Pearson: Politicking puts people off politics

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There’s a new category of homelessness in the country – the politically homeless – and the implications are significant.

The decline in traditional party support is growing. This is partly due to disillusionment with established options and their perceived inability to address our modern problems. Worldwide, an angry rise in populism has emerged to fill the gap, leaving nations splintered and floundering.

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Democratic movements embraced politics in order for people to develop a better understanding of one another and to work out their differences. It was supposed to improve society’s capacity for empathy, entrepreneurship, knowledge, and action. And for a time it worked, elevating millions out of subsistence living and tyrannical leadership.

What happened? The primary purpose of politics today is to drive division so as to secure power. It’s not about connection but contention, not aspiration but anger. For the politically inclined it’s heady stuff, but for average Canadians it becomes increasingly alienating. We have become more insular, removed, and distrustful.

Ontario recorded its lowest voter turnout in history during the 2022 election, where only 43 per cent of voters marked a ballot. That same year, 25.5 per cent voter turnout made London’s municipal election a kind of hollow decision. Elections at all levels are in similar decline. The result is governments with limited mandates.

With this last American election, there are now ten democracies that have turfed incumbent governments, regardless of stripe, in their most recent contests. And as more extreme versions of the political left and right pump their fists, millions just walk away, enlarging even further the ranks of the politically homeless. The inability to work out compromises has fuelled the fires of partisanship. Philosopher Hannah Arendt warned about this when she wrote: “The moment negative propaganda is at work, people are no longer addressed as individuals, but as members of a particular collective.”

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Ultimately, what we are getting from all this is a crisis of self-government. People no longer feel their voice matters; they sense their community no longer functions effectively.

What many citizens have done is to concentrate on their own neighbourhoods and local civic associations. They volunteer with local projects, support nearby athletic events, and reach out to their peers who have fallen on hard times.

Hence the anger directed at city council’s decision to consider cutting the $500,000 community grant program by half, or perhaps altogether. “They’re small organizations as far as staff and funding go, but they’re serving large populations,” Pillar Nonprofit leader Maureen Cassidy said. “Some of them are life-saving services.”

Exacerbating the tensions was council’s decision to significantly hike London’s tax rate by more than 30 per cent during the four-year period. The community grant program is only 0.02 per cent of the annual budget and is now vulnerable to cuts. Valuable caring partners to the city are losing faith.

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For almost two decades, the City of London has spoken of the importance of neighbourhood resource centres and has encouraged organizations to fill the gaps in various regions of London. Council’s consideration of cutting neighbourhood grants while raising the budget so significantly is having the detrimental effect of turning citizens and organizations off politics altogether while also ostracizing the very groups delivering care in this community.

Canadians want to have a meaningful say in how they are governed. Yet, no sooner do they vote, then politicians vote in measures that weren’t part of their campaign language. Should this practice continue, citizens will either walk away and refuse to vote, or they will join various organizations that push the extremes and divide communities even further.

All of this is leading to an ever-greater inequality in democracies around the world, producing a great unravelling of the sense of community. Our politics is driving us apart, but we have few other venues for making collective decisions. If politics works, then so do we. The opposite is equally true, as the numbers of politically homeless and frustrated now reveal.

Glen Pearson is co-director of the London Food Bank and a former Liberal MP for London North Centre. glen@glenpearson.ca

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