What if you’re a Liberal, and Justin Trudeau’s insinuations about construction workers makes you feel ridiculous? What if you’re Conservative but you can’t stand the xenophobic immigration rhetoric that Andrew Scheer and company are peddling? What if you’re simply, actually, in the middle of the most divided election Canada has seen in many years? A new Maclean’s project takes aim at the sports team mentality that we used to smugly ascribe to American politics and tries to figure out when the dialogue stopped and how to get it started again.

We know! Whatever’s wrong with the Left, what’s wrong with the Right is worse! This is bothsides-ism at its best! This is more SJW propaganda! Please stop it. We’re not going to solve anything with these discussions. And the point of this two-part series is not to declare a winner. The point is to turn a mirror on the labels we fling at one another and hopefully realize that whatever gap there is between Liberals and Conservatives in Canada, both parties’ strategies are actively widening it. And that’s not good for anyone.

GUEST: John Geddes, Ottawa Bureau Chief, Maclean’s