I fear the leaders of Canada’s two dominant political parties are House smart, life stupid.
It is with side of eye and purse of lips that I click open stories about Ottawa’s resident petit dauphins, Opposition leader Pierre Pollievre and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The former appears to develop policy whilst doom scrolling Twitter (FTX is more fun than the Bank of Canada; CBC is RIA Novosti), while the latter has, to quote former parliamentary ethics watchdog Mary Dawson, “a blind spot” regarding gifts, vacations and appointments for and from wealthy friends.
They are each other’s foil, in a game to game Canada’s parliamentary system to achieve power – and they are both very, very good at it.
They’re good at it because they like it: Troll One and Troll Two.
Two sons of different parties to the House of Commons born, raised in the practices of the late industrial age’s version of the command and control parliamentary system, with the added support of social networks’ speed and mobility.
Trudeau was literally birthed into it in 1971, three years into his father Pierre Trudeau’s 16-year tenure as Liberal prime minister, then opposition leader, then prime minister again, and the younger Trudeau spent his 20s and 30s supporting Liberal campaigns, before becoming Liberal leader in 2013 and prime minister in 2015.
Pollievre was a teen volunteer for the Reform Party, then Canada’s youngest MP at age 26 in 2004, a cabinet minister in the last two years of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s nine-year tenure, Opposition critic of Trudeau’s government, and now party leader since 2022.
You cannot spend your entire life this immersed in the artificial world of party politics, Question Period and political leadership and not develop a severe case of tunnel vision.
There is no room for broad diversity of thought or expression in party politics; everything is focused on winning and holding power, and to do that, campaigns must be framed as ‘us versus them’.
A binary, simple choice: red or blue if you want to be in power; orange, green, sky bleu or purple if you seek to upend Canada’s traditional power dynamic.
Or at least that’s how it used to work; two parties vying to win the centre, while the other parties raised specific issues from either side of the political spectrum.
To transform government, politics and public institutions we need people who can design new approaches to old problems, and the ability to convert these ideas into policies, processes and services that deliver impact.
Rarely do we find all these talents in one person or in one sector, which means we will have to learn to embrace collaborative behaviour.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the Ottawa way, so if it’s change we seek, we’re going to have to step up and do it ourselves.
We can start by facing up to our role in producing a cynical political culture that rewards trolls at the expense of more balanced voices.
In an August 28, 2018 Globe and Mail interview, former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna cited the poor quality of political candidates as a significant concern. “For one thing, social media and the attack potential scares people off,” he said. “Any successful person looking at that would say, ‘Why the hell am I going to go through that?’”
A steady supply of quotable but ineffective politicians have run under various party banners and been not only elected, but re-elected by constituents who fail to hold their MPs, MLAs or MPPs to a higher standard.
Then there’s the social media fights that we start or join, either to pile on the criticism or the defense of the latest political tempest.
The political centre ain’t what it used to be.
Some pundits will tell you it’s gone, others that it is on the move, but I think it’s something else: I think the centre is changing, morphing into something new.
We’re rolling around in the democracy chrysalis, covered in goo, trying to figure out what we’re going to become.
We’d be fools to leave it to the political class to figure it out alone.
They’re not up to the task, but then neither is the private sector, nor are we, plain old citizens, at least not if each of us acts alone, vying to create a new system for our own self-interest.
That would be stupid.
