For a guy who routinely accuses the prime minister of being divisive, Pierre Poilievre sure does an awful lot of dividing himself. Take his most recent attempt to portray experts as some sort of enemy of the people, a view he deliberately highlighted in a tweet over the weekend. “Liberals say common people should shut up and do what the ‘experts’ tell them,” he said. “Here’s the thing: the common people are the experts.”
This is a pretty obvious nod at the more conspiratorial elements in his coalition, who would love nothing more than to re-litigate the science around the COVID-19 pandemic and commiserate about the evils of the World Economic Forum. It’s also self-evident nonsense, given that experts are by definition uncommon, at least in their specific area of expertise. Then there’s the reality that, by and large, we probably should do what the experts tell us. I mean, yes, you could fix that plumbing or electrical problem in your house yourself, and I suppose you could try performing the surgery you need if you’re really feeling brave. But there, as with most things, it’s probably best to just let the experts handle it.
Poilievre’s personal animus towards experts is somewhat understandable, given how often they clap back at his policies and proposals. His attacks on the Bank of Canada and deliberate misrepresentation of the carbon tax’s role in driving inflation have been criticized by any number of economists and academics, while his poorly timed promotion of cryptocurrency remains a popular source of mockery for people who actually understand financial markets. His ongoing campaign against safe injection sites has been rejected by any number of actual experts in the field, including Benjamin Perrin, the former justice and public safety adviser to Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.
But as the leader of the official Opposition and the person most likely to become Canada’s next prime minister, his disdain for experts — and let’s be clear: he means the highly educated ones — is a problem. It’s the same anti-intellectual pablum that populists around the world, from Donald Trump (“I love the poorly educated”) to Boris Johnson, have been feeding their supporters for years. Indeed, as American historian (and former adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) Bruce Bartlett wrote back in 2020, it’s been getting served up by conservative politicians for decades now. “Since time immemorial, pseudo-populist demagogues and right-wingers have pandered to the uneducated and least sophisticated members of society. They know that a quality education will tend to make people dismiss the wrong-headedness and excessive simplicity of the conservative worldview, because education encourages critical thinking, open-mindedness, and truth-seeking.”
If we want to know where this might lead, we need only look across the Atlantic to Great Britain. In an interview a few weeks before the fateful Brexit vote in 2016, then-secretary of state for justice and lord chancellor Michael Gove told Sky News: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organizations with acronyms saying they know what is best.” And in some respects, he was right. The British people narrowly voted in favour of leaving the European Union, a decision cheered on by Canadian conservatives like Poilievre, former Conservative Party of Canada leader Andrew Scheer and former Alberta premier Jason Kenney.
But now, more than six years after that vote and more than three years after the U.K. formally left the EU, it’s become clear to all but the most blinkered Brexiteer that this was a ruinous own goal. The British economy is falling well behind its peers in Europe, with new analysis showing the decision to leave is costing the country £100 billion annually in lost economic activity. The British pound flirted with parity with the U.S. dollar last year, the first time it’s come close to that level in nearly four decades. And as if to add insult to injury, supermarkets have even had to ration fresh fruit and vegetables in recent weeks as a result of supply shortages, while European cheeses and other popular imported foods are suddenly much harder to find. Maybe the British should have listened to their experts after all.
There’s a lesson here that Canadian conservatives like Poilievre could stand to learn. No, experts aren’t infallible, and nobody is actually suggesting they should be listened to uncritically. But the world we live in is underwritten by expertise and experts, now more than ever before. From the people who design and deliver our internet services to the medical innovations that have both extended our lifespans and increased their quality, we depend (and are dependent) on expertise in ways even our recent ancestors couldn’t have imagined.
To pretend otherwise, as Poilievre and his fellow populists seem determined to do, isn’t just foolish or naive. It’s corrosive to the shared project we call society. But, then, maybe that’s part of his plan. Conservatives have never been big on the idea of a society, much less one that’s defined by things like common purpose and shared ideals rather than freedom and liberty. And experts, with their stubborn belief in things like evidence and data, are a natural antagonist to anyone trading in populist sloganeering. It’s no wonder Poilievre seems to find them so threatening — and so dangerous.
