What are Canadian values?

By Graeme McNaughton/Columnist

The race to replace former Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the helm of the Conservative Party is heating up. Several MPs have already thrown their hat into the ring ahead of the May 2017 runoff. As is the case with any political party that went from the ruling group to the opposition, potential leaders have spoken on what they believe needs to change to bring more voters to the blue side of things. What, exactly, needs to change really depends on who you ask.

One of the leadership nominees, Kellie Leitch, has put an idea forward. Earlier this month, her campaign floated an idea to its supporters and has taken it on full steam. That idea? Screening incoming immigrants for so-called “anti-Canadian values.”

Not only does this raise the question of how exactly one would screen for these things, but also the question of what exactly it is that is being talked about when “anti-Canadian values” are uttered.

The notion of screening newcomers to the country has gained steam as of late. South of the border, in one of the, um, more interesting elections in recent memory, Donald Trump has proposed “extreme vetting” to screen out “anti-American values.” And as with a lot of things Trump has put forward, it is a lot of words without actual meaning. And based on Trump’s history of attacking just about every minority under the sun, I would be worried to think what exactly this screening process would entail.

So with Trump getting as much backlash over this plan as he has, it seems odd that Leitch would now take a Canadian spin on this idea as a possible plan for the lands north of the 49th parallel.

And what would Leitch consider anti-Canadian values? Who knows? I imagine my views of Canadian values are quite different than hers. I’m sure within any household, if you asked what Canadian values are, you would get several different answers. Same could be said for homes in America.

The one thing that really bugs me about this sort of concept is who would be responsible for dictating what Canadian values are? After all, there are millions of us.

I think Michael Chong, another candidate for the Conservative leadership, got it right when he labelled Leitch’s idea as dog-whistle politics – the type of political ideal that may sound like one thing on the surface, but could be interpreted as a much different, often less savoury, thing by others.

Leitch is, after all, one of the champions of the Conservatives’ failed Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline, which was pitched during last year’s election. The idea behind that gem was for people suspecting their neighbours of engaging in barbaric acts to call in and report it. To me, the idea was the mix of the Red Scare and 1960s McCarthyism (report your neighbour, he might be a Commie!) and the horrible and unfair label placed by some on Muslims both in this country and abroad. Considering the funding for the hotline was specifically targeted as refugees from Iraq and Syria, it didn’t come as a far leap.

So let us not go down that path, or down the path that Trump is proposing. I truly think we, as Canadians, can do much better than that.