“Citizens ‘don’t feel safe’ as hate fills Edmonton’s streets,” proclaimed the Toronto Star on April 20, in reference to a gathering of Albertan white supremacists—one of at least two that occurred that month. In the lead paragraph, Star reporter Omar Mosleh grimly noted the ironic nature of a venue, Edmonton’s Churchill Square, “a place named after a world leader instrumental in defeating the Nazis.” The article was widely shared on progressive social media, where tales of Canada’s supposed slide into neo-Nazi extremism are now common currency.

But for anyone who looked past the headline, a mere glance at the accompanying photo showed the underwhelming totality of Edmonton’s allegedly epic hate-fest: about a dozen random locals, surrounded by a larger number of counter-protestors and curious onlookers, plus a sizeable detachment of police officers keeping order. Even if one accepts the Star’s generous tally of right-wing protestors at the pictured event—“about 15 people”—the conceit that “hate fills Edmonton’s streets” is ludicrous. There aren’t enough haters here to fill a parking spot.

The fact that such an article could appear in Canada’s biggest newspaper helps explain the hysterical tone suffusing our just-concluded federal election campaign, in which Justin Trudeau’s incumbent Liberals lost the popular vote to the opposition Conservatives, and got knocked down to minority Parliamentary status. As I wrote recently in Foreign Policy magazine, many of the big substantive issues that traditionally have divided Canadians—separatism, free trade, inter-provincial payments—weren’t on the table during this election cycle. And so much of the campaign discourse devolved into vacuous fearmongering.