Social:Trumpism in Canada

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Short description: Canadian iteration of the political movement known as Trumpism

Trudeau and Trump in 2017

The effect of the political and ideological movement known as Trumpism in Canada has been a topic of some scrutiny by researchers and the media since 2016.[1][2][3][4][5] While several Canadian politicians have been compared to Trump in some respects, anti-immigration platforms are not widely accepted in Canada where 80% Canadians believe that immigration is a positive factor for the Canadian economy.[6] Canada's pro-immigration policies have been praised as Canadian exceptionalism by The Economist, the New York Times and The Atlantic.[7] in contrast to immigration restrictionism and anti-immigrant sentiment, which played a significant role in Trumpism.[8] While there are some right-of-centre politicians who have used Trumpian anti-immigrant rhetoric, this did not dissuade Canadians from remaining more open to legal immigration.[9] Politicians, like premiers Doug Ford in Ontario and Jason Kenney in Alberta have been compared to Trump, but those who disagree with this comparison distinguish the Canadian brand of populism from Trump's.[2][10] Some say that the rage and hatred associated with Trumpism would not "infect the Canadian body politic", such as pollster and social values researcher, Michael Adams, author of Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit (2017), communications and political strategist Peter Donolo, and National Post columnist, Jonathan Kay.[2][1][11] The director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, Barbara Perry, who described "Trumpism" as a "form of right-wing populism convergent with an emboldened white supremacy", has been studying Far Right Groups (FRG) for over two decades. Perry reported a dramatic increase in active far-right groups in Canada from 100 in 2015 to 300 in 2021.[12] She said that the group "Canadians for Trump" formed in 2015 when Trump began his presidential campaign, and that the January 2021 convoy protest in Toronto in support of Trump, was an extension of that movement.[13] Articles in the The Canadian Press and The Conversation describe the 2022 Canada convoy protests as a "coming-out party for a Trump-flavoured strain of populism in Canada",[14][15] and an "unwelcome arrival of Trumpism in Canada".[16]

Canadian exceptionalism vs immigration restrictionism

Trudeau and Trump in 2017

The international press, including The Economist, has given Canada positive coverage in the way immigrants are welcomed—in a "depressing [world] of wall-builders, door-slammers and drawbridge-raisers, Canada stands out as a heartening exception".[9] The Economist noted that there were some right-of-centre politicians who used "Trumpian rhetoric" to stoke fears of the "shrinking middle class" and "Islamist terrorism", but this did not dissuade Canadians from being more open to immigration.[9] Both the New York Times and The Atlantic published headlines saying Canada had resisted "the West’s populist wave” and escaped "the liberal doom loop."[7] George Washington University historian, Tyler Anbinder, whose research focusses on anti-immigrant sentiment, said that Trump had "spread more anti-immigrant hatred than any other American in history" and made "public expressions of nativism socially acceptable for the first time in generations."[17]

During a February 2017 conference hosted at McGill University on Canadian exceptionalism, to help Canada avoid the "fate of the U.S. and other faltering states", guest speaker Sarah Kendzior, said that Canada would not fall "prey to Trumpism" because it was uniquely American. She cautioned that no country, including Canada, is immune from autocracy, white supremacy, nationalism and xenophobia that was sweeping across western democracies.[18]

A September 2021 Environics Institute survey found that 80% of Canadians agree that immigration has a positive impact on the economy and 65% do not think that the current immigration levels are too high.[6] The current attitude that Canadians need immigrants to increase the population is a "sea change" since the 1980s and 1990s, when most Canadians firmly rejected the need for more immigrants.[6]

In his February 2022, Macleans article John Geddes—the magazine's Ottawa bureau chief—wrote that the 2022 Ottawa convoy protests should dispel the illusion that Canada is insulated from right-wing populism.[5] He said Canadians are just as susceptible as Americans were to Trump or the British to Brexit, or the French to Marine Le Pen.[5] Geddes wrote that Canada also struggles with "economic anxiety, nativist intolerance, regional resentments" which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Geddes credits the strongest elements of Canada's democracy—its electoral system, its immigration policies, and judicial system—among others, with holding the country together, not something in Canada's national character that makes us less likely to "gather for an unruly, unreasonable protest, issue blatantly undemocratic demands, and lay siege to the capital."[5]

