbelief through their word choices, their headlines, the photos they choose to illustrate their articles, and of course, through which stories they cover, and which they ignore.
In a multi-party system like Canada’s, this bias affects which parties get taken seriously. Populists and social conservatives, in order to avoid the taint of association with icky “far-right” ideas, self-protectively cluster with libertarians and Bay Street types under a single big conservative tent; while politicians from the lefty fringe, emboldened by their friendlier media coverage, feel free to flake off into purist micro-parties which splinter the left-wing vote – helping the unified conservatives take power.
That’s the paradox: that left-leaning media might, in clumsily putting their thumb on the scales, accidentally be tipping elections to the right.
Yesterday’s election illustrates the paradox. The Liberals, New Democrats, and Greens – whose platforms appeared, to this untrained eye, as scarcely distinguishable shades of pale pink – together commanded the allegiance of 55% of the electorate. In Quebec yet another left-leaning party, the Bloc Quebecois, was in contention, so that in some ridings the progressive vote was split four ways.
This five-way split is the only reason the Conservatives were in the running at all. Although by international and historical standards they’re about as right-wing as a kindergarten teacher bottle-feeding a baby goat, apparently it’s enough to terrify an outright majority of the population. Against a unified left the Tories would long ago have been winnowed to a handful of farmers fulminating in an Alberta curling rink. Yet somehow they carry on, to the outrage of all decent-minded Canadians, cobbling together a majority every quarter century or so.
Plainly it’s in the interest of said decent-minded folks that a further-right alternative should emerge – one capable of siphoning off five or ten percent of the Tory vote, to give progressive candidates a bit more breathing room.
And yet when Maxime Bernier, miffed at his loss of the Tory leadership contest to hollowed-out marshmallow Andrew Scheer, declared his intention to launch just such a further-right alternative, did the media give him a respectful hearing? No, they went promptly to work re-installing the limits of acceptable discourse just this side of Bernier’s podium, appointing the nation’s most acute offense-detectors to guard the ramparts.
(Of course Scheer’s Conservatives were happy to give clandestine assistance to this project.)
Although there’s little in the People’s Party platform to support the accusation that it is, as my friend put it, a “Christian party”, it has emerged as a safe harbour for former Tories tired of being angrily shushed by their colleagues whenever they admitted to discomfort with the latest advance in the ongoing sexual enlightenment. Also for those drummed out of respectable society for doubting the reality of climate change, or the sanctity of immigration.
I suspect Bernier doesn’t care a fig about these cranky causes. Given his druthers he would have built his platform around laissez-faire economics of perfectly stodgy think-tank pedigree: ending supply management in the dairy industry, for example. But knowing that such a party would appeal only to a handful of bow-tie-wearing statistics profs, he welcomed his fellow ex-Tory refugees, believing (in the manner of the multiculturalists he now affects to disdain) that their diversity would prove to be a source of strength.
Was this realistic? Putting aside taxes and spending, and focussing on the culture-war issues, according to recent opinion polls:
- 25% of Canadians remain opposed to gay marriage; [1]
- 33% are leery of letting trans women use women’s bathrooms; [2]
- 36% would support at least some restrictions on abortion; [3]
- 18% are unworried about or doubt the reality of climate change; [4]
- 55% would like to see immigration reduced. [5]
I imagine there’s a large degree of overlap on the gay marriage, transgender, and abortion issues: let’s say around 30% of Canadians are, on questions of marriage and sexuality, more or less socially conservative.
Bernier probably assumed, contemplating the tastes of this recalcitrant 30%, that they must also be angry about immigration, in denial about climate change, and ready to take the knife to taxes and social services. As many of them surely are.
But although it’s convenient for partisan head-counters, there’s no inherent reason these attitudes should cluster. One of the main lessons of the twin Brexit and Trump upsets of 2016 was that when voters are shaken loose from their customary political allegiances, they’ll reassemble in ways that are confusing to metropolitan observers: working-class Labour and Democratic Party voters, it turned out, weren’t as enthusiastic about mass immigration, cultural dislocation, and the affordable wares of Shenzhen as the folks in the capital thought they ought to be.
