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While a populist movement sweeps the globe, Canada has mostly carried on with a conventional conversation in federal politics.

Relatively high wages and a sense of security from resource-based jobs could be the number one thing keeping Canadian politics in equilibrium, according to new analysis from Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a public policy think tank in Ottawa.

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That may be good news at the moment, but it also means that the struggling oil patch is the only thing standing between Justin Trudeau and a populist surge on the right.

“The oil and gas sector has effectively hoovered up a lot of these people who would have been exposed to changes in manufacturing,” said Sean Speer, a Munk senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former senior economic advisor to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

That’s something policymakers should keep in mind when they are drawing up regulatory rules and laws that could negatively affect the resource industry, said Speer in an interview with the National Post.