Then Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in New Delhi in 2010

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, in which capacity he was a very "effective ambassador to Canada's ethno-cultural communities".[2] Likewise, Ford hosted an annual festival with a highly diverse gathering.[2]

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."[1]

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."[19] Leitch's proposal to screen immigrants for "anti-Canadian values" was compared to Trump's immigration restrictionism, which played a significant role in Trumpism.[8]

Then PC Tourism Minister Bernier in 2013 with Dr. K. Chiranjeevi in New Delhi

Maxime Bernier, who is the leader of the People's Party of Canada, and is known for supporting strong immigration restrictions, was described in a 2021 Washington Post article, as a "far-right politician who is compared to Trump."[20] In 2019, Bernier ran a campaign calling for the construction of a fence along the Canada-United States border. He lost his own seat in that election.[20]

Concept of Trumpism

Barbara Perry, director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, who has been researching hate crimes for over two decades, followed the rise of right-wing populism in Canada. In a 2017 article she co-authored in the Journal of Hate Studies, she developed the concept of "Trumpism" as a "form of right-wing populism convergent with an emboldened white supremacy".[12] She said that the number of far-right groups active in Canada increased by 30% since Trump's presidency, to about 300. In their 2019 book, Right-Wing Extremism in Canada published by Springer, Perry and researcher Ryan Scrivens devoted a section to "Trumping multiculturalism: explaining the trump effect in Canada". They said that there was fertile ground in Canada for Trump's "right-wing populist rhetoric" prior to his presidency.[21] They described how reactionary trends at all levels of governance in Canada provided the "crucial background to the uptake of Trumpism in Canada".[21] The authors said that through the integration of Canadian and American technologies and economies, Canadians receive an "uninterrupted flow of Trumpism and right-wing populism from the United States" and that "Canadians are fed a steady died of Trump's hyperbole."[21]

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.[4] 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."[4] Rock cautioned that Canada must "keep up its guard against the spread of Trumpism"[22] which he described as "destabilizing", "crude", "nationalistic", "ugly", "divisive", "racist", and "angry".[4] 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.[4]

Mariano Aguirre, an independent analyst on international politics, while not mentioning Canada specifically, described Trumpism as an "ideology for the extreme far-right globally".[23]

Academics and media responses to Trumpism in Canada

Researchers at Ryerson said that Trump was a symptom of American anti-immigration and white nationalism, not the "underlying cause". 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."[24] Early indications of Trumpism in Canada, included alt-right flyers circulating in Toronto in 2016 during Trump's election campaign asking, "Hey white person, tired of political correctness?"[24]

In his 2017 book Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit, pollster Michael Adams said that Canada has a "long history of compromise and accommodation", which lacks both "glamour" and "drama" but has been "quite effective." [1]

The CBC's The Fifth Estate made the connection between the anger in America over Trump's Immigration Ban and the January 29, 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting, a terrorist attack at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City by a young white university student, who had become consumed with the "far right, mass killers, Donald Trump and Muslims."[25][26][27]

In his 2019 article describing how misinformation reigned in Canada's 2019 Canadian federal election, New-York-based journalist, Nick Robins-Early, who reports on extremism and disinformation, described a global playbook for misinformation, citing the example of President Trump. Robins-Early described how conspiracy theories and rumors of scandals involving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had transformed Canada's normal brief and tame political campaigns into a rare "level of dirty politics and divisiveness".[28] It included harassing journalists and attempts by far right groups to "hijack the political conversation".[28] In the run up to the 2019 Canadian federal election, supporters of Conservative Andrew Scheer, then leader of the Conservative Party and leader of the Official Opposition denounced Trudeau with calls to "lock him up", a copy cat of the attack against Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton.[29] Despite MAGA-labelled thousands of Twitter accounts using #TrudeauMustGo and other anti-Trudeau hashtags for months before the election, Trudeau won.[29][28] Claire Wardle, who is the founder of a global elections misinformation monitoring organization, First Draft News, expanded on the playbook for misinformation, saying that "bad actors" had figured out how to amplify their baseless claims by getting the attention of someone with huge followings, such as President Donald Trump. Wardle described how politicians and their strategists learned through Trump that there were no negative repercussions for spreading misinformation or conspiracy theories. There was no public shame or regulation. In the echo chamber of mass followers, fact checkers had no impact, according to Wardle.[28]