***
I think social conservative cranks, climate cranks, and immigration cranks should all feel welcome to air their views. This is probably because I’m an immigration crank myself. Which is to say I share with the majority of Canadians the opinion that immigration should be reduced.
The latest polling on the subject is from June, when 63% of respondents agreed that “the government should prioritize limiting immigration levels because the country might be reaching a limit in its ability to integrate them”. (Of course “limiting” immigration is not necessarily the same as “reducing” it.)
As you’d probably expect, the highest support for this proposition – 81% – came from Conservative voters. (People’s Party supporters weren’t broken out.) But the pattern beyond that is counterintuitive: 57% of Greens, 44% of New Democrats, and 41% of Liberals also favoured “limiting”.
Maybe those 57% of Green supporters fret about immigration for the same reason I do: they fear it’s pushing up the cost of housing and accelerating urban sprawl.
Maybe a few of them also believe, as I do, that a nation ought to be something more than a bunch of unrelated people scrabbling furiously to drive up the gross domestic product; that citizens should share some common values, common heroes, even a common language, so they can have a chat in the intervals between acts of commerce.
Regardless, there’s no particular reason that the above beliefs must be paired with, say, opposition to gay marriage or abortion. (In fact, someone concerned about overpopulation might logically be in favour of both.)
Or, to look at the pairing from the opposite angle, many of those Canadians who remain unembarrassed to profess social conservative views are themselves immigrants from places where the penalties for incorrect speech are far graver than being called out by some Twitter scold. They may see four more years of declarations from Justin Trudeau that their beliefs are un-Canadian as an acceptable tradeoff for the chance to bring their relatives over from the old country.
Suppose that there were no correlation at all between social conservatism, climate skepticism, and wanting less immigration. In that case the likelihood that a randomly selected Canadian would hold all three opinions would be 30% × 18% × 55% = 3%.
The People’s Party couldn’t manage even that: their final share of the popular vote was 1.6%.
But if there is a correlation, it may simply be that all three of the above opinions are currently deemed unsayable. A citizen accustomed to feeling that his beliefs have been twisted, traduced, and ignored by the media is bound to begin to mistrust coverage of other topics; if they’re willing to mischaracterize my viewpoint, the dissident realizes, how can I trust what they say about anyone else’s?
***
I’m not terribly surprised by Justin Trudeau’s victory, by the way. I don’t think the election really had much to do with pipelines, or taxes, or SNC-Lavalin, or blackface dance routines, or any of the other things pundits thought were important.
I believe what it came down to was that Trudeau makes Canadians feel special. Since he’s been prime minister, the rest of the world pays attention to us sometimes. Andrew Scheer could strangle Elizabeth May on the floor of the House of Commons and it would be reported somewhere around page 9 of the New York Times. Trudeau puts on funny socks and it’s retweeted around the world.
As the singer Nanette Workman enthused after performing at Justin’s dad’s retirement gala, “I’m not very political, but I love Trudeau. He’s a star. Like Mick Jagger.”
I have a feeling that, as we did with his father, we’ll be putting up with Justin for as long he decides to stick around.
M.
64% “should continue to be allowed to legally marry”
15% “should only be allowed to form civil unions and not marry”
10% “should not have any kind of legal recognition”
11% “not sure”
Source: Research Co., July, 2019
33% “definitely” should be allowed to use the public bathroom of their choice
19% “probably” should be allowed to use the public bathroom of their choice
16% “definitely” should use the public bathroom based on their biological sex
17% “probably” should use the public bathroom based on their biological sex
16% “not sure”
Source: Research Co., July, 2019
53% “should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants one”
24% “should be permitted in certain circumstances, such as if a woman has been raped”
7% “should only be permitted when the life of the mother is in danger”
5% opposed “under any circumstance”
11% “not sure”
Source: Ipsos, March, 2017
4. Climate change or global warming is…
47% “an extremely serious problem”
35% “a serious problem”
13% “not that serious problem”
5% “not a problem at all”
Source: Abacus Data, Summer, 2019
5. “I would like to see tighter border controls that allow fewer immigrants into Canada.”
30% “strongly agree”
25% “tend to agree”
27% “neither agree nor disagree”
11% “tend to disagree”
8% “strongly disagree”
Source: Ipsos, January, 2019
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