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Letter: Finding middle ground is more challenging today

Letters to the editor
By Letters to the editor
November 29th, 2022

To The Editor:

An American observer of his nation’s public discourse in 2020 said this: “Americans do not understand one another, do not trust one another, and do not like one another.”

Canadians generally believe our public sphere is nowhere near as toxic as what is seen in the USA.

I will own up to this: I really have difficulty liking what I see of the political atmosphere and public opinion among Canadian conservatives — who seem to rule the governmental and media territory of the Prairie provinces, with their economic obsession with raw material export and disregard for the environment.

I deeply dislike what I believe to have been the general attitudes of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa last winter. Pat King and others who have appeared in front of the committee examining that event, are repellent to me.

Pierre Poilievre, Scott Moe, and Danielle Smith, disturb me with their values. Doug Ford and Francois Legault in Ontario and Quebec, respectively, are not reassuring either.

Hopefully, Canada is not going the path of America in creating polarized toxicity in politics. No one is predicting a civil war here, as they are for America. 

But I listen and observe our evolution in public affairs, and I worry my own feelings and those of friends, are becoming as harsh and uncompromising as the conservatives we oppose. Two realities contradict one another, and the Convoy reality is incompatible with the one I inhabit.

Nelson is a place of pluralism, and I like that. But finding middle ground is more challenging today than at any time I can remember.

My intentions are good….

Charles Jeanes
Nelson

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