Has Canadian politics become more Americanized since Trump?

[Lechasseur]

No right-wing government will be formed in Canada for a long, long time that is not premised on accepting multi-cultural dogma that is predominant in Canadian politics.

I'll just add to the pile on top of pro-multiculturalism...

-  pro-choice LAWS
- universal healthcare
- gay rights (not necessarily trans rights though).

Conservativees do better when they virtue signal that they're pro-life in their personal lives, and they tend to do well with anti-trans dog whistling, as long as it's subtle enough and they non-enthusiastically claim to be pro-trans when pressured.

The fulcrim of any such winning coalition seems to be a mix of libertarianism (so against the most extreme kinds of gun control at the very least, among other things), and fiscal conservativism, right?

Yeah I guess that sounds about right. Conservative leaders usually have to appease lots of little sub-groups with hard-right views on specific topics to win, without appeasing them too much and alienating the relatively large group of centrist swing voters / occasional voters that decide most of our elections. It's like trying to attract and retain Trump voters AND non-leftist Hillary voters by not being Sanders. Delicate balancing act.

And all this merely puts them within striking distance of the Liberals. The Liberals still have to be weakened for this strengthened conservative movement to actually win government.

Exactly. The Liberals have to just not f___ up and they've basically got federal politics by the bollocks.

I suggested in the Canada megathread that the Conservatives shift a little bit left. IMO it would help them a lot. They would anger their die-hard supporters, but ultimately 90%+ of those die-hards are still going to vote Conservative, they're just gonna pinch their noses a little bit when they do it. There are a lot of centrist voters that could be potentially won that way, and you also back the Liberals into a corner. Do they become the party that's almost the same as the Conservatives or almost the same as the NDP?

What exactly do you think they should shift left on? And what do you think should be the strategy for that?

[Lechasseur]

Well first, I don't think noise on Twitter is very representative of the Canadian population--after all, Twitter thought the PPC was going to sweep the nation.

You're right in making the observation that Canadian politics are getting more Americanized. But this really isn't something new, it's something that has been happening throughout Canadian history. The long-term trajectory of English Canada has been Americanization, whether we like it or not, and a more American style of politics is a consequence of it. I'll go into it further if anyone is interested, but both the major Canadian parties have been borrowing from their American counterparts for a very long time.

So I don't think this is a new, unique phenomenon by any means. However, there are some ways in which Canada is genuinely different from the US, and that prevents Canada from going full-on America.

For one, the Liberal base isn't as broad a tent as the Democratic Party's base--this is both a weakness and a strength. It's a weakness when they're out of power, because the base isn't that big. But it means more party discipline and message control. Think about it: the Democratic Party has a base that ranges from AOC to Joe Manchin. In Canada, AOC would be NDP and Manchin would be CPC. The internal divisions that haunt the Democratic Party don't haunt the Liberals. The Liberal Party knows its base: middle-class, professional types, mostly living in major metro areas; non-Franco Quebecers; the atlantic provinces. Keep them happy, and you're in the clear. Hard-left types are mostly in the NDP, meaning there isn't a centrist-leftist divide within the Liberal Party apparatus. But on election day, a lot of those hardcore lefties will vote Liberal anyway, fearing a Conservative gov't.

As for the Tories, well, it's the opposite. You're right, a big chunk of their base is made up of hardcore right wingers that would fit right into a MAGA rally. But they're only one part of the coalition. The Conservative Party of Canada has to accommodate a HUGE spectrum of voters--from disaffected Liberals, to the religious right, to the MAGA right, to libertarians, etc etc. You see this conflict all the time in Canada. When it comes to abortion, the Tories always have to toe a really fine line between pro-choice and pro-life to avoid alienating any part of the base. Their message on immigration also has to toe this thin line, because they know their base, but they also know you'll never win a Canadian election without those immigrant-heavy suburbs.

