What a real debate about Canadian values would look like

The phrase "Canadian values" is the slipperiest euphemism in this country's political vocabulary.

In the past two months, the phrase has been appropriated chiefly by the Conservatives but also by the other parties and brandished at the head of the partisan parades.

It's been, at times, a savage discursive accelerant,probably more so than in any previous campaign.

Mind you, Canadians still haven't arrived at the simplistically vicious world of American politics, where "Vote your values" has served as code for imposing a fundamentalist religious vision on the nation.

Or where a serious presidential candidate like Republican Ben Carson can raise millions and invigorate his campaign by openly stating that a Muslim shouldn't be president.

But we may be getting there.

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In the last Quebec provincial election, the Parti Qubcois advanced a "charter of values" that presumed to define a common cultural morality.

It sought to define the other, and subordinate them to the presumed will of the majority in the public square scrubbed free of religious symbols (except for the illuminated cross overlooking the city of Montreal and the crucifix hanging in the Quebec legislature, because, you know, those are cultural and historic).

To their credit, the voters of the province rejected the PQ and their document.

But suspicion of foreign religious symbols still lingers across the country strongly in Quebec, according to pollsters.

And the "values" gambit is like political nerve gas.

It ignores the law, but it often works, and campaign generals cannot resist reaching for it when things get desperate.

A Conservative ad a few days ago told voters that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is "disconnected with their values" because he would allow the face-covering niqab at a citizenship ceremonies. (Which, incidentally, was also the view of the Federal Court of Appeal).

The Liberal campaign, meanwhile, tells us Stephen Harper has pushed us away from "Canadian values," and shamed us in the eyes of the world. (Harper has essentially upended a tradition of rather ineffectively neutral foreign policy and moved the country more into line with its historic allies.)

Agents of change

That is not to claim equivalence. The Conservatives, in power for a decade and struggling to be "agents of change," are blowing the values trumpet harder than the other parties.

A rather unsubtle flyer sent out by Kelly Block, a Conservative candidate in Saskatchewan, informs voters there that: "New arrivals to Canada have received dental andvision care paid by your tax dollars. They've had free prescriptions. Not anymore."

Other Tory ads accuse Trudeau of planning to "mandate brothels," and of planning to sell pot to kids.

• NDP accuses Liberals of spreading rumour a candidate is dying

Whew.

Still, all parties' rhetoric ultimately relies on the subtext that Canadian values are intrinsically good and decent. This is a remarkably powerful notion, widely revered.

An old colleague and friend recently wrote me a passionate note about the whole idea of voting for values.

Canadian values, she wrote, were "forged by heritage, forebears and the legacy we've come to respect, and hope we've passed on."

What, though, in this day and age, constitutes a pan-Canadian value?

For much of its collective existence, this country has really been four or five sub-nations, bound together by a political agreement and a system of wealth redistribution. The idea that they shared common values is a fond revision of history.

My forebears, for example, were fanatical Calvinist settlers with a foundational belief in the character-building nature of backbreaking labour and adversity.

Once a year, in July, they'd head across the Ottawa River to taunt French Catholics, decrying papism and obnoxiously celebrating the Protestant accession to the British throne guaranteed by the Battle of the Boyne.

Some of them would blow yowling martial music on their pipes, while old French-Canadian women tried to toss the contents of bedpans out of upstairs windows onto their drunken heads.

Canadian values? Really?

Vote your 'ism'

Since that era, millions of immigrants have arrived, cohorts that hold different views on collective versus individual rights, the intersection of church and state, the importance of ethnic traditions, and morality in the public square, never mind the supremacy of the Pope.

Given that, a rational discussion at election time should probably focus more on the importance of the rule of law and the protection of individual rights in a morphing, evolving culture.

But there is no profit in that for a politician.

The fact is, and politicians understand this, values are supreme in the polling booth.

Voting, the most democratic thing you can do, is the one significant public act that is unrestrained by laws protecting the rights of others.

You may vote greed, racism, sexism, ageism, classism, nativism You can project any of your "isms" onto that ballot.

Stephen Harper has suggested that the "ballot box question" will ultimately be economic self-interest. Simply put, that means: Do you want a bigger federal government, and are you willing to pay for it?

But pollsters suggest most voters will consider something even simpler: Do you want more Stephen Harper? Which, given the Conservative leader's own rhetoric, is a question suffused with values.