A
guest article by Jared Milne.
Right-wing
Conservatives are hardworking entrepreneurs who stop at Tim Horton’s
for a double-double on their way to work, get up early on Saturday to
take their kids to hockey practice, and maintain their homes and
their cars themselves. Either that, or they’re greedy corporate
monsters who cheerfully destroy the planet and oppress the poor in
order to line their own pockets.
Left-wing
Liberals, NDPers and Greens are compassionate and interested only in
helping the poor and caring for the environment and fighting for
social justice. Either that, or they’re snobby elitists and civil
servants who look down on honest, hardworking citizens, think they
know what’s best for everyone, and love nothing more than spending
other peoples’ money on their pet projects.
Those
are the stereotypes Canadians hear on a regular basis, but just how
true are they? In my experience, right-wing Conservatives are just as
apt to show concern for the environment, compassion for the poor and
support for social justice as any left-wing. On the other hand,
Liberals, NDPers and Greens are just as apt to be the hardworking
hockey parents who drink Tim Horton’s coffee and show
entrepreneurial spirit in owning their own businesses. Some people
might adhere to the negative stereotypes that I previously mentioned,
but applying them to every single person that happens to vote for a
particular political party or hold a particular set of beliefs is
just plain stupid.
Take
former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, for example. He’s one
of the most prominent conservatives in Canada, and yet he’s gone on
record as saying that there should be a “price on carbon”, and
bluntly stating that Albertans need a “wake up call” on the
environment. In my own hometown of St. Albert, city councillor Cam
MacKay is a card-carrying federal Conservative who spearheaded the
move to give severely disabled residents a major discount on public
transit. Such actions don’t exactly mesh with the negative
stereotypes that Conservatives don’t care about the environment or
people in need. Nor do the civil servants I know who can be counted
on to vote Conservative come election time-they don’t exactly live
up to the stereotype of public servants being snobs who only listen
to CBC and love spending other peoples’ money.
On
the other side of the fence, take Susan Thompson, founder of the
Canadian nationalist site Vive Le Canada, at www.vivelecanada.ca.
She’s a blue-collar entrepreneur founded her own welding company in
my home province of Alberta. According to the stereotypes, she should
be a Conservative, but she’s a devoted NDPer who’s run for the
federal party more than once. Another example is farmer David
Orchard, who’s online at www.davidorchard.com.
He’s a rural Saskatchewanian who puts a lot of work into
maintaining his farm. According to the stereotypes, he should be a
Conservative, but in fact he’s a Liberal who’s known for actively
criticizing the North American Free Trade Agreement. And this doesn’t
even take into account all the other various small business owners
who’ve run for the Liberals, the NDP or the Greens at the federal
or provincial levels. These people risk their own capital and own
their own businesses, and yet they support parties that are generally
viewed as left-wing.
Different
parts of Canada also break with these stereotypes. Alberta is often
seen as the right-wing and business-oriented province, yet we have
prominent Alberta conservatives like Preston Manning and Peter
Lougheed (who called for a slowdown in the development of the
oilsands) taking stances that, according to the stereotypes, would
only be associated with left-wingers. Conversely, Ontario and Quebec
are said to be more left-wing and government-heavy, and yet those
provinces have noted high-tech industries. A company like Research In
Motion might be in trouble now, but how could a company like that
have ever gotten so big in the first place if Central Canada didn’t
have an entrepreneurial spirit of its own?
Do
some people live up to the stereotypes described? Of course they do.
The problem, though, is that the positive stereotypes are often used
to make one’s own political group look good, and make the other
political group look bad. This is one of the biggest, albeit
overlooked, problems in Canadian politics today-the tendency among
some pundits and bloggers to demonize other Canadians for their
political beliefs, to the point of making it seem as though other
people are less Canadian, less Albertan, or what have you, based on
their beliefs. Many Canadians readily identify with Tim Horton’s
drinkers and hockey parents, for instance, but Tim Horton’s
drinkers and hockey parents can just as easily vote Liberal or NDP as
they can vote Conservative. Similarly, many Canadians identify with
helping the poor and caring for the environment, but Conservatives
are just as apt to do this as Liberals or NDPers.
Instead
of judging entire political groups or even entire regions of Canada,
we’d all be much better off if we tried to actually see each
others’ points of view and get to know one another as Canadians,
instead of judging each other based on stereotypes that often don’t
apply.
This
article was originally published in a modified form in the St. Albert
Gazette on January 19, 2013 at
http://www.stalbertgazette.com/article/20130119/SAG0903/301199976/0/sag.
Jared Milne is a writer, researcher
and public servant living in St. Albert, Alberta. His major interests
including Canadian unity, nationalism and history, particularly
regarding how Canada's incredibly rich past has affected the present
we live in today.
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