Check out their ongoing leadership race: a candidate, Derek Sloan, suggested that Canada's Chief Health Officer is doing China's bidding, and questioned her loyalty to Canada. She happens to be of Chinese descent. I can't post a link because I haven't made enough posts on this website, but I'd suggest looking up the following: Rookie Belleville, Ont., MP gets blowback for ‘racist’ comments against Canada’s top doctor

Is it a dogwhistle? Who knows, the whole point of dogwhistling is that it's impossible to prove. But it's clearly inappropriate and distasteful for a sitting MP to make, especially one who is running to be the party leader (and thus, the Prime Ministerial candidate). Now Sloan isn't going to win the race, but he's been able to meet the strict fundraising and membership requirements, so there clearly is a base. So this relatively minor distasteful molehill gets made into a mountain in this country, because there's no obvious position for the Tories to take. If they stand by Sloan, they risk alienating moderate voters and ESPECIALLY Chinese-Canadian voters, who have been voting pretty reliably Conservative for a few election cycles now. But Sloan obviously has appeal among the far-right twitter set you mentioned, and the Tories don't want to alienate those people either. So the entire existence of the Conservative Party is founded on eggshells, which makes running an effective campaign extremely difficult in a parliamentary system. Instead they have been focusing on destroying Trudeau's credibility so much that they win by default. This will bear fruit inevitably, but in doing so they may relegate themselves to a protest party.

I guess I kinda went off topic, so I'll bring it back here: yes, Canadian politics have gotten more Americanized. But that's not so much Trump as it is the inevitable conclusion of sharing a continent for over 150 years. However, there are real differences that make Trump-style politics tricky in Canada.

Tbf, someone like Joe Manchin would be a conservative in any other Western country.

It's only in the US where he'd be a Democrat.

I think the old Blue Dog wing of the Democratic Party would have been conservatives anywhere outside the US.

[CumbrianLefty]

Of course, some of the old Deep South "Democrats" would have been actual fascists elsewhere

[DC Al Fine]

It was under Diefenbaker that the Prairies became a Conservative stronghold (the party used to be centered in Ontario and the Maritimes).  Although his politics were different, the Diefenbaker base looks a lot like the Conservative base today.  He combined economic populism with cultural conservatism.

Diefenbaker was described as a "Red Tory" but the definition has shifted to business-friendly social liberals. 

I'd have been a Red Tory (One Nation Conservative in the UK) in the old sense (like Diefenbaker) but not in the later sense (the business friendly social liberal sense).

Yes, this also shows the limited utility of "Red Tory". It's a decent enough term for sussing out factions in a given time period, but it's almost useless once you expand it beyond that.

[T'Chenka]

No right-wing government will be formed in Canada for a long, long time that is not premised on accepting multi-cultural dogma that is predominant in Canadian politics.

I'll just add to the pile on top of pro-multiculturalism...

-  pro-choice LAWS
- universal healthcare
- gay rights (not necessarily trans rights though).

Conservativees do better when they virtue signal that they're pro-life in their personal lives, and they tend to do well with anti-trans dog whistling, as long as it's subtle enough and they non-enthusiastically claim to be pro-trans when pressured.

The fulcrim of any such winning coalition seems to be a mix of libertarianism (so against the most extreme kinds of gun control at the very least, among other things), and fiscal conservativism, right?

Yeah I guess that sounds about right. Conservative leaders usually have to appease lots of little sub-groups with hard-right views on specific topics to win, without appeasing them too much and alienating the relatively large group of centrist swing voters / occasional voters that decide most of our elections. It's like trying to attract and retain Trump voters AND non-leftist Hillary voters by not being Sanders. Delicate balancing act.

And all this merely puts them within striking distance of the Liberals. The Liberals still have to be weakened for this strengthened conservative movement to actually win government.

Exactly. The Liberals have to just not f___ up and they've basically got federal politics by the bollocks.

I suggested in the Canada megathread that the Conservatives shift a little bit left. IMO it would help them a lot. They would anger their die-hard supporters, but ultimately 90%+ of those die-hards are still going to vote Conservative, they're just gonna pinch their noses a little bit when they do it. There are a lot of centrist voters that could be potentially won that way, and you also back the Liberals into a corner. Do they become the party that's almost the same as the Conservatives or almost the same as the NDP?

What exactly do you think they should shift left on? And what do you think should be the strategy for that?

