TRUMP-PROOFING CANADA
As I approach the two year anniversary of this blog, I now have a portfolio of pronouncements of sufficient volume and breadth to merit a critical revisiting. Looking back at my rants, the one that caught my eye was the second piece that I did in August of 2015 titled “Good Things Come in Threes” that extolled the virtues of the Canadian three-party political landscape as a bulwark against Trump-style populism.
While the piece does give rise to a chuckle at my assertion that neither Trump nor Sanders were a real threat to gain their respective party’s nomination, it does identify a phenomenon of Canadian political discourse that is once again evident in the current races for the leadership of Canada’s two major non-governing parties. In a three party system, the parties of the left and right are left at least somewhat obliged to remain anchored to the fundamental tenets of their purported ideology. The right is pro-business and inclined to social conservatism; the left is the advocate for the working class and socially progressive. The party of the centre is left to strike a balance between these competing but insidiously symbiotic political agendas.
Of course, this formulation does not always work perfectly. The 2015 Canadian federal election saw the NDP lean right on fiscal policy, hoping to complete the occupation of the centre that had been initiated by the sainted Jack Layton. This exposed their left flank to Justin Trudeau in the same manner that the old PC party exposed its right flank to Preston Manning’s Reform party in 1997 (the parties of the right and left are always vulnerable when hubris inspires them to lean too far to the centre). But inevitably things return to their equilibrium state, and this is clearly evident in the current leadership races for both the Conservatives and the NDP.
The slate of candidates for the Conservatives predictably includes one candidate that openly courts the Xenophobic socially conservative arm of the Trump coalition, while the NDP leadership hopefuls uniformly embrace the anti-corporatist, anti-globalist economic strain of the Trump message. Canadian xenophobes need not embrace anti-trade policy to find their voice, nor do anti-globalists need to embrace xenophobia to protect Canadian workers. There is room on the Canadian ballot for both Bernie Sanders AND a party of the centre, and a ballot that has room for both of these political interest groups is not one that is accommodating to the Frankenstein’s monster that is Trump.
Many have raised the alarm that the Kevin O’Leary candidacy represents the introduction of Trump populism to Canada, but the equivalency is superficial. The marketability of celebrity businessmen/reality stars as political leaders is definitely a troubling indication of where the political and social culture is heading in North America. That being said, there is little likelihood that a Trump-style populist, even if so inclined, would find it as easy to straddle the disaffected on the right and centre-left in Canada as it proved to be in the US.