What Andrew Scheer Gets Wrong about “Privilege”

“…we have a new entry in the contest for the most craven wielding of social justice lingo in Canadian political history: Andrew Scheer exhorting the individuals aiding indigenous rail blockades to, ‘check their privilege.'”

Even by Canadian standards, our last election was a master class in political superfluity. With little difference between the two major parties (voters got to choose between tax cuts and tax cuts, a toothless environmental policy and an even more toothless environmental policy), the election focused on questions of personal morality, with both the Liberals and Conservatives scrambling to unearth decades-old instances of politically incorrect behavior committed by the opposing party leader. The Liberals struck first, highlighting a fourteen-year-old video in which Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer—then an upstart Tory MP—expressed his disapproval of gay marriage (something unlikely to surprise anyone above the age of adolescence, as in 2004 this was the position not just of the Conservative Party, but of most Canadians). Shortly thereafter, photos of Justin Trudeau donning himself in blackface on multiple occasions surfaced. The Prime Minister, then, held a press conference in which he rattled off PC buzzwords with such eagerness that you’d be forgiven for thinking the Canadian Human Rights Commission had paid him for product placement. “Systemic,” “intersectionality,” “privilege,” “micro-aggression”…we’re good, right?

One might think that tacky gestures such as these would be confined to election season—a time when, to paraphrase former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, one needn’t talk about serious issues. Today, electioneering—like war in Orwell’s 1984—is constant. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that we have a new entry in the contest for the most craven wielding of social justice lingo in Canadian political history: Andrew Scheer exhorting the individuals aiding indigenous rail blockades to, “check their privilege.”

A bit of context is needed. In British Columbia, TC Energy is currently attempting to construct a 670km pipeline, “Coastal GasLink”, to ship natural gas from Dawson Creek to Kitimat. The pipeline passes through the traditional lands of several First Nations, including unceded territories. (The absence of historical treaties in British Columbia between the Crown and indigenous peoples has made it particularly susceptible to First Nations land claims.) TC Energy has engaged in a consultation with said groups and boasts that Coastal GasLink is supported by all 20 of those whose traditional lands overlap with the pipeline’s projected length. The problem is with whom they consulted. While it’s true that 20 of the elected band councils agreed to back the project, many of their hereditary chiefs, including those of the Wet’suwet’en nation, continue to oppose it. Making matters more complicated is the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada already recognized both aboriginal land title and the authority of hereditary chiefs to co-govern in a 1997 decision, Delgamuukw v. British Columbia. The question of whether the Wet’suwet’en’s hold a legal title to their own traditional lands was, however, not resolved by this decision. Due to procedural errors, a retrial was ordered, but it has not yet taken place.