The world may be going to hell in a handcart, but Canada is not. Not today

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

You may remember those lines – William Butler Yeats, 1919 – from high-school English. They should really be on today’s political-science curriculum.

In Germany, political parties and voters are running for the extremes. Something similar is happening in France, where politics is increasingly dominated by the far-left La France Insoumise and the far-right Ralliement National. Last weekend’s unprecedented explosion of pillage and looting has made a lame-duck centrist government look more impotent than ever, six months before national elections.

In Britain, the head cheerleader for the own-goal of Brexit – the far-right Reform party – spent most of the past year at the top of the polls. The Labour Party recently moved back into the lead, but under a Prime Minister whose popularity is born of a doomed promise to avoid the upset of vigorous action against economic and fiscal crises. This isn’t centrism; it’s a sleeping pill.

A country with its elbows up faces separation threats on two fronts

As for the United States, the MAGA Republican Party now disdains almost everything it once stood for: law, democracy, the Constitution, free trade, alliances, and on it goes. And as the GOP has hard-shifted to the right, important parts of the Democratic Party have moved to the dunderhead left.

U.S. politics is a zoo of separate media cages, whose respective inmates speak dialects that are barely intelligible on the other side of the bars.

And now to Canada.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre campaigned in Alberta last week. Not against one another, but for the same cause. They even used some shared language.

On Friday in Edmonton, the PM told a Remain Canada rally that voting for Canada is a duty – “our duty to the generations that came before us, and those who will come after us.” The same day in Calgary, Mr. Poilievre similarly called our obligations to country and history a contract, “between the dead, the living and yet to be born.”

Jason Kenney, former Alberta premier and leader of the United Conservative Party, and Rachel Notley, formerly premier and leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party, have in recent weeks appeared together on stages and TV screens, making the case for Canada. They’re happy to admit that they disagree on many things. They’re also adamant that those disagreements happen atop shared foundations – the Constitution, the rule of law and the unity of the country.

In contrast, when politics descends into an existential war between mortal enemies, common ground disappears. It’s happened in many countries. Politics has become tribal. It leads partisans to automatically embrace the opposite of whatever the other tribe believes, and to reflexively believe the opposite of whatever the other side is saying.

In Canada, the past couple of years has brought a rediscovery of at least some common ground.

It has also brought the return of a centre that is not merely an arithmetic average between the extremes, but a place where it’s possible to have reasonable policy formation, based on something more than just reactionary partisanship.

That kind of politics can only succeed if voters are open to it. In Canada at the moment, they are.

A backhanded thanks is due to Donald Trump. The U.S. President’s threats have concentrated Canadians’ minds. They have sharpened the focus on what matters. They have snapped us back to reality.

In many other countries, crisis has the opposite effect. It has led to a retreat into magical thinking: that salvation will come not from facing problems, but through empty and symbolic victories against the other side – owning the libs or cancelling the conservatives.

There’s still lots of that in Canadian politics, at all levels. But there’s also a certain amount of attempting to tackle real problems with something more than partisan talking points. That kind of centrism is less present in the U.S. right now. But it’s in evidence when you look at the Carney government, and compare it with the Liberal administration that came before.

Tyler Dawson: Canada is strong, but it will be forever altered by Alberta’s separation referendum

The current federal government won’t ever use this term, but it’s progressive conservative. It’s conservative liberal. Until a generation ago, a lot of Canadian politics looked like this, in both major parties.

Its return means that, for example, questions about oil, natural gas and the environment are now treated less as morally absolute partisan avatars and more as practical matters involving costs and benefits. The benefit of more regulatory certainty for oil and gas development – normally a right-wing talking point – also brings with it more public money for health care, education and other social programs – normally left-wing causes.

This appears to align with the practical, less partisan views of most Canadians. It’s politics for normies. Which democratic politics must be.

When politics becomes hyperpolarized, partisans only speak to one side of the ledger. They cannot extend grace or understanding to the other side’s concerns.

But at its best, democratic politics brings people together by finding things they can agree on.

As I write this on Monday afternoon, before the ballots are counted in Alberta’s referendum, I’m hopeful that the latest example of that finding of common ground will be the answer delivered by voters on Question 10.