Canadians can take small comfort from the death spiral of Donald Trump’s campaign. While his presidential vision implodes below the border, Canada is giving birth to its own version of diversity and divisiveness close to home.

On Saturday, maverick Conservative MP Kellie Leitch will officially launch her increasingly popular campaign to become our federal opposition leader, positioning herself to one day become prime minister. An obscure if peculiar cabinet minister during Stephen Harper’s reign, she has risen to sudden fame — or infamy — as the practicing physician who opens wounds rather than healing them.

Leitch emerged as a deeply polarizing figure during the last federal election, when she unveiled the notorious “Barbaric cultural practices tip line” that invited Canadians to snitch on suspicious Muslims in our midst — wherever they might lurk. Substitute “barbarism” for “terrorism,” add a bit of burqa baiting, and you have an irresistible recipe for dehumanizing and demonizing Muslim Canadians.

Never mind political correctness. Cultural correctness is what Leitch and her ilk are selling as she proposes vetting the values of immigrants.

So much for Canadian smugness. Are we really that much better than Americans, with their ongoing indulgence of Trump’s malignant Muslim-baiting, Mexico-bashing and misogyny raving?

In the Parti Québécois leadership race, former cabinet minister Jean-François Lisée has just triumphed with a campaign reprising his province’s flirtation with identity politics — criticizing his rival for wishing Muslims well on an Islamic holiday. Everything old is new again.

Canadians didn’t like, at first, Leitch’s in-your-face maligning of Muslims in mid-campaign, for which she subsequently apologized. But polls suggest they are warming up to the good doctor’s more surgical attempts to vet the values of foreigners — and responding to her fundraising efforts.

The federal Liberals won praise for bringing in 25,000 Syrian refugees while the Americans remained hostile. But more recent polls show a majority of Canadians are skeptical of the new arrivals.

It strikes me, after welcoming a Syrian refugee family last month, and after having lived overseas for a decade in areas of intense demographic and religious differences, that this split personality is deeply embedded in the Canadian psyche:

We imagine ourselves beyond bigotry. But beware the Canadian penchant for righteous, holier-than-thou preaching about our open-mindedness.

Cheerleading isn’t leading. Idealism can blind us to the day-to-day reality of diversity.

In truth, our body politic is easily rattled by the challenges that arise when different cultural traditions collide. Those tensions might be over conflicting attitudes to sex education, or about a new mosque sounding the call to prayers, or ethnic enclaves concentrated in one region. Problems are exacerbated when people paper over legitimate differences, pretending that we are all one big happy Canadian family

A recent column calling on politicians to espouse tolerance in their public speeches sparked comments from some readers (activists and politicos) criticizing me for using that very word: Tolerance, they argued, bespeaks condescension, superiority, insincerity and negativity.

After all, one tolerates something unpleasant — a loud noise, a bad smell. One has “zero-tolerance” for drugs. Surely we should celebrate diversity, not merely tolerate our differences, these readers argued.

Well, yes and no. To me, tolerance is a worthy objective in itself, because it is eminently realistic and achievable. Here’s how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines tolerance:

First, a “willingness to accept feelings, habits or beliefs that are different from your own.” Second, “the ability to accept, experience or survive something harmful or unpleasant.”

Tolerance can, in fact, have a double-meaning — fairness versus forbearance. Which is quite apt.

It’s understandable that many Canadians try to put a relentlessly positive spin on diversity, calling on us to “celebrate” and “embrace” it — appealing to our better angels. But let’s be honest with ourselves.

There’s not always cause for celebration. Not all diversity is delightful.

For example, one can be tolerant of the face-concealing burqa, without necessarily celebrating it. The Islamic call to prayers wafting from a nearby mosque might annoy some neighbours, until they realize that church bells pealing nearby are also part of the religious landscape — and so one tunes out the noise, rather than praying for silence.

Tolerance is an antidote to intolerance and discrimination. We needn’t sugar coat all diversity. Far better to truly understand differences while seeking reasonable accommodation.

Let’s not make tolerance a dirty word. If we persist in pretending that all diversity is positivity, we will quickly get caught out in a lie — and feed the resentment that Trump harvests across America, or that Leitch is mining in the Conservative leadership race.

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Live and let live. Even if you don’t always love the lives others lead.

It’s better than living a lie. The best way to defend diversity is with honesty — not defensiveness.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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