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I say “non-partisan” only because that’s how many have come to label their often curdling anti-Tory venom. It’s an absurd description, but makes warped sense if you believe Canada was indeed a quasi-pacifist, ever-green utopia of egalitarianism before Harper turned it into a snowy Mississippi. And the more time passes, the more people pine for things that never were.

This sort of false nostalgia is especially convenient to Liberals, the party that ruled over that mythical land. So it’s no wonder that Liberals, above all, are so anxious to retain our sadly splintered party system, in place of the two-way debate that other Western democracies enjoy. To their credit, Canadian conservatives came to realize the folly of this some years ago, which is why they got their act together and created a common vehicle for elections.

Canadian progressives have yet to really try. Instead, since they can all agree that Democrats are good/Republicans are bad, they spend their time mimicking American debates about economic or racial equality, immigration or social issues, which rarely apply north of the border. Our national discussion is much more about language than race; east-west, not north-south. Plus, on the centre-left’s usual trump card — economic fairness — our party of the 1% isn’t the Conservatives: it’s the Liberals.

Still, American critiques of economic unfairness find echoes elsewhere, so as usual Liberals tried to appropriate the discussion to themselves. Last time they were out of office, the environment was the big new idea, so they glommed onto that. Now, it’s the widening gap between rich and poor. It’s such a big deal, Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Eve Adams said, that it drove her away from Harper, to help Justin Trudeau spark a U.S.-style class war.