Things getting fiery in cool, low-key Canada
There’s a 50 percent chance the Toronto Blue Jays will represent the American League in this year’s World Series, the Pittsburgh Penguins regularly compete against Canadian teams and it’s only a four-hour drive to get to Niagara Falls, Ontario, from Washington.
Yet, to many Americans, Canada is as far removed from daily thought as the Principality of Liechtenstein, and its leaders are about as easily identified as low-level bureaucrats from Ulaanbaatar. Strip away his entourage and any of the other trappings of power, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper could almost certainly stroll through the Washington Crown Center shopping mall without anyone recognizing him or bothering him in the least. The same goes for his immediate predecessors, Paul Martin and Jean Chretien.
Maybe we can credit Canada’s reputation for low-key civility for the fact it rarely crosses our minds. But lately Canadians have been enduring an uncharacteristically fiery election season, and it will culminate in a vote Monday that could end with Harper being cast out of office after a tenure of almost a decade.
Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party, won a majority in the country’s House of Commons in 2011 after serving as prime minister for five years at the head of a minority government. That Harper was able to triumph so convincingly, particularly since the opposition Liberal Party is considered Canada’s “natural” governing party, was considered to be quite a feather in his cap. Though Canada’s Conservatives are several steps further to the left of someone like, say, Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz – born in Canada, ironically enough – many prognosticators believed Harper’s extended residence at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa showed that Canadians were perhaps ready to embrace some of the freewheeling, individualistic attitudes of their southern neighbors.
However, some polls indicate that a long-term Conservative hegemony might not be in the cards just yet. In recent weeks, the Conservatives, Liberals and the left-leaning New Democratic Party have been locked in a three-way tie among voters, but the Liberals have since taken a slight lead and the New Democrats have lost steam. When the Liberals last faced voters, they were led by the terminally pompous and uncharismatic Michael Ignatieff, but now have Justin Trudeau in the top job, who has the advantage of being both youthful – he’s 43 – and the son of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who is to many Canadians what John F. Kennedy is to many Americans.
Faced with the tangible possibility of defeat, Harper and his fellow Conservatives have taken to fearmongering to try to scare up votes. They have tried to stoke the embers of Islamophobia by opposing a recent ruling by a Canadian federal court allowing Muslim women to wear a face-covering niqab during citizenship ceremonies. It’s hardly an issue of existential importance – only two women have refused to take off the niqab during such ceremonies in the last four years. Harper and his allies also say, if returned to office, they will set up police tip lines so “barbaric cultural practices” can be reported. There is little doubt about what group’s “cultural practices” are being targeted.
For those of us who have looked to Canada as a citadel of calm and tolerance in a world where all too many politicians try to win votes by demonizing “the other,” this is particularly dismaying.
One can only hope Canadian voters will not reward these kinds of tactics when they go to the polls, and they will not become a regular feature of the country’s politics.