Believe Canada is immune to US President Donald Trump-like conservatism? That the nation could never be swept by a right-wing populist scapegoating the vulnerable, promising to bring back jobs and beating the drum of law and order?
Think again.
The conditions for such an eruption are on stark display.
A poll released last week reveals a stunning lack of trust in the government among Canadians — and a dramatic drop since Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power.
No less than 80 percent think the Canadian elite are “out of touch” with ordinary people. Sixty percent believe mainstream politicians will not solve their problems.
As in the rest of the world, it is no different in Canada: Anti-establishment and populist sentiment is surging like never before.
The reasons for this crisis of legitimacy in Canada could not be more clear: Extreme weather, spiraling inequality and the financial recession of 2008, which sent the living standards of the majority tumbling. Wages are stagnant. Jobs are precarious. Healthcare is deteriorating.
Overworked, indebted and stressed, we have less time for leisure, family and friends. Is it any wonder people are enraged at the elite and the status quo?
The question now is who will capture and channel this anger. Such levels of discontent will not be contained by the populist gloss Trudeau’s handlers have given him — the initial proclamations of “real change,” the recent nationwide listening tour.
Nor can they be contained by his postures of social inclusion — his much-advertised feminism, his warmth with arriving immigrants — however popular they have proved.
That is because Trudeau’s social liberalism has been partnered with the very economic policies that have cemented inequality and savaged people’s quality of life — and which are now fueling such unprecedented rage at politicians.
The Liberal government’s plan to privatize Canada’s world-class public sector, a pro-business trade agenda, tax loopholes for the rich, the short-changing of healthcare and climate policies that go easy on polluting corporations — this is a surefire recipe to continue enriching the wealthy and pissing off the rest of us.
For four decades, the Liberals, as much as the Conservatives, have been shredding our social programs and starving state spending, showing through such neoliberal policies their true colors — subservience to the corporate elite.
These kind of policies are what have created such fertile ground for the new right-wing populism that has viciously triumphed in the US and is now emerging in Canada.
It is populist-style Conservative leadership contenders who have so far best captured the swelling anger — and they have been rewarded in the polls.
With pledges to subject immigrants to a “Canadian values” test, Kellie Leitch has misdirected anger at Muslims and refugees.
It is not a surprise that opinion in favor of her views has ticked upward: No politician on the left has made the case for welcoming immigrants and refugees as vigorously as she has for excluding them.
Kevin O’Leary is proving an even more formidable populist in the Trump mold.
The wealthy businessman has dialed back the intolerance, but dialed up the rhetoric against the establishment.
O’Leary has promised to bring back manufacturing jobs that consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments have hollowed out, while at the same time cultivating a maverick status as a non-politician who does not “owe anybody anything.”
These are the same political notes that Trump hit so successfully.
It does not matter that O’Leary’s aim — like Trump’s — is to keep enriching the corporate class of whom they are such ostentatious members. Their populism — aptly named “cartoon conservatism” by Avi Lewis — cannot be defeated by fact-checks or by lampooning its figureheads.
As last week’s poll indicates, as many as a third of Canadians say they would support a politician who plays funny with the truth — so long as they are prepared to dramatically change things.
Right-wing populism works because it tells a powerful story. Anger at Liberal policies will only feed it if progressive movements cannot tell a more compelling version.
Populism, after all, is not the reserve of the right.
US Senator Bernie Sanders targeted the billionaire class, exciting and galvanizing millions with a campaign for economic and racial justice.
More people in Canada than anywhere else in the world indicated they were ready to vote for a Sanders-style populist.
This sort of left-wing populism does not go after the vulnerable, but the seemingly invincible -— the corporations and the ultra-rich. It is long past time to direct anger in the right direction.
A report produced last month by Oxfam revealed that two individuals — David Thomson and Galen Weston Sr — own as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of Canadians, or 11 million people.
Why is the New Democratic Party not broadcasting this scandalous fact from every conceivable pulpit?
The rich are treated to offshore havens and historic low tax rates, while the rest of us have to make do with less and less, roiled by anxiety that our children will have it even worse.
Canada is practically screaming for a bold and unapologetic redistributive agenda.
That is the vision we tried to sketch under the banner of the Leap Manifesto, launched in 2015 by a broad and diverse coalition of organizations.
It argued that Canada can not only rise to the crisis of climate change, but that it can tangibly improve the majority’s lives with a transformative and holistic agenda — simultaneously unleashing a huge number of low-carbon living-wage jobs, expanding public services, honoring Indigenous rights, and combating institutional racism and sexism.
We could easily pay for this great transition by taxing those now hoarding an obscene proportion of our wealth — the banks, corporations and the ultra-rich.
Though the media has heaped scorn on the Leap, polls showed people across the entire political spectrum were ready to embrace this kind of left-wing populist agenda.
Is it any surprise that trust in the Canadian media — as responsible as any for watering the soil for the new right — is now also at record lows?
The political and media elite alike have cultivated a culture of diminished progressive expectations, trapping our vision of what is politically possible in their small-minded Ottawa bubble.
However, hunger for a radically better nation is bursting through.
There are no quick fixes, no easy way of stopping O’Leary or spurring Trudeau.
It will take face-to-face organizing among hundreds of thousands of Canadians, part of a task of fostering new momentum behind left-wing movements.
However, the nation is now as primed for it as it ever will be.
You do not want cartoon conservatism to ascend in Canada? Start building this progressive populist alternative.
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