Tolerance and kindness have historically been central to Canadian identity. We like to think of ourselves as a live-and-let-live, do-what-you-want-as-long-as-it doesn’t-hurt-me kind of people. We pride ourselves on being known as polite and helpful. And while we may have been a bit smug about these stereotypes – especially in progressive B.C. – they have generally held true.
Unfortunately, in recent years woke progressives have hijacked tolerance and kindness, and used them as a shield to deflect criticism and avoid having to defend their policies.
Questioning astronomical increases in immigration was labeled xenophobic.
Raising concerns about crime and street disorder indicated a lack of compassion for the homeless and for criminals. As did refusing to adopt ever-changing terminology, such a “unhoused” or “people experiencing incarceration.”
And sounding the alarm on the erosion of protected spaces for females and the harms of providing sex-changing medical procedures to children, euphemistically referred to as “gender affirming care,” was of course transphobic.
This has been an incredibly effective tactic.
Take immigration. For years, it was a fringe view – insofar as it was rarely discussed publicly – that inviting more immigrants to Canada without proportional increases in housing and infrastructure, was contributing to the housing crisis. Nor was it acceptable to suggest that this influx of newcomers was overwhelming our healthcare system or reducing job openings.
Even opposition politicians avoided making this incredibly obvious link. Anyone who did, was labeled racist or bigoted.
But as the cost of housing increased in lockstep with immigration, the cognitive dissonance became unbearable. More and more people spoke out, until the dam broke and Trudeau himself became a believer and found himself earnestly explaining his plan to bring down our rents by reducing immigration.
‘Woke progressive’ views losing traction
Thankfully, on issue-after-issue, the pendulum appears to be swinging away from the woke progressive view as people refuse to accept that any questioning of woke orthodoxy is a form of intolerance.
Despite frequent smears, leaders in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and New Brunswick have pressed ahead with laws and policies that have empowered parents with a greater say in their children’s school lives and limited the age at which a child can agree to “gender affirming” care. Trans activists are predictably upset.
When the BC NDP sought to move ahead with changes to the Land Act that would have given First Nations vaguely explained, statutory decision-making powers on Crown land, proponents decried any opposition as racist. Yet people continued to speak up, until the NDP put the legislation on hold to give them time to “educate” the public.
And despite accusations that critics are motivated by hate against drug addicts, the backlash against woke drug policies forced the BC NDP to back pedal and re-criminalize most drug use in public spaces.
This is all very welcome.
If we can’t talk honestly about issues, we can’t reach shared understandings and compromises. Reflexively labeling opponents bigots has been an effective way to silence critics and avoid engaging with their ideas, rather than having the courage for an honest debate.
Resist lashing out in the opposite direction
However, it will be easy for the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction.
For instance, progressives have told us for years that allowing males into female spaces constitutes a basic ‘kindness.’ This has been especially pervasive in the school system, to the point that I personally now reflexively distrust school officials when they call for students or parents to “be kind.”
Yet being decent to our fellow humans is a cardinal virtue that we all should practice. Not every call for kindness is a trojan horse for woke policy. Sometimes we just want kids to be nice to each other.
The same dynamic is at play with immigration. Calls for tolerance and accusations of racism have been used for so long to deflect criticism of immigration policy that many of us disregard them. The woke have cried wolf too many times.
Unfortunately, this comes at a time when we need tolerance more than ever. Both online and in real life, conversations about immigration frequently veer from criticism of policy to blanket judgements of races and ethnicities.
“We need tolerance more than ever.”
And it’s not just our discourse which is coarsening: the most recent data from police shows that between 2019 and 2023, hate crimes motivated by race/ethnicity increased by over 140 per cent.
Our challenge is to refuse to allow false accusations of intolerance to be used as a shield, while still holding the value of tolerance, especially in our interactions with each other.
This needle is often very difficult to thread, especially when issues enter the domain of culture.
For instance, many Canadians are concerned that large numbers of immigrants with drastically different values and practices are changing our society for the worse. Crowds of immigrants from Muslim countries chanting antisemitic slogans and support for terrorism has become commonplace in some Canadian cities.
There are increasing reports of organized crime and sectarian violence, including assassinations, among the Indo-Canadian community. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a refugee from India accused of terrorism by the Indian government, was murdered by an Indian citizen in Canada on an expired study permit.
Canadians notice these things, they connect the dots, and are right to question whether our immigration system is selecting people who share our values and want to integrate productively into Canadian society.
Time for some tough conversations
Unfortunately, it’s very easy for these larger concerns about culture to evolve into crude racial and ethnic stereotyping. This can lead to intolerance on a personal level. Anti-semitism and Islamic extremism are prevalent in the Middle East and most Canadians don’t want immigrants from this region to import these beliefs into Canada.
However, it would be not only unfair, but also incorrect, to assume all people with Middle Eastern backgrounds are Islamic extremists. Some of the staunchest opponents of anti-semitism and Islamic extremism have Middle Eastern backgrounds, such as Ontario MPP Goldie Ghamari, and B.C. author and activist Yasmine Mohammed. Both have first-hand experience with these dangerous beliefs and both have worked to combat them in Canada.
Woke progressives argue that any discussion of the existence and implications of cultural differences is a slippery slope. The same applies to discussing any issue that could reflect badly on a perceived oppressed group in need of their ‘allyship.’
This is nonsense.
Granted, these are hard conversations, and they have to be approached with honesty, intention, and some knowledge of potential pitfalls. But they are conversations we’re fully capable of having. Anyway, we can’t ignore them any longer, because if we don’t talk about the tricky issues, we can’t resolve them. And as most of us know, ignoring problems doesn’t make them go away, they just get worse.
There are no magic bullets to make this easy. And it’s no help that social media algorithms are constantly nudging us toward conflict and the extremes.
But one thing we can all do is follow the golden rule: treat others as we wish to be treated.
Rather than making blanket assumptions based on stereotypes, get to know people as individuals and treat them accordingly. Until they show you otherwise, work on the assumption that even the people you disagree with likely have good intentions.
And while we don’t want to be so open-minded our brains fall out, treating people with the tolerance and kindness we would want in return, is almost always a good policy.