Believe Canada is immune to Trump-like conservatism? That the country 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 this week reveals a stunning lack of trust in government among people in Canada—and a dramatic drop since Justin Trudeau came to power. No less than 80 percent think the Canadian elite are “out of touch” with ordinary people. 60 percent believe mainstream politicians won’t solve our problems. As in the rest of the world, it is no different here: anti-establishment and populist sentiment is surging like never before.



The reasons for this crisis of legitimacy in Canada couldn’t be more clear: extreme weather, spiralling 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. Over-worked, 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 won’t be contained by the populist gloss Trudeau’s handlers have given him—the initial proclamations of “real change,” the recent country-wide 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’s 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 fuelling such unprecedented rage at politicians. The Liberal government’s plan to privatize our 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 sure-fire 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 colours: 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 United States 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 stoked increased racism toward Muslims and racialized people. It is not a surprise that opinion in favour 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 dialled back the intolerance, but dialled up the rhetoric against the establishment: he has promised to bring back manufacturing jobs that consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments have hollowed out; and he has cultivated a maverick status as a non-politician who doesn’t “owe anybody anything.” These are the same political notes that Donald Trump hit so successfully.

It doesn’t matter that O’Leary’s aim—like Trump’s—is to keep enriching the corporate class of whom they are such ostentatious members. This brand of populism cannot be defeated by fact-checks or by lampooning its figureheads. As this week’s poll indicates, as many as a third of Canadians say they’ll support a politician who plays funny with the truth—so long as they’re 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. 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 Bernie Sanders-style populist. This sort of left-wing populism doesn’t go after the vulnerable, but the seemingly invincible—the corporations and the ultra-rich.

It’s 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 off-shore havens and historic low tax rates 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’s 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 the public services, honouring Indigenous rights, and combatting 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, the 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. But hunger for a radically better country 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 people in Canada, part of a task of fostering new momentum behind left-wing movements. But the country is as primed for it as it ever will be. You don’t want a Canadian Trump to ascend in Canada? Start building this progressive populist alternative.

Twitter: @Martin_Lukacs