Comments
It is so true, that disdain for intellectuals and experts is always easy to whip up with poorly educated. That is why having a robust public education system and a free press are both very important. One will reduce the number of ardent anti-intellectuals. The other will feed the truth. But both are not gaining more ground in Canada under more Right-Wingy governments.
Well stated Rob, unfortunately for so many in the world (including Canada) your words would fly high above the heads of those who truly need to understand them.
Anti-intellectualism is quite evident in Ontario under Premier Doug Ford.
As an example, early in the pandemic when he decided to offer “front line healthcare professionals” a temporary two dollar/hr “bonus” his list of the recipients left out many staff groups that were as exposed to the virus as nurses and those in his list. People such as Laboratory Technologists, X-Ray Technologists, CT/MRI Technologists, Sonographers, Physical Therapists, Medival Residents and many others who are all registered under Ontario’s Regulated Health Professions Act and who have daily contact with the public and therefore Covid positive patents. It was a devastating blow to these professions. Individually and collectively the professional associations who represent these “heroes”, to borrow a term used by the premier lobbied the premier and the Min of Health for a review as the individuals that they represented were demoralized. After months of pleading the decision was “no” and the rationale provided was that they had budgeted a certain amount and had no additional funds toll for these care providers. This was not well received by those excluded from the temp wage bump and viewed as “we see you, you are heroes but we didn’t fully investigate the list of possible recipients”. This was prior to the roll out of the initial vaccines. Many letters were sent to the premier, there were questions by the media but they held fats to their blatant error and ostracized a workforce much larger than the nurses and the other recipients.
The common understanding deduced from the lobby groups was that they had drafted a list with poor understanding of the professions involved and hurried to launch it into action. It has been a bitter pill for these people made much worse when they learned that the govt had billions in surplus.
This govt doesn’t value the educated professions critical to the safe operation of our province.
Mr Ford has floated the idea of doing away with building inspectors as he believes that the bulkiest of all people is best suited to inspect the construction. The move of the skilled trades oversight from College of Trades to the Min of Labour is another example.
Having PSWs, an unregulated profession, dolling out medications in LTCs, is more of the same ignorant “get it done” mentality.
The Greenbelt land grab which is opposed by the former Greenbelt CEO David Crombie (who resigned over the abuses) and many other environmental associations reminds us all that being in power trumps expert advice.
The new Ottawa Riverside Hospital ortho surgery clinic bends a lot of the regulations and is sold as offering a new model of care; one where if a serious issue arises during the weekend surgery, the physicians will need to call 911 as the hospital doesn’t staff a rapid response team on weekends.
I fear for Ontario as this won’t end well as our standard of living is the result of the professionals who keep us safe, create policies that reflect best practices as opposed to the ignorance and arrogance of the “get it done” premier and his government.
(Reposted minus typos)
Anti-intellectualism is quite evident in Ontario under Premier Doug Ford. As an example, early in the pandemic when he decided to offer “front line healthcare professionals” a temporary two dollar/hr “bonus” his list of the recipients left out many staff groups that were as exposed to the virus as nurses and others on his list. People such as Laboratory Technologists, X-Ray Technologists, CT/MRI Technologists, Sonographers, Physical Therapists, Medical Residents and many others who are all registered under Ontario’s Regulated Health Professions Act and who have daily contact with the public and therefore Covid positive patents. It was a devastating blow to these professions. Individually and collectively the professional associations who represent these “heroes”, to borrow a term used by the premier lobbied the premier and the Min of Health for a review as the individuals that they represented were demoralized. After months of pleading the decision was “no” and the rationale provided was that they had budgeted a certain amount and had no additional funds toll for these care providers. This was not well received by those excluded from the temp wage bump and viewed as “we see you, you are heroes but we didn’t fully investigate the list of possible recipients”. This was prior to the roll out of the initial vaccines. Many letters were sent to the premier, there were questions by the media but they held fast to their blatant error and ostracized a workforce much larger than the nurses and the other recipients. The common understanding deduced from the lobby groups was that they had drafted a list with poor understanding of the professions involved and hurried to launch it into action. It has been a bitter pill for these people made much worse when they learned that the govt had billions in surplus.
