Trumpism in Canada

In 2020, academics at Ryerson University in Toronto, said that Trumpism had already "significantly affected the political discourse in Canada" and that there was clear evidence that it was "influencing our national and political identity, behaviour, economics and society."[10] Ryerson Department of Politics and Public Administration professor, Wayne Petrozzi, said that Trump was not simply an "aberration", but a "culmination of a process that was building inside American politics for decades."[10] Early indications of Trumpism in Canada, included alt-right flyers circulating in Toronto in 2016 asking, "Hey white person, tired of political correctness?"[10]

Kellie Leitch, a cabinet minister in former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government and a candidate in the 2017 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election, said Trump's victory in the 2016 United States presidential election was an "exciting message and one that we need delivered in Canada as well."[11] Leitch's proposal to screen immigrants for "anti-Canadian values" was compared to Trump's immigration restrictionism.[12] Kevin O'Leary, a candidate in the same leadership election until he withdrew mid-race, was prominently compared to Trump. Both were celebrity businessmen and reality television personalities. O'Leary contended that his policies differed from Trump's, but also that with his toughness and business background he could represent Canada in negotiations with Trump.[13][14]

Public opinion researcher Frank Graves had been studying the rise of populism in Canada for several years. In a June 30, 2020 School of Public Policy journal article, authors Graves and Jeff Smith described a decrease in trust in the news and in journalists since 2011 in Canada, along with an increase in skepticism which "reflects the emergent fake news convictions so evident in supporters of Trumpian populism."[15] Graves and Smith wrote of the impact on Canada of a "new authoritarian, or ordered, populism" that resulted in the 2016 election of President Trump.[15] They said that 34% of Canadians hold a populist viewpoint—most of whom are in Alberta and Saskatchewan—who tend to be "older, less-educated, and working-class", are more likely to embrace "ordered populism", and are "more closely aligned" with conservative political parties.[15] This "ordered populism" includes concepts such as a right-wing authoritarianism, obedience, hostility to outsiders, and strongmen who will take back the country from the "corrupt elite" and return it to a perceived better time in history, where there was more law and order.[15] It is xenophobic, does not trust science, has no sympathy for equality issues related to gender and ethnicity, and is not part of a "healthy" democracy.[15] The authors say that this ordered populism had reached a "critical force" in Canada that is causing polarization and "needs to be addressed".[15]

According to an October 2020 Léger poll for 338 Canada of Canadian voters, the number of "pro-Trump conservatives" has been growing in the Conservative Party of Canada, whose leadership Erin O'Toole had then recently assumed. Maclean's said that this might explain O'Toole's "True Blue" social conservative campaign.[16] The Conservative Party of Canada also includes "centrist" conservatives as well as Red Tories[16]—also described as small-c conservative, centre-right or paternalistic conservatives as per the Tory tradition in the United Kingdom.

Journalist Max Fawcett, who is a former editor of Alberta Oil magazine, warned that the use of "Trump-style rhetoric" by some of Canada's "key politicians" is "dangerous".[6] O'Toole featured a modified version of Trump's slogan—"Take Back Canada"—in a video released as part of his official leadership candidacy platform. At the end of the video he called on Canadians to "[j]oin our fight, let's take back Canada."[17][6] In a September 8, 2020, CBC interview, when asked if his "Canada First" policy was different from Trump's "America First" policy, O'Toole said, "No, it was not."[18] In his August 24, 2019, speech conceding the victory of his successor Erin O'Toole as the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party, Andrew Scheer cautioned Canadians to not believe the "narrative" from mainstream media outlets but to "challenge" and "double check...what they see on TV on the internet" by consulting "smart, independent, objective organizations like The Post Millennial and True North.[19][6] The Observer said that Jeff Ballingall, who is the founder of the right-wing Ontario Proud,[20] is also the chief marketing officer of The Post Millennial.[21]

Following the 2020 United States elections, National Post columnist and former newspaper magnate, Conrad Black, who had had a "decades-long" friendship with Trump, and received a presidential pardon in 2019, in his columns, repeated Trump's "unfounded claims of mass voter fraud" suggesting that the election had been stolen.[9][22]

