Donald Trump and the Survival (?) of Canadian Democracy

Thursday, Nov 03, 2022

1:30pm - 3:00pm

Lecture by:
Geoffrey Stevens

Democracy is under attack almost everywhere. In North America, its survival is threatened by far-right extremist groups, accountable only to their motley collection of anarchists, white supremacists, Trudeau despisers, anti-vaxxers, hate mongers, anti-Semites, religious fanatics, anti-abortionists, neo-Nazis and assorted conspiracy nuts. They are abetted by a public that is largely oblivious to the threat, by voters too lazy to exercise their franchise, by social media that spread the lies that are the lifeblood of extremism – and by political leaders too timid to challenge the enemies of democracy.

This talk will focus on the challenges to democracy in Canada as seen through the prism of the American midterm elections on Nov. 8, five days after this session. Potentially the most significant midterms in modern U.S. history, they will be a barometer by which to measure the force of extremism in public life today.

Stevens will pose 4 questions and invite the audience to post responses via polling as the talk continues. Tentatively:

-Will Donald Trump, the disruptor-in-chief, run for President again in 2024?
-If he does, can the U.S. political system survive the experience?
-Is Joe Biden doomed to go down in history as a failed president?
-What message will the midterms send to Canada and Canadians?

As important as the results of these elections will be, the way they play out will be just as important.

The talk will give Canadian and American examples of political extremism, offer a few suggestions for countering anti-democratic forces, and conclude with a Q&A drawing on Poll responses to the 4 questions.

About The Lecturer

Geoffrey Stevens

A native of London, Ont., Geoff is a journalist, author and teacher. After graduating from Western in English and History, he joined the reporting staff of The Globe and Mail. He spent 15 years in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, including eight years as The Globe and Mail’s associate editor and national political columnist in Ottawa, appearing daily on the editorial page. He has also been The Globe’s Queen’s Park bureau chief, national editor, sports editor and managing editor; Ottawa correspondent for Time magazine; and managing editor of Maclean’s magazine, as well as publisher and editor of the Sun Times of Canada, a Tampa, FL-based newspaper for Canadian snowbirds.

After teaching a “Politics and the Media” course for fourth-year and graduate students at the University of Toronto, he moved to Cambridge, Ont. From 2004 until retiring at the end of 2020, he taught political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He continues to write a column of political opinion that appears every Monday in six daily newspapers in Ontario.

Geoff is the author or co-author of six books on political subjects. The Player: The Life and Times of Dalton Camp, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Drainie-Taylor prize for the best biography of 2003. Most recently, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald and published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust’s 2022 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. (Alas, Flora! did not win the prize and the $25,000 cheque that went with it.)

In June 2007, Laurier awarded Geoff an honorary Doctor of Letters degree for his “unique and outstanding lifelong contribution to political reporting and public discourse across Canada.” He is a life director of the Canadian Journalism Foundation and a long-time judge of the annual National Newspaper Awards.