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"Stephen Harper declared recently that Canadians have become more conservative over the past two decades," The Globe's Michael Valpy wrote Saturday in his article The growing ideological no man's land.
"He is right, although at least half of his fellow citizens will have no idea what he's talking about.
"Over the past two decades, Canadians have been inching toward small-c conservatism, a slow, oozing shift in values and notions of how the country should be run, taking them further and further away from their one-time rah-rah support for the progressive state as the instrument of national collectivity.
"But the real seismic adjustment of the electorate is not from one ideological camp to another.
The Globe and Mail's Michael Valpy (Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail)
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"Rather it's a drift from Canada's traditional small-l liberalism — or, perhaps more accurately, its red toryism — to a rejection of all ideology and theoretical ideas of governance and society that dramatically sets Canadians apart from their southern neighbours."
Pollsters say Canadians increasingly think of themselves as non-partisan and non-ideological, and have the weakest political-party affinity in the Western world. To a majority of Canadians, the parties pretty much look alike, with Jack Layton and Stephen Harper as an identical pair of suits.
We at globeandmail.com were pleased Mr. Valpy joined us online to take your questions about his article and Canada's electoral shift.
Your questions and Mr. Valpy's answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Mr. Valpy is a senior writer for The Globe and Mail.
He began his journalistic career at The Vancouver Sun and became that newspaper's associate editor and national political columnist. For The Globe and Mail, he has been a member of the editorial board, Ottawa political columnist, Africa correspondent, deputy managing editor and columnist on social and political issues.
He has produced public affairs documentaries for CBC Radio, written for Maclean's, Elm Street, Policy Options and Time (Canada) magazines, won three national newspaper awards, co-authored two books on Canada's Constitution -- The National Deal (1982) and To Match A Dream (1998) -- and one on Canada's emerging generation of adults New Canada (2003). Trent University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1997.
Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
Brodie Fenlon, globeandmail.com: We are pleased to welcome Mr. Valpy back to globeandmail.com for today's discussion. Thanks for joining us.
Jean Baillargeon from Canada writes: Hi Mr. Valpy, and thank you for taking questions. My question is: should we distinguish support for the Liberal Party and support for liberalism? It seems to me that while Canadians do not endorse the Liberal Party as they once did, they have not abandoned their support of liberal values. Canadians did elect the Conservatives in the last election, but only gave them a minority. And recent polls show that well over 50 per cent of Canadians support either the Liberals, the NDP or the Greens. This is not so much a shift in political values as a desire to support a wider variety of parties who are committed to liberalism broadly understood. Do you agree?
Michael Valpy: And thank you for your excellent question. I think you're right — and that the majority of Canadians still fall into this somewhat amorphous, small-l liberal centre. But what survey after survey tells us is that we have likely the weakest attachment to political parties among the advanced democracies.
Nick Wright from Halifax Canada writes: Mr. Valpy, Thank you for articulating the sense a lot of us have that there is an important transition under way in how Canadians view themselves as a body politic. The age of simplistic, straitjacket left-right ideology is dying out, and good riddance to it. However, it served a purpose by at least fostering a civil society based on mutual respect, discourse and support. We have entered a dangerous phase in which a uniting vision of civil society is dying out, but there is not yet one to take its place. The default alternative — which I believe we are seeing in the Harper government — is an absence of vision and a resort to primitive selfishness, resentment of others who are different, and the ape-instinct level of social interaction; political debate becomes increasingly crude and futile, and society begins to fragment into fiercely competing islands of shared interest or values. The next logical step in the discussion you have begun is to ask where this alternative uniting social vision might come from and who will bring it into the sphere of political choice. [Your thoughts Michael?]