In a November 2020 interview on The Current, immediately following the US elections, law professor Allan Rock, who served as Canada's attorney general and as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, described Trumpism and its potential impact on Canada.[23] Rock said that even with Trump losing the election, he had "awakened something that won't go away". He said it was something "we can now refer to as Trumpism"—a force that he has "harnessed". Trump has "given expression to an underlying frustration and anger, that arises from economic inequality, from the implications from globalization."[23] Rock cautioned that Canada must "keep up its guard against the spread of Trumpism"[4] which he described as "destabilizing", "crude", "nationalistic", "ugly", "divisive", "racist", and "angry".[23] Rock added that one measurable impact on Canada of the "overtly racist behaviour" associated with Trumpism is that racists, especially White supremacists, have become emboldened since 2016, resulting in a steep increase in the number of these organizations in Canada and a shockingly high increase in the rate of hate crimes in 2017 and 2018 in Canada.[23]

Not all Canadians agree that Trumpism is viable in Canada. Canadian communications and political strategist Peter Donolo, who worked for former prime minister Jean Chrétien, wrote in an article in The Globe and Mail in August 2020 that Canadians feared that "the pathogens of Trumpism—with all its hatred and rage—would "infect the Canadian body politic", but they should not.[7] While populist politicians, such as premiers Jason Kenney of Alberta and Doug Ford of Ontario were compared to Trump, Donolo rejected the comparison. Kenney had served as a former senior cabinet minister under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and a very "effective ambassador to Canada's ethno-cultural communities"[7] and Ford hosted an annual festival with a highly diverse gathering.[7] Donolo agreed with the findings of the pollster Michael Adams who wrote about the possibility of Trumpism in Canada in his 2017 book Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit.[24] Adams said that Canada has a "long history of compromise and accommodation", which lacks both "glamour" and "drama" but has been "quite effective." He cites the example of consensus on Canada's public health care system and immigration. Adams says Canada's immigration policy results in "demographic renewal" that had "plausibly become" a "defining feature" as well as the mechanism that "injects values of openness, tolerance and compromise into every sphere of social life."[24] Donolo said that the more important reason that Canada does not need to fear Trumpism, is "money and economies of scale". The Canadian market is neither "big or lucrative enough".[7]

Ken Boessenkool, a senior research fellow at the C. D. Howe Institute who worked as a Conservative strategist and as Stephen Harper's campaign manager, cautioned Canadians against what he called "casual Trumpism" in the personal and political, in a January 12, 2021, CBC The Current interview.[25][26] He urged party members to "find policy solutions that speak to [voters], as opposed to stoking their anger."[25]

In January 2022, Lawrence Martin wrote in an opinion piece for The Globe and Mail that Trump's main base of support in Canada was in the Prairie provinces for reasons such as his opposition to political correctness, his opposition to climate change mitigation and his support for oil which is a major industry in those provinces, and his general populism. Ekos Research Associates president Frank Graves also stated in an interview for the article that Trump supporters in Canada are under the age of 50, working-class, male, less educated and live mainly outside urban cores, which is similar to Trump's base in America. He also stated that he believed the same forces that produced the Trump presidency in the U.S. are at work in Canada, albeit on a smaller scale. Though he said that it was too difficult to tell if Trump's level of support would grow or decline in Canada, he pointed to the support level for the right-wing People's Party of Canada over the next few years as a possible barometer.[27]

Days before a convoy of truckers was scheduled to arrive in Ottawa to allegedly protest the January 15, 2022 federal vaccine mandate for truckers, the National Observer reported that the convoy—riled by the misrepresentation of reality, "false information", and "fake controversies"—"key ingredients in the toxic stew of Trumpism", had reached a "dangerous new level".[28] The article said that both Laura Ingraham from Fox News and Donald Trump Jr. had been referring to the Canadian truck convoy while "fanning the same flames" that contributed to the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[28]

In 2022, Candice Bergen became Leader of the Opposition and interim leader of the Conservative Party. In a photo, undated but circulated via social media and news media after the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Bergen had worn a baseball cap with the inscription Make America Great Again over a camouflage background. She subsequently condemned the siege but was silent about the hat.[29][30]

• Populism in Canada
• Canadian nationalism
• People's Party of Canada