EDITORIAL: The need for unity

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did little to bring the country together in his address from where he was in COVID isolation on Monday afternoon. If anything, he just further divided the nation.

While Trudeau smiled throughout, his remarks weren’t happy ones. He was focused on the negative.

The PM went out of his way to draw attention to the bad actors on Parliament Hill during the convoy freedom protest, rather than acknowledge it was a peaceful event that drew people from all walks of life.

He also went out of his way to be extremely partisan. Trudeau spent a lot of time focused on attacking Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, who had practically nothing to do with what transpired over the weekend.

This is not the sort of leadership we need right now. We need politicians who listen — really listen — to what the people are saying. We need politicians who are understanding and who seek to foster unity.

The truth is that a lot of Canadians are hurting right now.

There are those who have lost so much the past two years — whether it is directly because of COVID-19 or because of the harms caused by the lockdowns and other measures.

It’s understandable that emotions are raw. It’s been a tough couple of years. Why can’t we have compassion for others tough?

Part of the problem is that politicians and their staffers and strategists can only see the pandemic through a political strategy lens. Everything is about polls and votes. But the challenges of the past two years have been anything but political — they’ve been a deeply human time full of earnest emotions.

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As we’ve said before in this space, Canada needs to do away with the bulk of its COVID-19 restrictions, just like other countries are doing. We need to learn to live with COVID-19, just as our own public health officials are now urging us to do.

Not everyone is going to be on the same page. That’s OK. We won’t get 100% agreement on where to head next just like we won’t get a 100% vaccination rate.

It’s not too much though to expect politicians to approach these issues with a view to unity over division.