Politicizing Facts in Canadian Parliament: A Comparative Analysis of the 35th and 42nd Parliament

Abstract Contemporary political controversies often seem to centre on issues that can be verified empirically. This article investigates the hypothesis that right-wing populism increases such contestation—which I call the politicization of facts—by a comparison of parliamentary debates on 44 bills in the Canadian parliament spanning two time periods (1994–1997 and 2015–2019) and two subjects (the environment and crime). The main findings are that in the legislative debates under study (1) the politicization of facts has been more intense when the populist Reform Party was the main right-wing opposition than when that role was played by the more mainstream Conservative Party of Canada and when the legislation under discussion was about crime than when it was about the environment, and (2) the Reform Party has been more active in politicizing facts about crime, whereas the Conservative Party has been more involved in politicizing facts about the environment.