This govt doesn’t value the educated professions critical to the safe operation of our province.
Mr Ford has floated the idea of doing away with building inspectors as he believes that the builders are best suited to inspect the construction. The move of the skilled trades oversight from College of Trades to the Min of Labour is another example.
Having PSWs, an unregulated profession, dolling out medications in LTCs, is more of the same ignorant “get it done” mentality.
The Greenbelt land grab which was opposed by the former Greenbelt CEO David Crombie (who resigned over the abuses) and many other environmental associations reminds us all that being in power trumps expert advice.
The new Ottawa Riverside Hospital ortho surgery clinic bends a lot of the regulations and is sold as offering “a new model of care”; one where if a serious issue arises during the weekend surgery, then the physicians will need to call 911 as the hospital doesn’t staff a rapid response team on weekends.
I fear for Ontario as this won’t end well as our standard of living is the result of the professionals who keep us safe, create policies that reflect best practices as opposed to the ignorance and arrogance of the “get it done” premier and his government.
Totally agree, Ontario voters need to wake up, get out & vote next time and just ignore the faux polls being pushed by the right biased polling agencies. This is all part of the disinformation plan by the right and corrupt IDU under Stephen Harper playbook.
If Poilievre is the best the Conservatives can promote as leader, they are truly in sad shape. Poilievre is divisive, economically illiterate and only attracts uneducated or naïve followers who appear incapable of fact checking the garbage Poilievre spews daily. Poilievre is just another Trump or Boris Johnson and we all know how that turned out. Doug Ford seems to be sown from the same cloth, with his garbage and lies.
But one thing overlooked is Stephen Harper's corrupt IDU who helps promote the failing leaders around the globe. The right-wing leaders are all playing from the same playbook, sewing disinformation and propaganda in social media platforms to garner support. But so far, it seems they are not attracting the voters they need to remain in power for very long.
That is an accurate point John. Mr Harper always seems to be involved. I would have less concern with that if he was promoting goodwill, democracy, policies that advance Canada as nation but unfortunately I do not have that confidence. Of late it seems that the expected democratic principles have been sidelined by conservative political parties and replaced with a “win at any cost”…. “Say anything to gain votes, promise whatever is needed” and once elected it’s all forgotten and the announce that we are going to open up the Greenbelt, lay-off building inspectors, challenge every court ruling that isn’t in your favour….the end result is a govt that the people who elected them do not recognize, neither do those who didn’t support them.
Our democracy has been weakened and at times I wonder if some of our government’s actions are similar to the politics of those of South America in the 1960-1970’s.
Where is our Peace, Order and Good Government?
If we keep this up, very soon the opening lyric of our national anthem may take on a whole different meaning!
“O Canada” indeed.
Please don't even say that this pugnacious fool could become prime minister.
This comes from a poll so begs the question, "How are polls really that different from social media misinformation?"
Despite them being totally wrong repeatedly and because they can't actually be statistically accurate now, we're still suckers for the excitement of the horse race so journalists seem to hector Singh regularly about breaking the agreement with the Liberals to create the drama of that AND another election so we can copy the States. WHY?
And speaking of hectoring, even if Trudeau concedes on the "public inquiry," and it reaches the same conclusion as the Liberal government, we need to remind ourselves that it probably won't make much difference with most dumbass conservatives.
Having said that, it seems this is what has to be done now when conservatives have been so depressingly successful in undermining trust in our institutions, and this one of democracy itself IS the most important one.
Yes, and the pugnacious fool comes custom suited (bad pun) for Parliamentary question period where his smug, arrogant, accusatory jabs wearing really thin. (including today's below the belt, child like name calling when referring to two Liberal Cabinet ministers, who had tried to respond to his nonsensical questions above the ever present, unruly, cackle and din of the Con. bench). P.P. is hell bent on becoming PM, and anyone and everyone seeing through his facade should be equally hell bent on not letting that ever happen lest things really become "broken".
Canadians may be getting weary of a Liberal government and PM that often seem intent on wearing out their welcome. But enabling this full-on social media troll to become the next PM isn't a solution to anything but Pierre Poilievre's ambition.