Among Canadian journalists, it is a matter of received wisdom that the Wildrose Party lost the 2012 Alberta election because they ran too many far-right loons with offensive opinions. A similar explanation was offered for Stephen Harper's now long-forgotten 2004 loss to Paul Martin, with the Conservative electoral victories of subsequent years credited to Harper's skill at limiting "bozo eruptions" from socially regressive candidates.
Little hard evidence was offered to support these conclusions. Though we may question the loveliness of comments about gays burning "in the lake of fire" or metaphors likening ISIS-style head-choppers to abortionists, no poll I'm aware of has ever been produced showing voters in 2012 or 2004 or whenever rejected a party they had been previously inclined towards because a back-bench candidate said something off-putting, as opposed the more generic motives of caution that generally swing indecisive voters back to incumbent parties late in any campaign.
Media-types push the flattering narrative that Canadians are an inherently moderate people repulsed by extremes on "either side." Yet the comparatively scant revulsion the press encourages towards the bozo eruptions of the far-left suggests the real phenomenon is a journalistic class prone to assuming their personal bugaboos regarding Christian fundamentalists and the like are more widely shared than they actually are.
Linda McQuaig, the NDP candidate in Toronto Centre, is the Platonic ideal of a left-wing extremist. She has written several cranky books decrying free-market capitalism (the economic system this country uses, for those keeping track) and has likened it to slavery on more than one occasion. Of "Israeli Apartheid Week," the invented campus holiday for airing grievances against the Jewish state that range from nuttily conspiratorial to openly anti-Semitic, she's said "there's nothing odious." There's a photo of her shaking the hand of Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez with an enormous grin on her face, and she praised him lavishly when he died. She believes Canada broke international law by overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan, and of Canadian-American relations once quipped "we are not dealing with a best friend" but hungry imperialists who crave our conquest.
The Conservative Party deserves criticism for not making this woman a household name, but the media equally so. After all, if we are to believe the press holds moral obligation to spotlight deviant politicians that threaten Canadian normalcy, then surely McQuaig deserves a sound shaming.
On Friday, McQuaig made the rather mild (by her standards) comment that "a lot of the oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground." Her rivals, on both the campaign trail and social media, pounced with such viciousness the press was forced to cover the controversy.
But even then, in the reporting that followed one is hard-pressed to find any reference to McQuaig's history of far-left causes or rhetoric, or any effort to slot her into a scolding lesson about the danger extremist cranks pose for Mr. Mulcair's efforts to pass as an unthreatening centrist. The soft touch is particularly stark when contrasted to the treatment received by, say, outgoing Tory MP Rob Anders, who was invariably described in every story he appeared with tags like "controversial," "staunchly-conservative," and prone to "sometimes inflammatory statements." McQuaig rarely faces adjectives spicier than "well-known."
Why this double standard exists is no great mystery. Journalists lean left, and people who lean in any direction are disposed to ignore the extremism of their own side, not necessarily because they're sympathetic, but because its existence just doesn't seem interesting or newsworthy. Most Canadians would probably find a Chavez-loving Marxist as exotic as a Mandela-hating so-con, but most reporters evidentially do not, which is why you'll invariably hear more about one than the other.
I don't think elections are won or lost over the extremist ramblings of back-benchers. Most Canadians understand that the prime minister runs the show and the agenda of any government is not driven by a lone-wolf MP, no matter how loud (though Mulcair's musings that McQuaig is cabinet material deserves some pause).
Yet much of the Canadian political news complex believes the opposite. They believe conservative parties have lost multiple elections of recent history due to right-wing extremism — extremism they themselves felt ethical obligation to emphasize.
The NDP's current crop of candidates is vast, diverse, and mysterious. If the public good is served by highlighting worrisome cranks of any ideological flavour, then one imagines enterprising reporters should be able to find much here to work with.
But they must first convince themselves to care.
Written by J.J McCullough
