Former Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson once said that “the genius of our Canadian civilization” is its ability to be complex while resisting fragmentation. As Clarkson alluded, Canada used to be considered one of the most peaceful nations in the world[1] despite the significant disagreements which are intrinsic to Canadian society (like the English versus French rift). The fact that Canada is now less peaceful and more polarised was dramatically revealed on January 29th, 2022, when the Freedom Convoy, a collective of over a thousand trucks and many more thousands of protesters, descended on Canada’s capital to protest vaccination mandates and general discontent with the government.
The Freedom Convoy was not the first time that Canadians have protested on mass or that there has been vehement disagreement between groups. But it was the first time in recent history that the anger of an ideological faction destabilized the nation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time since its introduction and placed the military on the streets. An EKOS survey reported that in the convoy’s aftermath, Canadians’ greatest fear for the future (over the climate emergency, a declining economy, and potential health crises) is polarisation.
So, what, if not disagreement, pushes a society from peace to tension? And what can Canada’s rise in polarisation teach us about what is required for opposing political opinions to manifest as civil debate rather than political instability?
Unlike a long list of other divided democracies, such as the USA or Mexico, Canadians have not grown significantly more ideologically divided on most basic policy matters. However, according to McGill’s Digital Democracy Project, Canadians still perceive their political opposition to be more ideologically distant than they used to be. The inconsistency between perception and reality exists because people have evolved to believe in their opinions more intensely and to more vehemently dislike and distrust those who disagree with them, according to the project report. Willingness to empathize, or even pragmatically compromise, has evaporated.
Dr. Richard Johnston, a professor at the University of British Colombia, defines this phenomenon as “affective polarization” or “partisan sorting.” When opposing political beliefs become synonymous with opposing identities, politics becomes a battle ground of us versus them. Name any Canadian politician and they have most likely modelled the conflation of opinion and identity. Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, regularly references the views of the “Liberal Snob” or “Clueless Liberal” on his social medias. And Jason Kenney, former Albertan premier, called his dissidents “lunatics” during his fight to hold onto his leadership. The symptoms of equating ideas and identity are clear. 1 in every 4 Canadians “hate” their political opponents (not just some of their political opponents’ opinions). And identity-based hate crimes rose by 183% between 2019 and 2022.
Online political dialogue may portray an even more extreme picture. 47% of Canadian social media users do not engage in political conversations online for fear of criticism and cancel culture, reported The Samara Centre for Democracy. Because of self-selection, those left over in the arena tend to be those whose intensity of opinions are greater. The direction and tone of the conversation thus becomes akin to a screaming match, and the information shared reflects the biases of those on the peripheries of the political spectrum.
There is a one-way street between heightened emotion and partisanship [2]. As traditional media has taken a hit (only half of Canadians trusted the media in 2022), web-based media has exploded. Ideological bloggers on sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, often rely on emotional appeals – rather than non-partisan journalism – to generate donations or to increase views. Politicians use similar tactics on social media to condemn their opposition. A Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) admitted that “MPs now think about Question Period exclusively in terms of what can be clipped and shared on social media.” Clips from Question Period, posted out of context on YouTube, can rack up hundreds of thousands of views.
Trust in politicians, government, and democracy is at its lowest point in recent Canadian history, announced The Proof Strategies Index. A report released in the aftermath of The Freedom Convoy[3] revealed that of the Canadians surveyed, more than 20% believed that civil disobedience (over voting) was the most effective method to enact change. And the COVID-19 pandemic was the straw that broke the camel’s back for lack of faith in government. Understandably, intense emotion fuelled every perspective. Tragically, over 50, 000 Canadians died of COVID-19, so emotions ranging from fear to sadness bolstered the commitment that many Canadians had to lockdown and vaccine mandates (and their frustration with The Freedom Convoy protesters). That being said, Canada’s COVID-19 response came at the expense of the economy. The Freedom Convoy and the anti-government sentiment of 2022 was largely a product of the extent to which the lower and middle classes struggled in the economic aftershocks of COVID-19. Emotion based on experience did not just inform perspective, it also fuelled the strength of opposition to the alternate opinion. Partisanship soared.
Diving into the reasons for the rise in partisanship in Canada reveals that the culprit is heightened, albeit understandable, emotion. It feeds the absence of empathy across party lines and aggravates the lack of trust in government and information. It is also the difference between disagreement and partisanship – between a politically peaceful society and an unstable one.
Imagining political stability then becomes less about how to avoid disagreement between groups, and more about how to promote rational dialogue between peers. This may look like ensuring informational institutions are accessible and non-biased, limiting the range of social medias that official politicians are allowed to use, or introducing new modules in school curriculums to teach children from a young age how to disagree and maintain empathy simultaneously. (The Young Academy of Scotland’s Charter for Responsible Debate is just one of many initiatives aiming to wean us off combative, win-lose models of debate and encourage more collaborative approaches which prioritise finding common ground and shared purpose. You can read their wider report here.) Peace may look like heated debate, or to borrow Clarkson’s words, like complexity. But disagreement which coexists with peace is founded in respect for democracy and media – and for people. It is critical that we ensure that they are deserving of respect.
What do you think?
- What role do our personal, social, political and cultural identities play in how we debate with other people? And what use do politicians make of identity politics to influence debates?
- Do you think that partisanship is ever necessary or effective?
- How could trying to eliminate emotion from political processes be detrimental to peacebuilding? Conversely, in what ways might heightened emotion be beneficial to building political peace?
- Are politicians responsible for modelling respectful dialogue, no matter the stakes or opinions of their opponents?
- How else might rationality, under understandably emotional circumstances, be encouraged?
If you enjoyed this item in our museum…
If you enjoyed this item in our museum, you might also enjoy ‘Colombia: The Long Road to Peace,’ ‘The Hidden Costs of Unification’, ‘Taking Love and Care Seriously in Classrooms,’ and ‘Kartarpur Corridor.’
Madighan Ryan, October 2023
Notes and Further Reading
- Canada’s past is not peaceful, but instead marked by colonial land-grabbing, oppression, and systemic injustices. This article’s assumption that Canada was considered peaceful is largely a reference to its relative political stability in recent history, as was stated in the 2022 Global Peace Index: Click to access GPI-2022-web.pdf ↩︎
- The relationship between emotion and partisan identity is explored further in this journal article: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/expressive-partisanship-campaign-involvement-political-emotion-and-partisan-identity/7D2A2C87FBEBBE5DABAAF9658B3162AA. ↩︎
- ‘Far and Widening: The Rise of Polarisation in Canada,’ published in 2023, is a deep dive through data collection, interviews with academics and experts, and investigative journalism into the current state of affective polarisation in Canada. The report can be found here: https://ppforum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/TheRiseOfPolarizationInCanada-PPF-AUG2023-EN2.pdf. ↩︎