For the past few days I, and a lot of other Canadians who share my status as a “visible minority,” have been watching the battle play out over just how much or how little diversity is good, or bad, for Canada.
First, we watched Maxime Bernier’s fear-mongering about a “cult of diversity” and “extreme multiculturalism.” His then-boss, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, let that fester for days before tepidly expressing concern.
Then, when Prime Minister Trudeau called out a heckler for her rant against asylum seekers, Scheer was quick to step in with his own divisive rhetoric. “This is how you can tell when Liberals are losing,” he tweeted. “Concerned about illegal border crossers? You’re a racist. Worried about the cost? You’re un-Canadian.”
And if anyone was wondering whether Bernier’s resignation from the party signalled the Conservatives might shift a little left of the ultra-right, they got their answer on Sunday when Conservative convention delegates voted in favour of ending birthright citizenship. This is a new low that even Donald Trump has so far resisted.
But the Conservative agenda isn’t just about undermining citizenship access for immigrants. It’s fuelling discrimination against all racialized communities. And it ignores the reality that with the exception of Indigenous peoples, we are pretty much all immigrants.
That includes me, and you, Mr. Scheer.
As someone among those implicated by this rhetoric, and as someone with personal experience with racist hecklers, I commend the prime minister for taking a stand.
But if we really want to stop hate, we need to do more than just call it out. We need to recognize that it is growing economic inequality that creates the conditions for hate to fester. That’s the reality Andrew Scheer is trying to exploit: the economic injustice that has left so many very hard-working Canadians wondering why they can’t make ends meet, and what — or who — is to blame.
This summer I met a lot of those Canadians, Canadians who Scheer hopes will tune into his message. Workers juggling multiple jobs just to pay the rent and wondering why good quality, long-term work is so hard to find. Families that, every month, are just a few dollars away from not being able to pay their bills. Students grappling with debt and a job market with very little to offer. Seniors having to choose between paying for groceries and the medication they need. Parents struggling to find child care they can afford and rely on. Too many wondering how they’ll ever retire without living in poverty.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The Maxime Berniers, Andrew Scheers, Doug Fords and hecklers of the world are peddling what can sound like a very simple solution: keeping immigrants out means more jobs for the rest of us, being able to afford a better apartment, smaller class sizes for our kids, shorter wait times at the hospital. Never mind all the evidence to the contrary: according to Scheer, keeping immigrants out is a panacea.
Canadians have been waiting too long for real solutions. The prime minister and his government have the power and the resources to implement the solutions that really will make peoples’ lives better. And unless they do that, they are perpetuating the conditions that allow division and hate to resonate and spread.
There is no excuse for inaction in the face of economic injustice. It’s time to implement real solutions.
Solutions like universal pharmacare, which economists say is more than feasible and will save us billions of dollars. Solutions like universal child care, which we know would more than pay for itself by allowing more parents, especially women, to go to work. Solutions like an immediate federal investment in housing, which we know would make an enormous difference to families struggling to pay skyrocketing rents for substandard accommodations.
We know we can help pay for these and other concrete solutions by finally clamping down on tax loopholes and tax havens, so that everyone in Canada, including the richest, pay their fair share. But Canadians have been waiting too long for that simple and fair fix.
If we really want to stop hate from spreading, we need to put an end to that waiting. We need to truly understand what economic injustice and inequality looks like for hard-working Canadians grappling with it every day on the ground, at home and at work. And we need a government that takes concrete steps to fix it now.
As I tweeted in response to Bernier: “Canada’s identity is based on inclusion, and our unyielding belief in lifting each other up in response to attempts to divide us.”
This value is our North Star. It is the value that underpins everything that makes us proud to be Canadians. And it must be a driving principle when it comes to standing up to all those inspired by Donald Trump’s example.
So let’s go beyond calling out hate to stopping it at its root, and act now to lift up all Canadians. That’s how we really can move closer to creating a welcoming and truly inclusive Canada.
Jagmeet Singh is the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/08/31/stop-hate-at-its-root-economic-injustice.html
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