Comment
The space in between
Much of the post-election commentary has centred on the divide between Alberta and “the East”. Trial balloons have been floated suggesting Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi as Cabinet minister in Justin Trudeau’s new government. Other putative salves are being proffered to treat the perceived schism created between Alberta, sometimes Saskatchewan, and the rest of Canada.
These notions reveal a fundamental misreading of the election map on Tuesday morning.
There is surely a divide in Canada, but it isn’t strictly between east and west. It is rural and urban. From Saint John, New Brunswick to Tofino, British Columbia, with very few exceptions (with the Maritimes east of Fredericton being the most significant outlier) voters chose Liberals in cities— and something else in the countryside.
Our national election map on Tuesday morning consists of wee dots of Liberal red across the country amid a sea of blue, orange, light blue (Bloc Québécois) and three green specks. Victoria, Vancouver and suburbs, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Windsor, London, GTA, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Saint John. They are wonderful cities. They do not comprise a nation.
The common narrative last week suggested the Liberals had won the election by “dominating” in Ontario, winning 78 seats. The truth is they won it in Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor, Peterborough, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. The vast expanse of this great province did not vote Liberal. Most of the geography south of North Bay vote Conservative, north mostly elected NDP.
Bay of Quinte re-elected Liberal Neil Ellis, but with a slim 1,465 vote margin. Had Stephanie Bell not performed as well as she did, (gaining 2,769 more votes than the NDP candidate in 2015) it is at least arguable that this riding might have gone Conservative as well—forming a solid swathe of rural blue from the Quebec border to Goderich.
Some suggest that Quebec doesn’t fit into this thesis. That rural Quebec was animated by the sense they had to protect their Bill 21—a law banning religious symbols in governmental workplaces. And surely this was a significant factor. Yet it is a stark map. Two ridings in Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Hull Gatineau are red, with a sprinkling of others surrounded by vast regions of blue and light blue.
Should it matter? The Liberals won a healthy minority mandate. That they did this with just 33 per cent of the electorate and with fewer votes than the Conservatives is beside the point. This is our system, and the argument for proportional representation has not yet been persuasive.
My worry is that with the focus solely on soothing wounds in Alberta and Saskatchewan, we risk overlooking the broader, and increasingly chronic, divide between urban and rural Canada. That the discussion becomes solely about pipelines and fails to ask serious questions about how to reengage rural Canadians in the discussion about this nation.
It is hard to imagine Mr. Trudeau being more tone-deaf to the cleavage that the election had wrought than his speech on Tuesday night. It was a declaration of victory over evil. And that is his fundamental challenge.
Mr. Trudeau has a bit of a tic when answering a question or delivering remarks. He typically opens with a variation on: “Canadians understand that X is important to our future.”
It seemed a benign technique at first, but it has become more grating with repetition. For it implies if one doesn’t agree that X is important, that we are not a true, good or proper Canadian. The premise implies that you are in or out. That there is one way of thinking. Whether conscious or not, young Mr. Trudeau is stoking division and disaffection when he suggests and repeats the assertion there is only one pure way forward.
By Thursday, his message handlers had persuaded him he needed to demonstrate more humility. And his remarks to reporters late last week represented a decent fumble recovery. It is not yet clear, however, whether he believes a more humble and empathetic response is necessary, or that this moment requires him merely to do humble.
At some level, I don’t care which is which. What matters is that the governing party makes an earnest effort to understand the breakdown between rural and urban Canada—that we make honest attempts to bridge the chasm. Beyond pipelines and Alberta.
It need not be emphasized that the trouble our American neighbours are enduring has its roots in disaffection between rural and urban voters—between the coastal elites and the flyover states.
We are not there yet, and may never be, but it is a big mistake to ignore this divide. Worse if we are unable to recognize it.
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