Voters in the United States have decided to suspend the great American Experiment in Democracy for (at least) four years. This puts their country in such august company as China under Xi Jinping, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Russia under Vladimir Putin, Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
While bureaucrats fret over how to parry with a man who detailed his bully-and-bluster tactics in his telling book, The Art of the Deal, there is an even larger question our federal politicians need to contemplate: Can the populism that is sweeping across many once-democratic nations around the world find a home in Canada?
The short answer is: probably.
Not that Canadians would necessarily ever embrace a character so repugnant and profane as Donald Trump. Perhaps it’s our British roots that drive us to be more dignified than falling for a misogynistic convicted felon who encouraged an attempted coup on the nation whose constitution he had a duty to uphold.
No, in Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre we have a populist so mild by comparison, he seems like a cuddly pussycat. This is a guy who shows his wild side by walking down alleys and speaking forcefully (a la Rick Mercer) while sporting an Axe the Tax T-shirt. Thank the higher powers for small mercies.
But, while Pierre’s spice-free appetizer is easy to digest, the main course is not so different from what we’re witnessing in some of those jurisdictions mentioned above. Canadians, like our southern neighbours, are primed for a new world order.
Consider just a few of the factors at play.
Immigration was allowed to run out of control: The well-meaning (that’s intended as an insult) Liberal government of Justin Trudeau encouraged increased immigration to address the need to grow our population and to address significant shortfalls in our labour force. Sadly, the Trudeau government failed to reach a deal with other levels of government to find all these new Canadians decent housing to live in. As a result, home prices have torn through the stratosphere, putting the home-ownership dream out of reach for many young families.
Ham-handed efforts to curb carbon emissions have deepened divisions in the country: In Alberta and Saskatchewan, which both rely heavily on resource revenue, the Trudeau government seems to be resorting to the stick rather than the carrot to try to cut emissions. Many oil and gas producers are feeling betrayed as they realize the feds are no longer interested in working with them to find solutions that curb emissions while keeping the economy alive. Resentment among workers, whose jobs are very much at risk, is running deep. You can find their message on every second 4X4.
Social media (and Russian trolls?) have eroded respect for, and trust in, our elites: Medical authorities really did know what they were talking about when they put in restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. And they were learning on the fly about a health threat whose dimensions were not fully known. Yet, people with little or no educational background in medicine scoffed at those measures and promoted quack “cures” like Ivermectin. Social media spread this nonsense like wildfire, undercutting our confidence in the very people in whom we should put our trust.
Harmful myths about crime are allowed to fester: Thanks to the hobbled mainstream media, stories that need to be reported with depth and nuance are given superficial treatment. Those of us who worked in the biz back in the day know that crime coverage is a quick and dirty way to get eyeballs. Many media outlets now just chase ambulances because they don’t have the resources needed to dig deeper. And sustained crime coverage without adequate perspective pieces underscores the perception that crime is running out of control. Ask yourself: Have you read any stories recently that pointed out the crime rate in Canada in 2023 was 25 per cent lower than peak levels in 2003?
Universal healthcare is under siege: Wait times at ERs are unbearable and an estimated 6.5 million Canadians do not have a family doctor or nurse practitioner they can see regularly. Patients, in some cases, must endure many months in pain waiting for hip surgeries. Even a simple tonsillectomy can take weeks to schedule.
Our prime minister is out of touch with the shifting mood: Look, I’ll be honest. I never believed that Justin Trudeau had the chops to run the nation. Initially, I was proven wrong. In 2015, when he was first elected prime minister, Trudeau showed that he had captured the zeitgeist of a new generation of voters. He had an ambitious and progressive agenda, and he seemed determined to connect with every region of this wildly disparate country. Now, he seems tone-deaf to the public mood. He seems to be clinging to the schtick that got him first elected, unable to fully understand that Canadians are tired of runaway inflation and regional factionalism. It feels like he has crawled into a cave, hoping against hope that Canadians will once again fall in love with him.
I’m sure each of you can come up with even more grievances. But these and similar factors have contributed to a sense that things are bad and are only going to get worse. It’s emotions like that that can trigger a willingness to jump off the RMS Democracy and head for the lifeboats, no matter how leaky. Maybe, some people reason, a real boss’s boss can get us back on course.
That’s partly what happened in the U.S. There was an overpowering sense of malaise, and the folks in office seemed powerless to fix it. It can happen here, too.
As the pollsters have once again learned in the U.S. election, predicting the future is tricky. It is hard to say how Canadians will react when Trump starts kicking out immigrants and sending them to our borders, when his tariffs drive up the cost of goods while choking our markets, and when agreements that created a fully integrated auto industry are torn up, sending our economy into a tailspin.
Will we be desperate enough to go down the authoritarian road? Or will we be so horrified by what we see in the U.S. as Trump flexes his newfound muscles that we’ll seek a better path? The next few years will test what it means to be Canadian, trying to live in peace beside an aging, grumpy elephant.
The only thing for certain is the Trudeau Liberals in Canada seem as doomed as the Democrats were in the U.S. We need a new Moses, and fast.
Doug Firby is an award-winning editorial writer with over four decades of experience working for newspapers, magazines and online publications in Ontario and western Canada. Previously, he served as Editorial Page Editor at the Calgary Herald.
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