Convoy 2022 anti-media messaging

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.[30][31] The Observer said that Jeff Ballingall, who is the founder of the right-wing Ontario Proud,[32] is also the chief marketing officer of The Post Millennial.[33] Trump included the media as well as "elitist conspiracies" and Democrats as "objects of his wrath".[34] He accused the mainstream media of being biased, treated journalists as adversaries, and called their work "fake news".[23]

In their June 2020 Canadian Global Affairs Institute journal article, public opinion researcher Frank Graves and Jeff Smith wrote of the impact on Canada of a "new authoritarian, or ordered, populism" that resulted in the 2016 election of President Trump and the United Kingdom's Brexit from the European Union.[35] Graves has been studying the rise of populism in Canada for several years. In this report which was partially funded by a partnership between the Government of Canada and Western Economic Diversification, the co-authors 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."[35] They said that 34% of Canadians held a populist viewpoint—most of whom are in Alberta and Saskatchewan—and tend to be "older, less-educated, and working-class". They are more likely to embrace "ordered populism", and are "more closely aligned" with conservative political parties.[35] 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.[35] 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.[35] The authors say that this ordered populism had reached a "critical force" in Canada that is causing polarization and "needs to be addressed".[35] Trump's 21st-century brand of narcissism makes him believe that he can solve any problem; this is appealing to people who feel they have lost control of their lives and seek a leader who seems to know what he is doing during troubling times.[36]

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."[24] In both Canada and the United States, Trump's rhetoric served to embolden white nationalists.[24]

Not all Canadians agree that Trumpism is viable in Canada. Canadian communications and political strategist Peter Donolo, who served as Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's Director of Communications from 1993 to 1999, 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.[2] 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 not "big or lucrative enough".[2] While populist politicians, such as premiers Jason Kenney of Alberta and Doug Ford of Ontario, were compared to Trump, Donolo rejected the comparison. The Globe's Justin Giovanetti said that Kenney channelled populism, not Trump.[10]

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.[37] The Conservative Party of Canada is a "big tent" party which also includes "centrist" conservatives as well as Red Tories[37]—also described as small-c conservative, centre-right or paternalistic conservatives as per the Tory tradition in the United Kingdom .

The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Gil McGowan, raised concerns in November 2020, that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was using the "Trump/Republican playbook on COVID" by accepting the false dichotomy of protecting the economy versus saving lives by managing the pandemic.[38] McGowan said that Kenney's COVID-19-related public health policies were based on "libertarian talking points" and ignored "common sense precautions to protect the public good."[38]

In his January 8, 2021 National Post article, entitled, "The storming of the U.S. Capitol wasn't about white supremacy, whatever Canadian pundits say", Jonathan Kay provided the most strongly worded argument against those who said that white supremacy was the underlying fuel that led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack and that it could infect Canada. In direct response to the question asked on the January 8, 2021 front page of the Toronto Star, "Could it happen in Canada?", Kay said, "If right-wing populism really were going to metastasize northward in a meaningful way, it would have happened by now. But it hasn't."[11] In the January 14, 2021, episode of TVOntario (TVO), Ontario's public broadcaster's flagship show, The Agenda, "Is Trumpism Affecting Canadian Politics?" with a focus on how how Canada could "keep Trumpism at bay", the host, Steve Paikin, asked Barbara Perry to respond to Kay's comment that Trumpism had not migrated north.[13][39] Perry said that there has been a dramatic increase in active right wing extremism (RWG) groups from 100 in 2015 to 300 in 2021.[13] Since 2015, there has been more than twenty homicides associated with far RWG narratives, as well as the July 2, 2020 Rideau Hall attack, that has been described as an attempted assassination of the Prime Minister.[13] Perry said that support for Trump was noticeable in Canada since 2015, with the formation of Canadians for Trump, and that the January 2021 convoy protest in Toronto in support of Trump, was an extension of that movement.[13]

