Compassion Over Contempt: Canada’s Path to Healing After the Election

April 29, 2025

The campaign is over, the signs are coming down, and while the final ballots are still being counted, an arduous and bracing election season is drawing to a close. Across the country, Canadians are sorting through a complex mix of emotions: relief, disappointment, exhaustion, and possibility.

But beyond winners and losers, something deeper and more consequential demands our urgent attention: the bruises left not only by this divisive campaign, but by years of rising polarization and social fracture. Healing and the restoration of civility are not just post-election tasks; they are the long-overdue work of repairing the fabric of our democracy.

This election was not the beginning of our divisions, but their culmination. Canada, traditionally known for politeness and moderation, has not been immune from the populist wave that swept much of the world. Polarization, once seemingly foreign to our shores, became an everyday reality in our political discourse. Family dinners, community gatherings, even hockey locker rooms—places once safe from political acrimony—felt the tremors of division.

Yet, now that ballots have been cast, the question before every Canadian is simple but profound: How do we move forward, regardless of how we voted? How do we rebuild trust, restore dialogue, and nurture a democracy bruised by suspicion and resentment?

The answer lies in consciously choosing compassion over contempt.

Contempt is seductive; it simplifies our worldview, casting those who disagree with us as morally deficient or dangerously misguided. But contempt is also corrosive. It erodes trust, shuts down dialogue, and makes compromise impossible. Worse, contempt feeds cycles of bitterness, inflaming tensions until civility itself breaks down.

Compassion, on the other hand, demands something difficult but necessary: seeing the humanity in those we disagree with. It insists we understand—truly understand—the anxieties, hopes, and grievances of our neighbours. Compassion does not ask us to abandon our beliefs; it asks us to temper the instinct toward ideological purity with the harder work of respectful engagement, seeking common ground and compromise where we can.

Canada is uniquely positioned to model this compassionate democratic renewal. Our national identity has long blended diverse cultures, languages, and beliefs into a peaceful coexistence. This isn’t simply feel-good nationalism; it is an historical truth. We are the country of compromise, the nation that built unity without uniformity. Today, that ethos must guide us again.

Anthropologists like Émile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons remind us that after periods of conflict or upheaval, societies instinctively seek to restore a sense of equilibrium. Conflict, while disruptive, can also serve as a catalyst for collective renewal—if channelled wisely. In their view, rituals, shared symbols, and acts of collective will help re-establish the social fabric, reaffirming the values and institutions that hold a community together. Today, following an election that laid bare old wounds and deeper fractures—Canada has a profound opportunity to engage in this rebalancing act: to create spaces where differences are acknowledged but common bonds are strengthened, and where the fractures of recent years are not left to fester but are consciously healed through renewed civic engagement.

Mark Carney, as Prime Minister, now faces a great challenge—and a great opportunity. He can lead with empathy, governing not just for those who voted Liberal but for all Canadians, setting a tone of respectful engagement. Opposition parties must respond in kind, providing vigorous accountability but eschewing cynical attacks and grievance politics that deepen divides.

Yet the ultimate responsibility rests not with political leaders, but with each of us. Healing cannot be legislated; it must be lived. Canadians of every political stripe must consciously choose kindness in daily interactions, practice active listening, and resist the allure of partisan contempt.

Psychologists have long recognized that anger is often not a primary emotion, but a mask for deeper distress: fear, frustration, sadness, or pain. As Dr. Harriet Lerner, a clinical psychologist and leading expert on anger, has written, "Anger is a signal" — one that often points to hurt or vulnerability underneath. Next time you see an "F* Carney" bumper sticker, or hear a bitter remark about politics, try to remember: you’re seeing an expression of suffering. Respond not with scorn, but with compassion.

We do not yet know if the storm of populism has fully passed, or if more turbulence lies ahead. But either way, our path forward remains clear. Cooler heads must prevail. Our national motto, spoken through action more than words, must be compassion over contempt.

This is the great civic project of our time: to choose compassion over contempt, to repair what has been frayed, and to renew the democratic bonds that hold us together. The task belongs to every Canadian, no matter how they voted. Our democracy, our communities, indeed our future together depend upon it.