"Virtue signaling" gets a bad rap, but it's always been clever politics.
Tackling problems is hard; loudly broadcasting support or opposition for some stylized representation of them is easy. Think of U.S. President Donald Trump and "the wall."
The federal Conservatives have shown considerable skill at practicing this style of politics, constantly signaling hard-line positions on what are basically political metaphors. The hope is this will earn them credibility on issues they're too timid to confront head-on.
The United Nations' Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is but the latest example. Officially ratified on Monday, the dense, 34-page document represents a multiyear effort to hammer out a "global consensus on international migration." It's mostly aspirational and not binding, but Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is nevertheless strongly against it, calling it a foreign scheme to "erode our sovereign right to manage our borders."
Why all the fuss? One answer would be Conservatives want credit for taking a tough stance against a high-profile, symbolic embodiment of supposed "open borders" ideology. Then, hopefully, Canada's sizable electorate of immigration restrictionists will overlook the fact that Scheer's party isn't doing much else they want.
The same day the migration compact was ratified, Pew released a sweeping survey of global attitudes on immigration. Canadians were skeptical as ever, with a large majority stating they'd like to see Canada's immigration rates capped or lowered. (The rate favouring the capped-or-lowered position, 80 per cent, was higher than the number of Americans saying the same, 73 per cent - a fact to keep in mind the next time you read some paean to "Canadian exceptionalism").
In other words, an overwhelming majority favours the opposite of what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in October: a steady increase of Canada's immigration intake over the next three years. The Conservative Party, however, has elected not to complain about the increase, instead suggesting Trudeau's Liberals are just vaguely bad at managing Canada's immigration bureaucracy. Trudeau's immigration minister called it "empty criticism for the sake of criticism."
If the Tories are being timid, it's likely because they'd be hypocrites for protesting given they themselves raised Canada's immigration intake to unpopular heights during their time in power. On a deeper level, however, it's hard to avoid concluding that the Tories simply don't believe the public's opinion on this issue is legitimate. Within the Canadian elite, opinions on immigration tend to be unflinchingly supportive, united in belief that Canada's immigration system is the most ingenious in the world and the least in need of critical reexamination.
Public dissatisfaction with liberal attitudes toward immigration must therefore be carefully redirected to only the most extreme, stylized representations of it.
The Conservatives' preoccupation with "irregular border crossings" from the United States is another example. The hassles and costs associated with managing a newly porous border are undeniable. In 2018 alone, Canadian border authorities intercepted over 17,000 unauthorized asylum seekers originating from America. Equally undeniable, however, is the political calculus.
As with the United Nations migrant pact, constantly highlighting a sensationalistic border crisis that has unfolded under Trudeau's watch "reads" as a tougher stance on immigration than the Conservatives actually have but voters seem to want.
Synecdoche politics define the Tory approach to other issues, too. In September, the Conservatives demagogued about the federal government's transfer of convicted child killer Terri-Lynne McClintic, a self-identified Indigenous woman, to an "aboriginal healing lodge." The situation provided a safe metaphor through which to channel outrage toward Trudeau's unpopular approach to Indigenous relations more broadly. A June poll by Angus Reid found 66 per cent of Canadians agreeing with the statement that "Indigenous communities should be governed by the same systems and rules as other Canadians" and 53 per cent agreeing that "in modern Canada, Indigenous people should have no special status that other Canadians don't have."
Arguing that the healing lodge program was misused is one thing. Reexamining the premises of its existence requires considerably more guts.
Then there was the Tory outrage last spring over the Trudeau government's decision to refuse grant applications for summer jobs employers that did not explicitly support reproductive rights. It was a move intentionally designed to kneecap pro-life groups who had received such funding in the past.
While eager to gain credit for fighting on their behalf, the Conservatives didn't really want the pro-lifers to succeed, however.
Scheer believes Canada's current regime of unrestricted legal abortion is the correct one. This position - that "there should be no laws on abortion and women should have the right to this procedure at any time during their pregnancy" - is endorsed by only 39 per cent of Canadians, according to a poll in May. Sixty-one per cent supports more restrictions than presently exist. Scheer calls the issue too "divisive" to confront.
Canada's Conservatives have long fretted about the electoral consequences of pandering to a repulsive right-wing extreme.
If they do not remain more substantially engaged with the large number of Canadians who hold tougher views than themselves on some of the country's most contentious issues, however, then a whole other problem arises.
During his recent chat with Ben Shapiro, former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper described his own standard for identifying the political fringe.
"If I got one or two per cent on the right of me, that's fine," he said, "but when you get five per cent or 10 per cent or 20 per cent - or, infamously with Hillary Clinton, 45 to 46 per cent - and you're calling them fringe, there's something wrong with you."
Harper's party now functions mostly to appease Canada's fringe majority out of realizing just how distant they are from the halls of power.
- J.J. McCullough is a political commentator and cartoonist from Vancouver
