I don't know if this is because I'm American and I don't know much about Canadian politics before 2015/2016 but has Canadian politics always been like this? Has Canada's politics become more Americanized since Trump took office?
I wouldn't use the intensity of rhetoric on Twitter as a proxy for much of anything. That said, to the extent that it's true, it's been true for a lot longer than Donald Trump's been in poliics. There's this weird phenomenon where people idealize the old Canadian right as this milquetoast ultra-centrist force that never had a harder edge until X (usually the Reform Party) happened, and it's just not true.
The Tories and their predecessors have long been the rural Anglo party and have acted accordingly, which means they've long been relatively pro-gun and skeptical of multiculturalism. The religious right is a lot less prominent here, but they found a home in the Tories long before Trump. The Trudeau hate is in part because his father was PM in the 70's and early 80's and was the most despised-by-Tories leader we've ever had. Heck even the populist tone has an antedecent in Diefenbaker using harsh attacks to win elections in the 50's.
I do think Canadian politics is becoming more Americanized, but it's process that started long before Trump.
And didn't Reform rise because Mulroney was too milquetoast for a lot of Tories?
While that was no doubt a factor, the biggest reason for the rise of the Reform party was a feeling in much of Western Canada that the PCs, like the Liberals, were ignoring their concerns in favour of the concerns of Central Canada, and Quebec in particular. In that way, their origins were more regional than ideological (though again, ideological factors were absolutely part of the rise of the Reform party and I don't mean to underplay them), hence many voters who voted NDP in 1988 voted Reform in 1993.
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