James Moore is a former federal cabinet minister under prime minister Stephen Harper, and a columnist for CTVNews.ca.
By default, I am an optimistic person. I think evolutionary progress, social learning, learning from history and innate human solidarity, taken together over time, serves us and makes us better, safer and stronger, and our condition better.
It often doesn’t feel that way and we can endure two steps back after taking three steps forward but, over time, we trend in the correct direction because our perseverance demands it.
As I write this, I am listening to Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” for inspiration. (Kids, Google it. You’re welcome). I am, because as I separate my desired outcome, partisan bias and policy points of view, there are positive developments about this election that should comfort all Canadians about the state of our country as exposed by the campaign.
The first piece of good news: we have two fine choices for prime minister. Partisanship and hyperbolic war room rhetoric aside, we have two choices for prime minister in Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney that we should be thankful for.
You don’t have to hate one to vote for the other. I have known each of these men for years and they offer different priorities and approaches to governing Canada for the next 12 to 48 months, and Canadians have a profoundly important choice to make.
However, neither of these men have ill intent for the country. Neither of these men are hateful, ignorant or cruel. They are both patriotic Canadians, policy obsessed, experienced, cultured, compassionate, decent and caring. Not all countries have the luxury of being able to make such a statement, but Canadians can.
Yes, they have differences that matter and there will be lots to disagree and agree with, but in terms of character, capacity and substance, we have an honourable choice between two honourable Canadians.
The second bit of good news: Canadians seem to have a healthy, trusting relationship with our political parties. For the most part, with a few exceptions, Canadians trust political parties to choose their leaders fairly and transparently, offer us candidates who align with party values, and provide competent slates from which a government can be composed to fill a cabinet and have a caucus to provide meaningful input. Some may disagree with some or all of this last sentence but persuading 343 high quality people from across our massive country to offer themselves for office through the gauntlet of social media scrutiny and cruelty, and doing so with a smile and kind demeanour, is a daunting task that the governing parties have largely tackled to the satisfaction of Canadians.
The parties make it look easy, but it is profoundly not easy. Their ratio of vast successes to quite a few failures is impressive.
A third piece of good news: for the most part, we don’t tend to see political parties as vehicles for our identity in an unhealthy way to do battle with our neighbours and defeat other factions of the country. Some do, some try, but they typically fail.
In Canada, our political parties, for most healthy Canadians, are not a cult. They are vehicles to drive positive outcomes related to our values. Most Canadians are never joining and will never join a political party in their lifetimes, but they align with a party and its values to achieve something good and of importance for their community, family, region or country. But the relationship is almost always a positive affirmation, not a cultish alignment as a test of moral purity or a weapon to righteously tear down other Canadians. We should be thankful for this.
A fourth bit of good news: our election appears to be run in a professional and competent way by Elections Canada. We take it for granted in Canada just how well our elections are organized and administered. When you look at the 50 different approaches taken in the 50 different American states every four years during their presidential campaigns, and all the imperfections, conspiracies and divisions their system generates, I am thankful for our approach in Canada.
A fifth piece of good news: despite the handwringing of many in traditional media, the varied sources of news, opinion, spin, observation, analysis and diversity of opinion seems to be growing, not shrinking. What seems to be shrinking is the old order of dominant elite media players – and often consensus opinion – about campaign narratives and information gatekeeping.
Through Substack, podcasts, YouTube channels, streamers, forums, Reddit groups, social media, Facebook groups, email chains, text group chats, live streams of leaders’ press conferences and rallies with live chats, and on and on, the world of politics and opinion is opening up wider in a way that is a great net benefit to voters. The way you filter misinformation is through the dilution of diversity and the quantum of choices for content intake. The diversity of content options is multiplying rapidly and the election has shown great progress on this front and Canadians are better for it.
So, while most of us are glad that the campaign is ending so we can pivot our energies back to our lives and obligations to family, work and community, this campaign has shown us a lot about our democracy and the state of our country. From what I observe, Canadian democracy is healthier and sturdier than its critics have falsely led us to believe. Now go vote.