Supriya Dwivedi said that following the January 29, 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting during national debates on whether Islamophobia should be condemned, she noticed an increase in hate mail targeting her specifically as a journalist of colour.[13] Dwivedi said that Canadian main stream media and politicians failed to inform the public about what was happening on social media from as far back as 2014–2015 Gamergate campaign. These journalists and politicians from the establishment were not aware of the existence of online hate groups—for example the radicalization of incels during Gamergate.[13] Main stream media and politicians from the left and right politicians chose to deflect, ignore, or pretend that the 2018 Yellow vests movement in Canada did not happen in spite of the sizeable number of people who attended the protest with "Hang Trudeau" or "Trudeau for Treason" signs.[13] Paikin asked Randy Hillier to comment on last November's Angus Reid poll in which people who voted in Canada's 2019 federal election were asked if they believed that the 2020 United States presidential election was free and fair—50% of those who voted conservative said they did not.[13] In response, Hillier cited Jonathan Haidt on how liberals and conservatives differed in terms of psychological characteristics.[13] Hillier added that we can draw different conclusions from facts, data, and evidence and that we needed freedom of speech so all sides could be heard.[13] Paikin asked John Ibbitson about his Globe and Mail article, in which he said that it was "absurd" for people on the left to "conflate" support for the Conservatives in Canada with the "kind of white nationalism" that supports Trump. Ibbitson said that Liberals and progressives were "characterizing all conservatives", including John A. Macdonald, Mike Harris, and Stephen Harper as "illegitimate".[13] He said while we need to condemn RWG violence, we also need to not believe that all conservatives are "in bed with extremists", or it will be impossible to hold things together.[13] In an accompanying article published as part of joint TVO/Toronto Star "The Democracy Agenda" series, Paikin said that historically Canada often imitated whatever happened in the United States with a junior version within an interval of five to ten years.[39] Paikon noted that Canada did not have any politicians who were as "charismatically dangerous as Trump" or one who could "champion" those who felt "left behind" by "globalization and urbanization".[39] He described how Maclean's magazine had branded five conservative leaders as "the resistance" and portrayed them on the magazine's December 2018 cover as an emerging populist movement—then UCP leader Jason Kenney, then Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, then Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.[39] Of these, Premier Moe has a high approval rate, and three lost positions. Paikin also noted—citing McGill University professor Andrew Potter—that unlike in the United States, polarization in Canada pertains to geographic regions, not "ethnicity or economic status."

American flag on convoy protest supply truck

The 2022 Canada convoy protests, which was called called the "Freedom Convoy" by protest organizers, were a series of protests and blockades initially against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions. The protest have been described as a "coming-out party for a Trump-flavoured strain of populism in Canada",[14][15] and an "unwelcome arrival of Trumpism in Canada".[16] Days before the Canada convoy protest was scheduled to arrive in Ottawa, allegedly to 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".[40] The protests have been described as a "coming-out party for a Trump-flavoured strain of populism in Canada."[14]

Anti-Trudeau messaging during 2022 occupation of Ottawa

In his February 2022, Macleans article John Geddes—the magazine's Ottawa bureau chief—wrote that the 2022 Ottawa convoy protests should dispel any illusion that Canada is insulated from right-wing populism.[5] He said Canadians are just as susceptible as Americans were to Trump, the British to Brexit, or the French to Marine Le Pen.[5] Geddes wrote that Canada also struggles with "economic anxiety, nativist intolerance, regional resentments" which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Geddes credits the strongest elements of Canada's democracy—its electoral system, its immigration policies, and judicial system—with holding the country together, not something in Canada's national character that makes us less likely to "gather for an unruly, unreasonable protest, issue blatantly undemocratic demands, and lay siege to the capital."[5]

Trump-style rhetoric

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".[31] 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."[41][31] 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."[42]

In the first year of Trump's presidency, he used "radically transgressive" racist rhetoric that dehumanized its targets and undermined what had been considered to be norms of a democratic society. He used this inflammatory rhetoric to consolidate power over his base who connected with him on an emotional level as he provided them with targets for their resentments. This hate-filled rhetoric succeeded in distracting the attention of the media away from what he was actually quietly and successfully achieving in terms of public policy changes.[43] Trump used "mockery and defamation" to belittle his political opponents.[23] His confrontational rhetoric appeals to people who feel frustrated that the government has let them down.[36]

