Importing Political Toxicity

Howard A. Doughty

The “anti-woke” agenda plainly played an important part in energizing the current president-elect’s supporters in the recent American election. It was surely one of several critical factors that returned the previous president to power. The consequences are uncertain for the United States, Canada, and ultimately the planet. 

Targeting a muddled and multi-faceted array of “social justice warriors,” “radical feminists,” “eco-terrorists,” “race-card players,” and “gun-banners” as well as atheists, communists, trade unionists, and teachers committed to making innocent young Americans “hate their country,” the victors in the election succeeded in persuading about half of America’s eligible voters to support a party that has increasingly relied on the divisive “culture wars” to achieve electoral success — with or without a plurality of the popular vote.

Canada, of course, is not immune to such tactics. In our history, we have displayed our share (and sometimes more) of hostility toward unfashionable, unconventional, and outright hated groups — most often rooted in ethno-national, gendered, and ideological and/or religious differences. To such people, it’s been bad enough that an “invasion” of immigrants has forced “multiculturalism” upon us; but now (this time inspired by the international far-right newspaper, The Epoch Times) they have found a new cause and an eager champion. Rising in the name of religious freedom, Progressive Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre recently claimed that military “chaplains are being banned from prayers at Remembrance Day ceremonies.”

Doggedly referencing The Epoch Times in a flurry of social media posts, the presumptive Prime-Minister-in-waiting insisted that new rules introduced independent of the Canadian government by the Chaplain-General had denied Canadians the right to commemorate “those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms.”

In fact, the decision was made independently by the Chaplain-General in order to comply with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that imposed a “duty of neutrality” on the state with respect to religious observances in which people of a diversity of faiths participated. Prayers would be permitted, but they must be “inclusive in nature, respecting the rights of those present.”

Here is what Chaplain-General Guy Bélisle said at the National War Memorial in Ottawa that so annoyed the Leader of the Opposition: 

May these words I share now be, for some, the prayers of your heart [and] for others a reflection of your heartfelt thanksgiving.  

Fighting words!

Mr. Poilievre, of course, misrepresented the facts of the matter. Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) chaplains are not prohibited from reciting prayers; they are restricted from reciting faith-specific prayer in situations where diverse CAF members are ordered to attend. He also erred in attaching “blame” to the so-called “NDP-Liberal” government of Justin Trudeau. The decision was an administrative one made by the Chaplain-General himself.

Growing numbers of Canadians appear vulnerable to the sentiments that now define political division in the U.S. Whatever we may feel about intersecting issues of “church and state,” “faith-based public ceremonies,” “war and peace,” and the coming federal election, we should be wary about inflaming passions. Humanists, agnostics, atheists, and mere advocates of religious tolerance should not be deemed culpable for what some construe as alien attacks on their identities or paranoid “great replacement” strategies meant to deny them their privileged social positions. Already at risk from the toxic spirit of illiberal resentment, pervasive media misinformation, and an ambience of economic and technological uncertainty, our body politic is stressed enough.