Most issues, just a little bit, both economic and social. Climate change definitely. They can keep being trans-phobic but they can pretend they aren't a little better.  They need to get Alberta onto green energy and get off of big oil's d___.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Fascinating thread. Lotta good posts for me to work through here.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Mulroney a "Red Tory"?

He was often presented as Canada's answer to Thatcher at the time.

His initial rhetoric was very anti-government, but Mulroney was far more moderate than Thatcher. It may have been in part because his premiership was largely consumed by constitutional reform, and a lot of his MPs were actually nationalistic Quebecers who didn't have much time for Thatcherism. He did privatize many crown corporations and brought in NPM reforms, but his reforms were very mild compared to Thatcher's. His government was very environmentally conscious for its time, pressuring Bush to sign the Acid Rain Treaty, and he was outspoken about its anti-apartheid position, uncharacteristically so for a 1980s tory.

He wasn't considered a Red Tory during his time, because back then Red Tories were traditional, paternalistic, 'High Tory' types. In fact, his embrace of neoliberal economics and indifference toward traditionalism pretty much killed the Red Tory tradition in Cdn federal politics. Nowadays, Red Tories in Canada are much less Benjamin Disraeli and more Nelson Rockefeller, if that makes sense.

[King of Kensington]

Diefenbaker seems to be quite admired by Conservatives of all stripes, from the very Red Tory Hugh Segal to John Baird and Jason Kenney.

Unlike Stanfield, Clark and Mulroney he was not a "Laurentian consensus" type.

[Lechasseur]

Diefenbaker seems to be quite admired by Conservatives of all stripes, from the very Red Tory Hugh Segal to John Baird and Jason Kenney.

Unlike Stanfield, Clark and Mulroney he was not a "Laurentian consensus" type.

What do you mean by "Laurentian consensus"?

[jaymichaud]

No right-wing government will be formed in Canada for a long, long time that is not premised on accepting multi-cultural dogma that is predominant in Canadian politics.

Or if they push for electoral reform... the Tories won the popular vote in October.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No right-wing government will be formed in Canada for a long, long time that is not premised on accepting multi-cultural dogma that is predominant in Canadian politics.

Or if they push for electoral reform... the Tories won the popular vote in October.

Well, if electoral reform does happen - it would not happen from the right, I suspect. Remember that the Tories in 2015 had a manifesto pledge to entrench FPTP in as the nation's electoral system for federal elections, specified as such in the Constitution itself iirc.

[T'Chenka]

No right-wing government will be formed in Canada for a long, long time that is not premised on accepting multi-cultural dogma that is predominant in Canadian politics.

Or if they push for electoral reform... the Tories won the popular vote in October.

Well, if electoral reform does happen - it would not happen from the right, I suspect. Remember that the Tories in 2015 had a manifesto pledge to entrench FPTP in as the nation's electoral system for federal elections, specified as such in the Constitution itself iirc.

The only party that could potentially cause federal electoral reform without damaging itself is the NDP. In the future, if the NDP steal the Liberals "spot" as one of the two main federal Canadian parties, then the Liberals could conceivably get election reform done as an attempt to regain power.

[MaxQue]

No right-wing government will be formed in Canada for a long, long time that is not premised on accepting multi-cultural dogma that is predominant in Canadian politics.

I'll just add to the pile on top of pro-multiculturalism...

-  pro-choice LAWS
- universal healthcare
- gay rights (not necessarily trans rights though).

Conservativees do better when they virtue signal that they're pro-life in their personal lives, and they tend to do well with anti-trans dog whistling, as long as it's subtle enough and they non-enthusiastically claim to be pro-trans when pressured.

The fulcrim of any such winning coalition seems to be a mix of libertarianism (so against the most extreme kinds of gun control at the very least, among other things), and fiscal conservativism, right?

Yeah I guess that sounds about right. Conservative leaders usually have to appease lots of little sub-groups with hard-right views on specific topics to win, without appeasing them too much and alienating the relatively large group of centrist swing voters / occasional voters that decide most of our elections. It's like trying to attract and retain Trump voters AND non-leftist Hillary voters by not being Sanders. Delicate balancing act.

And all this merely puts them within striking distance of the Liberals. The Liberals still have to be weakened for this strengthened conservative movement to actually win government.

