Scott Reid was director of communications for former prime minister Paul Martin, and the co-founder of Feschuk.Reid.
Canada’s next federal election will be a culture war. It’s inevitable.
This fate is due to three intersecting events: the unequal burdens of COVID-19, the 23-day occupation of our national capital and a federal Conservative party that has surrendered itself enthusiastically to the cause of populist-grievance politics.
In particular, this final factor guarantees the nature of the coming federal election. Federal Conservatives spent much of the pandemic bristling at public health guidance, denouncing vaccine mandates and, latterly, celebrating the incoherence and anger of protestors who adopted freedom as their unironic slogan, even as they air-horned over the rights and freedoms of others.
The Conservatives’ celebration of uncivil disobedience, distrust of institutions and scorn for all those they label as “elite” forms a new party orthodoxy. By summer, this transformation will be complete with the likely elevation of the barb-wired Pierre Poilievre to party leader. At that point, culture will become the undisputed fault line of Canadian politics.
None of this should come as a shock. The U.S. has always been the electoral laboratory from which Canada’s political professionals have borrowed: from polling and direct mail in the mid-20th century, to Barack Obama’s online mobilization in 2008, to the more recent digital cultivation of those threatened by loss of position, privilege and place.
Donald Trump. Boris Johnson. Rodrigo Duterte. Jair Bolsonaro. Modern conservatism has been overrun by “strongman” populists eager to exploit the legitimate worries and sometimes illegitimate prejudices of distressed and dispossessed voters. Did we really think that Canada’s political right would be immune? Or that it would even want to be?
The phrase “culture war” was termed to describe a political divide with clear demographic, socio-economic and geographic features. But it also captures something more. Something emotional about identity and our world. The haves and have-nots. The professional class versus the working class. Those who tell versus those who get told.
After Brexit and Donald Trump proved that the politics of culture could be used to win elections, its arrival here was only a matter of time. The convoy became that catalyst, rolling over what was left of Erin O’Toole’s Conservative leadership and dieselling us toward a federal election that will be all about culture.
Which also makes it seminal. Because wars, unlike elections, produce not only losers but casualties as well. If the lesson that political parties learn from the next campaign is that preying on class and cultural difference leads to victory, they will all follow suit. Culture will dominate our politics. Disinformation will flourish. Divisions will widen. Resentments will harden.
For these reasons, the coming culture-war election cannot afford to be lost. But to win, the incumbent Liberals need to take this threat more seriously and measurably up their game.
Two things in particular need to happen. Mr. Trudeau must stay, but he must also adjust.
He must stay because, even though his brand has been bruised, he is still his party’s strongest asset. Yes, he has become a rallying point for opponents. Many justifiably view him as a long-time culture warrior in his own right. But at his best, Mr. Trudeau has the skills, celebrity and summoning appeal that no other figure on his side possesses. It is impossible to imagine that his most likely replacements would be better suited to wage and win a culture war.
But he must also change. It starts with tone. The cliquish, insider-y, superior register that smothers so much of what this government has to say must go. Not everyone speaks in the knowing technocrat-ese of a management consultant. Or the language of values-laden exclusivity. If you want to stop your opponents, start by not being what they say you are.
Substantive change is also required. Mr. Trudeau’s government should be re-engineered around bread-and-butter economics. The rising cost of living will breed a larger pool of disaffected voters. Feeling threatened, these people are primed for the easy appeal of a populist pitch, just waiting to be told their fears are well-founded and their trust should be shifted. Do not abandon these voters. Fight for them. Have an economic program that speaks to them directly, that offers them prospects for gain. And communicate it in clear, unjudging terms.
Still more will be needed. Campaigns trained to focus on tiny slices of the electorate must reorient toward a broader, more encompassing appeal. Unleashing optimism after two years of drudgery will be vital. And combatting the politics of anger without becoming angry will require incredible discipline.
But the stakes are too high to fail. A culture-war election means that winning is the only option.
And winning will require the Trudeau Liberals to change the ways they both campaign and govern.
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