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The long COVID of Canadian politics: the polarization of debate around the truckers protest

 Protesters gathered for the “Freedom Convoy” in downtown Ottawa, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, day 17 of the protest.
Protesters gathered in downtown Ottawa, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, day 17 of the protest. - Ashley Fraser / Postmedia

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After the trucks have gone home, the states of emergency expired and the mandates dropped, the process of taking stock will begin.

Beyond the lives taken or upended by COVID-19, the businesses ruined or created, Katherine Fierlbeck worries of what enduring effects the pandemic will have on whether Canadians are willing to listen to each other.

“Once people stop saying ‘I disagree with you but I’ll hear you out,’ we’re in trouble,” said Fierlbeck, a political science professor at Dalhousie University who specializes in the politics, governance and policy of health care.

“The emphasis now is really on righteousness rather than discussion. When we cloak our discourse in a real sense of righteousness we think we are impermeable to criticism.”

Fierlbeck’s conclusion from how the debate has been carried out on both sides over the trucker protest, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, is that we are in trouble.

And that the inability for political leaders, commentators or a large number of Canadians to acknowledge the validity of opinions on the issue that run counter to their own and debate them civilly bodes ill for the future of our democracy.

A man holds a placard in favor of vaccination as he debates with a protester taking part in an anti-vaccine mandate protest outside Toronto General Hospital in Toronto on Sept. 13, 2021. - Chris  Helgren
A man holds a placard in favor of vaccination as he debates with a protester taking part in an anti-vaccine mandate protest outside Toronto General Hospital in Toronto on Sept. 13, 2021. - Chris Helgren

She’s not alone.

“There may be a polarization that will never go away; it will be woven right into the political fabric,” said Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto.

“The great problem we’re having is that it’s become so polarized, so political, so emotional that there’s almost no middle ground for discussion whatsoever. Both sides don’t speak to each other.”

There are slightly over five million unvaccinated Canadians over the age of five and among them are nearly 100,000 Nova Scotians.

The adults among them have been unable to fully participate in society and some have lost their jobs in workplaces with federal or provincial vaccine mandates.

According to a survey of over 30,000 Canadians last summer by Abacus Data, prior to the federal election where vaccine mandates were made a central issue, 35 per cent of the vaccine hesitant considered themselves Liberals, 25 per cent Conservative, 17 per cent NDP and nine per cent Green.

“The hesitant are not conspiracy theorists,” Abacus pollster Bruce Anderson wrote in Maclean’s magazine on Aug. 11.

Hundreds of people assembled at the Manitoba Legislative Building to demonstrate against the so called Freedom Convoy on Saturday. Feb. 12. 2022. - Chris  Procaylo
Hundreds of people assembled at the Manitoba Legislative Building to demonstrate against the so called Freedom Convoy on Saturday. Feb. 12. 2022. - Chris Procaylo

“They aren’t angry at the world. They don’t think COVID-19 is a hoax. They aren’t radicals of the left or the right — 61% of them say they are on the centre of the spectrum. Two-thirds have post-secondary education.”

As for the reasoning heard from the unvaccinated, Anderson wrote, “they don’t have a lot of trust in government. They also try to avoid prescriptions, dislike putting anything unnatural in their bodies and 83% say they are reluctant to take any vaccines. Most worry that COVID-19 vaccines haven’t really been tested for a long time.”

The statistically average vaccine-hesitant person just prior to the last election being called, according to Abacus, was a 42-year-old Liberal-voting woman from Ontario.

Asked about vaccine mandates last May on the Brandon Gonez Show, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “What do you do with someone with an allergy? What do you do with someone who’s immunocompromised, or someone who for religious reasons or … deep convictions, decides that no, they’re not going to get a vaccine? We’re not a country that makes vaccination mandatory.”

While not technically mandatory, for those who can’t work, can’t go to a public funeral, can’t fly on an airplane, can’t go to a restaurant or bar or visit loved ones in a senior citizens’ home, Bowman can see people feeling that way.

After an election where vaccine mandates became a central issue, and through a second COVID-19 winter, the tone has changed.

Trudeau accused the Freedom Convoy of being composed of a “small fringe minority” holding “unacceptable views.”

 The group’s leaders, meanwhile, insisted on the resignation of a democratically elected leader and blockaded the country’s major border crossings.

References to fascism and the Second World War have been lobbed from both sides.

Motorists line up along the shoulder after the Big Stop exit on Highway 102 near Enfield early in the morning Jan. 28, 2022 to show their support for truckers headed to Ottawa. - Eric Wynne
Motorists line up along the shoulder after the Big Stop exit on Highway 102 near Enfield early in the morning Jan. 28, 2022 to show their support for truckers headed to Ottawa. - Eric Wynne

 Fierlbeck and Bowman note there was little public discussion of the actual issue at hand — of weighing the effectiveness of mandates at this point in the pandemic against their social costs.

 “I think we really grossly underestimated and glossed over the broader effects of vaccine mandates and passports,” said Bowman.

“We didn’t look at the fact that people’s lives were being gutted, the depression, anxiety and isolation that came along with them, as well as the economic effects.”

Bowman sees politicians and public commentators on both sides of the political spectrum as having used mandates and passports as wedge issues by either demonizing those in favour or those against.

“They’ve fed this wolf, and now we’ve got trouble,” said Bowman.

Political scientists like Fierlbeck call it "partisan sorting" — where people begin associating all aspects of their lives and those of others to a political tribe.

In this context, issues are debated on moral grounds rather than on their individual merits.

And there is focus from each side to argue with the extreme of the other, rather than the valid arguments closer to the middle.

As partisan sorting expands, everything becomes political and the common ground rules of a shared society are increasingly disregarded by opposing sides whose members are propelled by a sense of moral rightousness.

 “We see it increasing in the United States and we are not immune to it here,” said Fierlbeck.

“We get so wrapped up in the objectives that we are willing to trample on the accepted rules of the game, the accepted democratic rules and norms upon which our society relies. It appears to be happening equally on the left and right of the political spectrum. That the rules of democracy are irrelevant and it’s all about winning power at all costs.”

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