In August, Prime Minister Stephen Harper
attacked the “liberal media and academic elites” who supposedly supported Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals.He took pains to portray himself as standing up for the little guy against these supposed elites, who are supposedly out to get him.
On one level, this is nonsense. With the exception of the Toronto Star, pretty much every major media outlet in the country endorsed the Harper Conservatives in the 2011 election, and Harper himself enjoys the support of media and academic elites like Ezra Levant, John Ibbitson and Barry Cooper. The country’s media and academic elites can be just as apt to support the Conservatives as any other party, just as ordinary, hardworking Canadians who play hockey in the streets and drink Tim Hortons coffee are just as likely to support the Liberals, the NDP or the Green party as they are the Tories.
However, that perception of an arrogant, self-serving progressive elite comes from a very real source-one that represents a very real danger to progressive goals.
In her seminal book
Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, reporter Robyn Doolittle talked about the “bubble” that many downtown Toronto residents lived in, and that was burst when Rob Ford was elected. Doolittle mentions how these downtowners came across as convinced of their own superiority, and looked down their noses at more suburban types who were more inclined to drive cars than take public transit, considering the latter backwards and inferior while congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness and superior, “progressive” values.
Twenty years ago, in N
ationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Canadian, Richard Gwyn described various activists and the movements for equality that they spoke for (whether based on gender, culture, sexual orientation, etc.) and their attacks on the “privileged majority” that was said to be responsible for this oppression. These activists ranged from judges to academics to various political leaders. Gwyn notes how critics of these movements could easily be denounced as bigots or oppressors, which in turn triggered a vicious backlash against the activists and their movements.
The problem is not necessarily the actual goals these movements were striving for. Indeed, in many cases the goals might have been quite worthwhile. However, the problem is the way they risk coming across-that anyone who dares to criticize them is not a fellow citizen with a legitimate point of view, but an enemy to be hated and destroyed, who are inherently discriminatory. In one notable example, a young university student asked longtime activist Naomi Klein why, if it was alright to be proud of being a woman or a person of colour, why he couldn’t also be proud of being white and male. Klein later confessed that she couldn’t think of a response.
This is what has fed the narrative of an activist elite determined to impose its own agenda, even as it demonizes anyone who dares to disagree with it. Many of the Human Rights Commissions and their excesses were textbook examples,
such as a woman who sued for discrimination because her employer complained about the smell of the food she cooked for lunch, claiming that the employer was enforcing a discriminatory use of the company microwave policy against her.This type of absurdity is one of the main reasons why Ezra Levant’s activism against the HRCs has been so successful over the past several years.
These types of excesses run the serious risk of alienating people outside the movement who end up feeling as though they’re accused of being stupid, bigoted, inferior or even un-Canadian for their views, and are otherwise looked down on by the advocates of various policies. Progressive columnist
Frances Russell provides a classic example:
$1:
Ekos’ polling shows that the current political landscape has shifted dramatically since the Harper majority victory of 2011 and could well be an aberration. Canada has been a blend of Red Tory/Progressive Conservative/Social Liberal/Social Gospel political culture since its birth under Red Tory Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. With its core in highly Americanized Alberta and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan, Stephen Harper’s government is an outlier, the Canadian branch plant of U.S. Republicanism.
Whether she intends to or not, Russell comes across as implying that people who support Harper, and indeed people in general who live in Alberta and Saskatchewan, as somehow un-Canadian in their views. That ties into the narrative painting Russell as an elitist who looks down on Albertans and doesn’t see them as truly Canadian, or otherwise consider them inferior. Never mind that many people voted for Harper for perfectly legitimate reasons, simply because they felt he was the best choice to manage the country out of all the options available.
Another example comes from Justin Trudeau as head of the federal Liberals,
who's being accused of demonstrating his father's arrogant dismissal of other peoples' views:$1:
Mr. Trudeau is 42. He hasn’t made clear when a man becomes “old”. (In French, his tweet was targeted at “les hommes aux cheveux gris”, so we know hair colour has something to do with it.) Scott Brison is just 47 – five years his senior. Is that old yet? His hair still looks pretty dark, but maybe he touches it up. Should Mr. Brison start curbing his opinions in preparation for turning 50? Or is 55 the cut-off point? Mr. Trudeau hasn’t made that clear, but perhaps he’s holding back for the election, as he is with the rest of his platform.
...
But wait: Isn’t the point of democracy the right to choose candidates who reflect your views and values? I’m betting there are relatively few Liberal voters who would support a strongly anti-abortion candidate, but if one or two constituencies out of 338 should feel that way, would it destroy the Liberal party to allow them a seat in caucus, if only to hear the other side? Apparently so. For Trudeau Liberals, democracy isn’t about the freedom to disagree, but about towing the line, even if it violates your conscience
...
Whatever else we may not know about Mr. Trudeau, we know he isn’t after the CARP vote. He has all that Trudeau arrogance the grey-hairs remember from way back when. When his father got annoyed at protesters on a western tour in 1982, he flipped them the bird. His son (who was reportedly on the train at the time) hasn’t got around to that yet, but there’s plenty of time. Lucky for him he’s still young, and knows everything.
There's also the perception of entitlement,
that these elites feel they have the right to spend as much taxpayer money as they like on whatever junkets and pet projects they want, even if such spending has little or nothing to do with their responsibilities:
$1:
Here are a few simple rules for Toronto school trustees, Ontario Pan Am Games executives, Canadian Senators, government consultants and politicians to follow to avoid public outrage when filing travel and expense claims, paid for by taxpayers.
First, don’t charge for anything you couldn’t justify were it to appear on the front page of your newspaper the next day.
...
Third, before embarking on any “business trip”, ask yourself (a) is this really necessary? (b) how many times have I been there before? (c) what can I accomplish that can’t be done by phone or online?
(d) how related is this to what I actually do?
(Hint: If you’re a school trustee, it’s probably a bad idea to charge the public almost $4,000 for a walking tour of Israel.)
For a Toronto-specific example,
here's a sample of some of the things that Rob Ford cited as part of the City Hall "gravy train":$1:
Toronto taxpayers will this year give $250,000 to an international environmental organization the city no longer wants to be part of, spend $140,000 funding the London, England, office of the climate-change group chaired by Mayor David Miller, and pay $250,000 to study the impact of extreme weather.
Toronto's proposed $8.7-billion operating budget was approved by the budget committee yesterday, despite much grumbling from councillors that the spending plan is "too rich."
...
"It's almost like running yourself into a brick wall," he said. "There's probably little change that is ever going to be affected, that's just the way it is here. The Mayor and his group have the votes to pass whatever they want and that's what they do.
These types of attitudes risk alienating Canadians who might otherwise be sympathetic to what the people expressing these attitudes might have to say. They also feed into narratives like Harper’s, that everyone with such views consider those who dare to disagree with them to be not just people with different opinions, but bigoted, misogynistic, not caring about the environment, or not even truly Canadian.
In that way, progressive goals of equality and sustainability risk being endangered by many of their very own advocates.