Will Canadians opt for co-operative progress or nihilistic post-COVID chaos?

OTTAWA—We’ve been talking about exiting from the pandemic for about two years now. But, despite continuing cases of COVID variants, it does seem that 2023 will be the year that begins to clarify the aftermath—political, economic, and otherwise—of the once-in-a-century virus. Like the day-to-day aspects of the pandemic, the ramifications of the health emergency will be felt in almost every realm of life. And it increasingly seems as if the dislocations of COVID, coupled with the omnipresent impact of social media, are breaking down and rewriting the rules, conventions, and parameters around how Canadians conduct themselves and what is acceptable in public and personal activities. Teenagers whipped up on social media have decided it’s fun to terrorize transit workers and riders. Provincial premiers think nothing of using the notwithstanding clause to nullify Canadians’ rights. Tens of thousands of people expressed support for agitators who blockaded the capital a year ago with the goal of throwing out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s elected government. And howling citizens have accosted, verbally abused, and threatened progressive politicians across the country, including Trudeau, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and others. No one even talks about the man who broke down the gates to Rideau Hall two-and-a-half years ago with the intent of confronting the prime minister while heavily armed. When it comes to public life, the generally accepted notions about shared realities, the limits of advocacy, establishing the truth, and working toward (if not co-operating on) reasonable solutions on behalf of citizen and country have been left behind in much of the western world. While this development has reached a more destructive level in the United States, there’s no doubt it has taken hold in Canada as well. The effects of populist politics can be seen all around, whether it’s the normalization of hate, the dismissal of any requirement for facts on the public stage, conspiracy madness, or constant unapologetic anger farming. You can see it in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s relentless effort to reduce every problem to a matter of emotional outrage that can be simplistically directed at Trudeau; Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s attempt to convince voters they are being cheated out of their provincial rights by power-mongering federalists; or Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s blithely hypocritical aspiration to work with Trudeau to bring in more nurses when Ontario is in court trying to protect a law that enforces unfair nurses’ wages. How this plays out for the next year will give us a notion of what life will be like in 21st century democracy. Among other things, it will almost certainly determine Trudeau’s political future. Having presided over the largely thankless task of trying to lead Canadians through the chaos of the last few years, his popularity is not surprisingly at a low ebb. But, with Poilievre showing few signs of connecting with voters in the key battlegrounds of Quebec and Ontario, the prime minister’s options remain open. The year’s events will also likely provide important clues about the cohesiveness of the country, particularly when it comes to petroleum/climate confrontations, Ottawa’s ability to preserve public health care, the integrity of public institutions, federal-provincial relations, and the future of social-economic policy. The interlocking problems of out-of-reach housing costs, a central bank-induced economic slowdown, the post-COVID inflationary bubble, pronounced wealth inequality, and the shortage of desirable, well-paying middle-class jobs are not going to be solved by any government overnight. Since 2015, the Trudeau government has actually produced seemingly endless programs meant to address the above-mentioned problems—everything from financial help for low-income families, to huge investments in future-oriented business innovation, to increased taxes on the super-rich and more skills training for young people. But, whether it stems from Trudeau’s communications weakness or something else, the government often gets little credit for these efforts. Whoever mentions the fact that the Trudeau government actually made a bit of headway in reducing wealth inequality or that Ottawa is putting $20-billion into a pipeline to help Alberta export more crude? Or that all the jobs lost during COVID, and then some, have been recovered? Many Canadians are, of course, frustrated and discouraged by setbacks to their hopes before, and during, the pandemic. And it has to be said that the Trudeau government, despite its $8.9-billion outlay under its new affordability plan, has been slow to grasp the public’s angst and take comprehensive action to address the post-COVID dystopia. Such deeply ingrained uncertainty is no doubt a factor in voters’ willingness to buy into extremist thinking and share in the growing rejection of government authority and normal concepts of public and political behaviour. At its darkest, this is a path toward more racism, hate, and violence. At the level of public life, it portends additional efforts to mislead the public, increased polarization, continuing vilification of elected leaders, more unhinged policy prescriptions, worsening federal-provincial co-operation, and the regularizing of lawless disruptions of normal political and public life. In short, the coming year will tell us a lot about whether Canadians will pull together to rebuild a better post-COVID society, or be further drawn into the destructive world of anti-democratic, nihilist populism. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times