In today’s Big Story Podcast, we have Justin Ling interviewing Erin O’Toole.
Like many places across the world, politics in Canada has become increasingly polarized. Long gone are the days of trying to appeal to the majority of voters – now some parties have gone to their most extreme constituents for support.
Probably the best example of this was the election of Pierre Poilievre as the new Conservative Party leader. Regardless of how you feel about Poilievre, there’s little doubt that he’s a sign of a new era of political polarization within Canada.
Last month, former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole resigned his seat in the House of Commons and delivered an emotional goodbye to his colleagues. He made an appeal to everybody in politics to make Ottawa less combative, less toxic, and less polarized.
“We’re now framing our political impact by the number of likes we get on social media, not the number of lives we change in the real world,” says O’Toole.
So, what exactly can Ottawa do better? And how?
Yeah, I have a Grandpa in the same boat - older “conservative”, but is disgusted by what the party has decided to embrace: climate change denialism, fear-mongering, rage-baiting, anti-LGBTQ, anti-science, weirdly pro-Russia for some reason? etc.
Not trying to view the past with rose-coloured glasses, but even looking at the past 10 years you can see and feel a sharp directional shift of the CPC towards regression.
I am a Liberal through and through, but it would honestly be refreshing if Conservatives just wanted to debate tax policy, spending, and free market economics instead of actively spreading misinformation and hate.
We need a sort of “internet enlightenment” era where we re-calibrate humanity back towards reason and empathy.
You need to go back a bit further than 10 years. The directional shift started with the Canadian Alliance, which was (my memory is a bit foggy here) 2001-2002 era. That forced a shotgun marriage between the reform party and the PC party to fight off the challenge. Even though the PC party members vastly outnumbered the Reformers, reform core influencers like Preston Manning and Stephen Harper quickly took advantage of said marriage from the ever growing steam the Alliance started to gather in that era, and well here we are. A bunch of weirdo alt right bullshit and populist anger.
I’m personally a lost soul. I voted liberal in the last election, but in all honesty I’m closest to a Red Tory of the 1990s, in that I believe in social liberalism (stuff like gay rights, entrenched women’s rights and the rights to an abortion, etc.). But economically I’m a bit more on the conservative side, I’d say right smack dab in the centre honestly. But that’s also hypocritical sometimes, because there’s been Liberal finance ministers I’ve liked. Paul Martin did a good job in the early aughts, and I think the Trudeau government generally did the best anyone could have been expected to do through the COVID era. But I don’t like my finances to get too loosy goosey. I’m a CPA, so I mean, I’m generally almost always going to be a bit more conservative than most when it comes to the economy and fiscal policy. But I also believe this country needs better consumer protections and needs to quit pandering to big business every single time, in every single fight. So yeah…