Watching the federal conservative leadership race and hearing references to “Canadian values” is nothing new.
All Canadian parties seem to have a proclivity for staking out the moral high ground. Each party has their own issues and constituencies, making it awful hard to figure out which group has the highest ground from which to preach.
Intimations last week by Conservative leadership candidate MP Kellie Leitch from the riding of Simcoe Grey that the Conservative race may benefit from some Trump-style politics coming to Canada didn’t go unnoticed.
One of her four key platforms is screening all visitors, refugees and immigrants for “Canadian values.” To our knowledge refugees entering Canada already require screening – the point of contention is screening for “Canadian values.”
Some may argue this less-than-replete explanation of such a policy statement is merely dog whistle type rhetoric to a constituency that sees immigration as one of our nation’s most troubling issues.
Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong, also a leadership hopeful, quickly pounced on this troubling statement and made hay with it. With his customary charm, he was able to claim the high ground on that talking point – that being any hint of discriminatory language or marginalizing others has no place in Canada. A whiff of Trump politics would be unwelcome if not outright un-Canadian.
While we applaud that stance, such conversations need to happen in the public realm. It would be difficult, perhaps unpleasant, but Canadians need to work through such things. It will make us stronger in the end.
As witnessed south of the border, relying on accepted values and verbalizing platitudes doesn’t always win the day. The change factor, coupled with deep-seated unrest over a cadre of issues, allowed Trump to defy all polls and win the election.
To assume for a moment that Canadians have a defined set of values that any man, woman or child in the street could recite is wishful thinking, if not utterly naive. The variables of geography, party, creed, gender or race, make it an ominous task.
We see this as the challenge facing all leadership hopefuls and Canadians in general.
We need to define a common purpose, not just claim the moral high ground.
