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Alberta NDP MP Shannon Phillips speaks during a press conference in Ottawa on June 28, 2018. Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press
Alberta NDP MP Shannon Phillips' announcement this week that she was retiring from politics went largely unnoticed in most parts of the country.
That's unfortunate. This has been one of the most significant events in our politics in recent years. And frankly, this is a decision that should concern us all, that should alarm us as a country.
For those of you who don't know Phillips, let me give you a brief introduction: She's a three-time elected NDP member of parliament from Lethbridge, a city not often known as a bastion of progressivism. Her victories speak to her tenacity and ability to find common ground among people with a wide range of views.
She was a highly effective environment minister under Rachel Notley's NDP government, and in her spare time she vented her frustrations at roller derby tracks, participating under the pseudonym Noam Stompsky, in homage to the social commentator Noam Chomsky. As environment minister, her proposals for greater protection of provincial parks near her electorate irritated some local police officers.
In 2017, two of those same police officers (who are also off-road enthusiasts, an activity proposed to be restricted by new park protections) decided to surveil Ms. Phillips without cause, grossly invading her privacy and personal safety. This is the sort of thing you'd expect from law enforcement in the southern United States, not Canada. Equally disturbing is that the Alberta Prosecution Service decided last month not to take the matter to court, despite the province's Serious Incident Response Team recommending there was strong evidence that criminal activity was committed by Lethbridge officers.
It is perhaps not surprising that Phillips cited it in a statement announcing her departure from politics next month, when she called police actions “far beyond the bounds of the rule of law and our liberal democratic institutions, and the police have never been held to account or shown a shred of accountability.”
Think about it: it doesn't matter if you live in Markham, Ontario, Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, or Poise Coupe, British Columbia, we should all be outraged that something like this could happen in our country.
The other reasons Phillips gives for her decision are just as dire and, sadly, all too common: the coarsening of political discourse, the frightening spread of misinformation, the stigma and hatred directed at politicians, especially women, and the rapidly eroding ability to see public office as a worthwhile goal.
All of this is a threat to Canada, and many other politicians, mostly women, have cited it as a justification for seeking safer public office.
I will admit that politicians are at least partially responsible for the deterioration of public life we ​​are witnessing. To pretend that we are not importing some of the same sordid politics we see in the United States is to be completely ignorant of reality. The lack of civility in the House of Representatives is as bad as it has ever been, and no one cares. The proceedings are dominated by a Speaker whom many do not respect and actively seek to remove. As a result, we see daily scenes that look like a class of high school students storming out in front of a helpless substitute teacher.
Let's be honest: Who in their right mind would want to run for public office? What sane woman, what sane man, would want to subject himself to the vile and demoralizing slander (online and otherwise) that has become an expected part of being a politician in Canada? The lure of a high salary and a nice pension (if you can survive six years at the zoo) just doesn't hold much appeal.
(I guarantee that within minutes of this column being published online, keyboard warriors will be pounding away like crazy with comments like, “Boo hoo. If women can't stand the heat, they should stay in the kitchen.” And it will get “liked” many times, with others chiming in with equally brilliant, witty remarks.)
Meanwhile, we will gather at summer barbecues, talk about how terrible our politicians are, and lament the fact that nothing is being done to solve the many problems that plague this country. We will conveniently ignore the corruption that is corroding our politics, which will ultimately destroy the foundations of our democracy as we know it.
Some will say that's an exaggeration, a wake-up call. Maybe it is. I like to think of it as a prediction of what will happen if we don't wake up to the realities that currently overwhelm and suffocate our politics.
