Fixing Canada: How can we bridge the partisan divide?

You’ve probably heard — from politicians, experts or even just friends and family — that “Canada is broken”. Everyone can draw their own conclusions about that, but there’s no denying some key aspects of the country aren’t working well for many of us. And complaining about that is easy, it’s fixing it that’s the tough part. This week, The Big Story is trying to do that with Fixing Canada — a five-part series featuring deep dives into five issues that touch every Canadian, looking to experts to diagnose the problem — but most importantly, to prescribe the cure.

Related:

• Fixing Canada: The competition
• Fixing Canada: How do we create world-class transit?
• Fixing Canada: How to create a more just immigration system?
• Fixing Canada: Why money alone won’t solve the health-care crisis

Today, the final episode of our series, our polarized political climate. If you want to know why it’s so hard to make real progress on the issues we’ve discuss for the past four days, this is a big part of that answer.

Justin Ling is an investigative journalist and author of the Bug-Eyed and Shameless newsletter.

“People are not necessarily rushing to the fringes on ideological or policy matters, right? What they’re often doing, and especially in the Canadian context, is that they are remaking themselves in the image of their political party,” said Ling. 

How did we get this way? Can we just blame the internet or do we have to look in the mirror, too? What can years of research into our growing polarization show us that actually works?