The Time Is Out Of Joint

 

I spend a fair bit of time in this blog discussing my aversion to the United States. Widely populated by benighted souls, it is a country I now shun and have no intention of ever again visiting.

However, my smug convictions about the superiority of Canadians relative to our American counterparts has been shaken, for reasons that will quickly become apparent.

Martin Regg Cohn offers this disheartening news:

One in three adults in Canada believe Microsoft founder Bill Gates is either monitoring people with vax chips, or they think it’s possible, or they’re just not sure — but can’t rule it out. That leaves just 66 per cent of Canadians who reject that particular conspiracy theory outright.

According to new public opinion research by Abacus Data, it’s not just the Gates microchip, but a host of hoaxes and top secret cabals that are on the minds of Canadians — and causing them to lose their minds. A few more to blow your mind:

• Elections, recessions and wars are controlled by small groups secretly working against us: 44 per cent agree;

• COVID vaccines have killed many people, but there’s a coverup: 44 per cent say it’s definitely/probably/possibly true, or they’re still unsure;

• COVID was caused by the rollout of 5G wireless technology: 26 per cent can’t rule it out.

While it would be comforting to lay the blame for these results on the way the Abacus poll was framed, a quick check reveals that respondents were simply presented with statements with which they could agree or disagree which, I believe, as polling techniques go, seems fairly innocuous. (I stand to be corrected here by those who know more about such things,)

But it has long been a quintessentially Canadian conceit that we are a more judicious and less suspicious nation, not so easily manipulated and corrupted. Not quite.

“As pollsters we often get asked, ‘Is Canada different, is Canada immune, are we somehow exceptional to our neighbours to the south?’” Abacus CEO David Coletto said in an interview.

“We felt the answer is No,” which is why his polling firm tested out these questions with a representative sample of 1,500 Canadian adults. “We’re still human beings and still susceptible to the same information at a time when we’re feeling anxious … I think we’ve come to this place.”

While I think we are all aware, thanks to the stridency of the anti-vaxxers and the Freedom Convoy occupation in Ottawa, that we have people who subscribe to destabilizing fictions, we have sometimes chosen to ignore other signs, one of which Regg Cohn reminds us:

When a trickle of “irregular” migrants started crossing our border from Vermont and upstate New York, the clamour to batten down the hatches kept rising; when a couple of boatloads of ethnic Tamil refugee claimants from Sri Lanka arrived off the coast of B.C. in 2010, a Toronto mayoral candidate named Rob Ford complained publicly that Canada didn’t need more migrants.

...an Angus Reid poll later showed a remarkable 55 per cent of Ontarians wanted those Tamil passengers deported even if found to be legitimate refugees (as most were). 

If any comfort is to be found in the Abacus poll, it comes from the fact that the support for fringe ideas

is higher among supporters of the People’s Party, those who self-identify on the right of the spectrum, those who have not received any COVID-19 shots, and those who think media and official government accounts of events can’t be trusted. Those who feel Pierre Poilievre is the Conservative leadership candidate closest to their values and ideas are more likely to believe these theories when compared to those who feel more aligned with Jean Charest.

You can see the full breakdown of that support here. 

While it is true that only a minority of Canadians hold beliefs or leanings that run counter to the goal of living in a rational and ordered society, the size of that minority is disturbing, and its implications a cause for concern, especially if the fracturing spreads. 

As Abraham Lincoln famously said, borrowing from the Bible, "A house divided from itself cannot stand."

Let's hope it never gets to that in Canada.

P.S. If you have the time and inclination, check out M.P. Charlie Angus's take on all of this.