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Electing governments of different stripes in the provinces and nationally is a historical pattern in Canadian politics. It is a peculiarly reliable system of checks and balances.

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Over the near decade that the Conservatives were in Ottawa (2006-2015), the Liberals were elected or re-elected in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia; New Democrats were in power in Manitoba and New Brunswick (one term). There were Conservative governments in Alberta and Newfoundland.

Now the Liberals are in power federally, and conservative parties, big or small “c,” are winning in the provinces. This may be the natural order of things – or, it may be the coming of a different, more aggressive conservatism, reflecting the contagion that has infected Donald Trump’s Republicans, whom Ronald Reagan would barely recognize.

Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are more conservative than Harper’s Conservatives. Astonishingly, Scheer supports Brexit, for example, which aligns him with the right-wing nationalists and nativists in Britain. He is also said to be a social conservative. In Alberta, where Jason Kenney is also socially conservative, many of his party’s candidates are, too.

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Meanwhile, the democratic world is trending Conservative. The re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces the prospect of indictment and traffics in ultra-nationalist rhetoric, is the latest example. In the Britain, France, Italy and Germany, the right is rising. In Turkey, Hungary and Poland, regimes are authoritarian.

The arrival of Conservative governments in Canada does not mean that Canada is following the rest of the world; no Canadian political party, for example, wants to close our borders to immigration, a litmus test of conservatism.

But if the federal Conservatives are elected this fall, it will come as no surprise. We will only be following the provinces, and much of the world. It’s the zeitgeist.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the Forty-Eight Hours That Made History.