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Their laments: Taxes are bad. Governments are wasteful. Politicians are corrupt. If you want a guy on horseback, here I am.

Canada is not the United States. Still, as pollster Frank Graves argues, there are similar forces stirring in Canada’s industrial heartland and beyond, in its vanishing heavy industry, displaced workers, opioid crisis, income inequity and distrust of élites.

We have long told ourselves we are more liberal, more peaceful, more tolerant.

Canada has universal health insurance. It has a generous social safety net. Money does not shape its politics and religion does not influence its government, which Canadians believe has a legitimate role in their lives.

We have long told ourselves we are more liberal, more peaceful, more tolerant. We believe we are less violent, less religious, less ideological. We have avoided slavery and misadventures such as Vietnam and Iraq.

We had no civil war and no (major) civil unrest. We have no colonies. We have always fought alongside others, never alone and never in wars of conquest. We rejected nuclear weapons and we were pioneers of peacekeeping, which we saw as our international vocation in the Cold War.

In social and economic measures, there’s an argument that Canada is a more successful society than the United States. (A prominent Canadian journalist is writing a book saying just that.) After all, who doesn’t want to think that you’re better?

In the shadow of Trump’s America, our self-confidence grows. Canadians see a country led by a president who is protectionist, isolationist, nativist, nationalist and conservative. By contrast, we embrace free trade, open immigration, collective security and interventionist government. We accept regulation and entertain Pharmacare. Abortion, capital punishment, gay marriage and assisted suicide are largely settled here.