Kurl: The rancour and divisiveness of federal politics threaten Canadian society

Our political system is at a crucial tipping point, or even in a death spiral. It desperately needs a reset.

Published May 10, 2024 • 3 minute read

The harsh and exaggerated accusations between party leaders is turning off voters, polarizing the public and hurting our democracy, Shachi Kurl writes.

If, in the last year, you looked at all three of Canada’s major federal party leaders and said, “none of the above, please,” you’d be far from alone. In an admirable bit of trawling through 50 years of public opinion data, recent analysis from the Angus Reid Institute shows it’s not just a feeling. One very long trend line indicates Canadians have never been as critical of all three major federal party leaders at the same time as they are now.

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Yes, there have been very unpopular leaders over the generations. But in the days of Trudeau, Stanfield, and Lewis, for every unpopular leader, there was at least one (or two) who had more fans than detractors. All the way back to 1974. Until now.

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For the first time in 50 years, Canada’s “big three” federal party leaders are all well below surface in approval and favourability. They still have people who like them, and more crucially, who would vote for them, but for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, more are turned off by each leader than turned on.

Since the release of these data, politicos in various party camps have blamed each other for the deterioration of political discourse that’s led to this moment. This would be less embarrassing if they weren’t also simultaneously sending fundraising emails to carefully curated party lists, based on outrageous things their leaders say in the House of Commons.

In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway describes a character going bankrupt “gradually, then suddenly.” The same might be applicable to the moral bankruptcy we are seeing as political discourse becomes increasingly poisoned.

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Like performance-enhancing substances for athletes, technology has put the parties’ ability to micro-target voters with increasingly niche messaging and policy offerings on steroids. Voters rarely, if ever, get the whole picture on party policy or platform anymore, even if they wanted to.

The long, seemingly never-ending decline of traditional news organizations had led to less consumption of mainstream news media than ever before. That in turn has eroded what little shared window exists on events of the day, content produced by journalists seasoned and trained enough to recognize and check their own biases. Facebook’s algorithms have been found to be toxically effective at polarizing people. A once-loved social media platform, X, is now run by a self-described “free speech enthusiast” who stands accused of removing crucial guardrails meant to curb disinformation and hate speech.

But in Canada, politicos don’t care. Or don’t care enough, anyway. As one astute colleague asserted, it’s easier to make an existing voter angry enough to cast a ballot or send $20 to a campaign than it is to convert a new voter. So Poilievre accuses Trudeau of “killing Canadians” with “radical ideology” over addiction policy while Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland accuses the Conservatives of readying to “tear up the Charter of Rights” over abortion, an issue Poilievre has said he won’t touch.

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This leader-on-leader verbal violence leads to ever-deepening divisions among their party bases. Understandably, not every Liberal or NDP voter wants to be identified as a woke snowflake. Not every Conservative supporter is a conspiracy theorist. Neither side likes being disparaged by the other’s leadership. The effects have been devastating. Half of Canadians with an opinion about the matter say there is no room for political compromise in the country today. Nearly one-quarter are open to authoritarian leadership instead of elections. Nearly half of 18-34 year-olds say mainstream news reportage can’t be trusted. A majority do not trust government to act in the best interests of the people.

And no one, not a single major federal leader, nor their political lieutenants, their strategists, their fundraisers, none of them, are willing to stop this death spiral, break the circuit and reset. Even if it costs them an election. Even if at this critical tipping point, it is what’s desperately needed. A naïve expectation? Perhaps. But I cannot underscore enough the extent to which our democracy, society, and human dignity are at stake.

Shachi Kurl is President of the Angus Reid Institute,  a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.

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