Canadians show appetite for the moderate middle ground

“Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite. (Every nation gets the government it deserves).”

— French philosopher Joseph de Maistre

Every once in blue moon, columnists and editors like to trot out variations of this quote and bat the idea around on the op-ed page, usually with an eye to show that the voting public lacked character in choosing that guy or this party.

Or, more often, it’s used as a way to slam an unengaged public that failed to show up at the ballot box.

For example, such an argument could be made in the last U.S. presidential election, when nearly 90 million eligible voters didn’t bother voting — or about 36 per cent of the voting-age population. That number, as the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper opined, was greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

But the recent federal election last spring here in Canada seems to have come off somewhat differently. Only now are we fully realizing exactly the kind of government Canadians decided upon when the majority chose to keep the Liberals in power, this time under former investment banker Mark Carney.

Little more than a year ago — even as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was surging in popular opinion polls — Angus Reid published the results of a survey in which one-third of Canadians said they felt like political “orphans,” as political parties were too extreme for their tastes. This included 47 per cent of respondents who placed themselves in the mushy middle of the political spectrum.

“As federal political parties take turns labelling the other as extremists, there is widespread belief that political options are abandoning the middle,” Angus Reid’s Sept. 12, 2024 report read.

The report also suggested that Canadians were more likely to agree than disagree that none of the federal political parties represented their views at the time.

It’s not hyperbole to say that under Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party of Canada has managed to push the party further to the extreme right — perhaps even more right of centre than when former leader Stephen Harper ruled the roost.

Neither would it be incorrect to say that Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party managed to undermine Tom Mulcair’s NDP in 2015 by taking a hard shift to the left and then proceeded to squat on that end of the spectrum for the better part of a decade.

With Carney the banker economist at the helm, that time seems to be over, with many of the policies coming out of the prime minister’s office far more small-c conservative than we witnessed from the Trudeau cabinet.

Make no mistake, Carney isn’t quite the Captain Canada he first made himself out to be on the campaign trail. And the jury is still out on whether he can actually Trump-proof the Canadian economy as he travels the planet looking for trading partners.

Nevertheless, Carney is making a few moderate Conservative heads turn, even as he has angered the hard left of the Liberal party who are unhappy with his recent agreement with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to support the construction of a new pipeline to the West Coast.

Last month, Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont cited concerns about Poilievre’s leadership when he crossed the floor to join Carney’s Liberal minority. And then just this week, the Conservative MP from Markham-Unionville, Michael Ma, quietly jumped ship to join the Liberals, blindsiding Poilievre and his Tory peers, and leaving the Carney government just one seat shy of a majority.

These defections follow growing frustrations within the Conservative party in advance of a leadership review in January, and in the wake of Poilievre’s failure to gain power last spring. Canadians, too, seem to be tiring of his negativity, with public opinion polls in September and November by Abacus Data and Angus Reid indicating that Canadians hold an overall negative impression of Poilievre.

This does not mean, of course, that Poilievre’s political career is petering out. But it shows that he may have an uphill fight on his hands to prevent further MP defections.

While the pangs of partisanship have drawn many Canadians into the extreme corners of the political ring, it’s fair to say that a great number of ordinary people have tired of the daily haranguing of parliamentary question period and angry media sound bites.

Perhaps there is still a public appetite for leadership from a red Tory or a blue Liberal — that mushy middle ground which until recently seemed abandoned by the two foremost parties in our nation. After a few decades of overheated rhetoric, ethics violations, excessive spending and irritating virtue signalling, we deserve a span of good government and a steady economic hand at the tiller.

Let’s just hope that’s what we get.