Exactly. The Liberals have to just not f___ up and they've basically got federal politics by the bollocks.

I suggested in the Canada megathread that the Conservatives shift a little bit left. IMO it would help them a lot. They would anger their die-hard supporters, but ultimately 90%+ of those die-hards are still going to vote Conservative, they're just gonna pinch their noses a little bit when they do it. There are a lot of centrist voters that could be potentially won that way, and you also back the Liberals into a corner. Do they become the party that's almost the same as the Conservatives or almost the same as the NDP?

What exactly do you think they should shift left on? And what do you think should be the strategy for that?

From what I heard in Quebec, tons of people I know would consider them if they were not "puppets/slaves/an arm" of the "Alberta oil industry".

Their issue isn't them being right-wing, it's them being the Prairies regional party.

[DC Al Fine]

Diefenbaker seems to be quite admired by Conservatives of all stripes, from the very Red Tory Hugh Segal to John Baird and Jason Kenney.

Unlike Stanfield, Clark and Mulroney he was not a "Laurentian consensus" type.

What do you mean by "Laurentian consensus"?

It's a term coined by a journalist about a decade ago to refer to shared values and policies favoured by leaders of both major parties, generally the well-to-do in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.

https://c2cjournal.ca/2019/11/fbp-the-laurentian-elite-canadas-ruling-class/

The above link gives a pretty good overview if you're interested.

[King of Kensington]

Yes, it was coined by Globe and Mail journalist John Ibbitson.  He claimed that the Conservatives were emerging as the natural governing party as a result of a Western Canada-suburban Ontario alliance.  It didn't really hold up well; not as prescient as Kevin Phillips' The Emerging Republican Majority for US politics in the 1970s and 1980s, for example. 

Now, the Liberals dominate the metropolitan areas of southern Ontario and the Conservatives have been significantly weakened in BC as well.

[Kamala's side hoe]

If anything I see America following the Tories/Liberals/NDP/Greens model in the near future. AOC even quote tweeted something about it a few months ago.

Care to link the source for this?

[Don Vito Corleone]

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.

[King of Kensington]

The difference between the electoral map of 1988 and today is pretty striking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Canadian_federal_election

[Former President tack50]

The difference between the electoral map of 1988 and today is pretty striking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Canadian_federal_election

To be fair wasn't Quebec going heavily for the Conservatives in the 80s a historical anomaly that has never happened before or since?

Saskatchewan (and to a lesser extent BC) going heavily NDP is indeed striking I guess

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

The difference between the electoral map of 1988 and today is pretty striking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Canadian_federal_election

To be fair wasn't Quebec going heavily for the Conservatives in the 80s a historical anomaly that has never happened before or since?

Saskatchewan (and to a lesser extent BC) going heavily NDP is indeed striking I guess

Prairie Socialism .

[Poirot]

The difference between the electoral map of 1988 and today is pretty striking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Canadian_federal_election

To be fair wasn't Quebec going heavily for the Conservatives in the 80s a historical anomaly that has never happened before or since?

Saskatchewan (and to a lesser extent BC) going heavily NDP is indeed striking I guess

The Progressive Conservatives got a majority of Quebec seats in the 1958 election (Diefenbaker) with 4% more votes than the Liberal Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Canadian_federal_election

It says the provincial Union Nationale allied with them. So yes it doesn't happen often. Mulroney in the 80s won two elections. He wanted to get Quebec to sign the constitution with honor and enthusisasm. He is from Quebec. The 1988 election was mainly about free trade with US and the leadership of  the two provincial parties backed it.

[Poirot]

Maybe Canbadian politics is more Americanized but not because of Trump. One factor could be social media / news. People import their issues.

[Buffywawa]

In terms of the frivolousness with which most conservatives/right wing politicians lie and fear-monger to get elected, yes.

[CumbrianLefty]

That's almost a worldwide thing now. Because they have discovered that, all too often, it works.

[Hatman 🍁]

We just saw a poll out by Leger with the Tories at 25%... I do wonder how much Trump is actually hurting the Conservative brand up here. People see the crazy anti-mask crowd up here mirroring what they're seeing in the US, and are associating that with the Conservatives, and have to be turned off.