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.[44][45] He urged party members to "find policy solutions that speak to [voters], as opposed to stoking their anger."[44]

During a session on "Polarization and cynicism in the contemporary media environment" at the annual Canadian Political Science Association conference, Ian Stedman described an emerging outrage porn problem in the Canadian political landscape that threatened debates on government ethics and accountability.[46] He examined how heightened emotional responses via hashtags and memes were overly simplifying complex debates on social issues instead of contributing to thoughtful discourse. Stedman cited examples of the way in which headlines in Canadian media resembled tweets by President Donald Trump that are intended to elicit emotional responses not call for open debate. Trump's "hollow outrage" became normalized as it was a magnet for attracting engagement. It is based on disapproving and not listening to comments reflecting a differing perspective.[46]

Trump's supporters in Canada

Trump supporters arguing with protestors at 2017 Women's March in Calgary, Alberta

In 2016, 57% of Conservative voters approved of Trump.[5] Only 15% of Canadians said they supported Trump in 2020; most condemned him.[47]

Trump supporters were very active for months prior to the 2019 Canadian federal election, "spout[ing] conspiracy-tinged, anti-Trudeau invective". Thousands of MAGA-labelled Twitter trolls posted anti-Trudeau hashtags such as #TrudeauMustGo and #ExpletiveTrudeau other anti-Trudeau hashtags for months before the election.[29][28]

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.[48] 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.[48]

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.[37][49]

Canadian politicians and Trumpism

Photograph with O'Toole and Andrew Scheer
O'Toole with Andrew Scheer in 2017

The leader of the opposition, Erin O'Toole seemed to be using Trump's playbook by 2020 with the use of the "Take back Canada" slogan, similar to Trump's MAGA line, during his 2020 Conservative leadership campaign.[50] While O'Toole and Trump were both aggressively against China, unlike Trump, O'Toole favours free trade and is pro-immigration.[50] Trump's anti-China stance may have been accepted by a number of Canadians who otherwise found little common ground with the former US president.[50] 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.[37] The Conservative Party of Canada is a "big tent" party which also includes "centrist" conservatives as well as Red Tories[37]—also described as small-c conservative, centre-right or paternalistic conservatives as per the Tory tradition in the United Kingdom .

Doug Ford

The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, a Conservative "man of the people", has been compared to Trump.[50] Ford had supported Trump for many years including during Trump's 2016 campaign.[51] The Toronto Star compared Ford and his brother Rob Ford's "shtick of using brash and simple slogans to woo working-class voters" to Trump's. Ford "revelled" in the comparison to Trump and suggested the American president had copied the Fords' populist style.[52] Like Trump, Ford has frequently called out the media referring to them as "liars" who want his "blood" in 2018.[51] In 2019, Ford said that back in 2019, Ford said that he was a "big Republican and "God bless the President."[51] By January 2021, Ford's admiration for Trump shifted as Trump's protectionist policies threatened Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic and during the steel and aluminum trade wars.[52] Ford began to distance himself from Trump after these trade wars, Ford's behavior, and Trump's impeachments.[52]

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 said nothing about the hat.[53][54]

In August 2020, Peter Downing, who was one of the founders of the separatist Wexit party—now the Maverick Party—and the director of the public action committee called the Alberta USA Foundation, installed billboards in Edmonton, Alberta with a large photo of Donald Trump and the question, "Should Alberta join the U.S.?"[55]

Kevin O'Leary, a major candidate in the 2017 Conservative 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.[56]

Pierre Poilievre and Andrew Scheer in 2018.

Pierre Poilievre, who is the official leader of the opposition, has been compared to Trump.[57] Globe and Mail journalist John Ibbitson says that "Poilievreism[...] is not Trumpism".[57] Ibbetson said that the fears that Poilievre's election would mean that the "MAGA wars [were] coming to Canada", "Trumpists have arrived among us", and that the "Conservative Party is turning into the Republican Party" are misplaced.[57] Poilievre who is running not just for the leadership of the Conservative Party but as the future Prime Minister of Canada, would makes cut backs to federal bureaucracy, remove a number of regulations and decrease funding to the media, particularly the bilingual public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), a federal Crown corporation funded by the federal government.[57] A June 2022 article in The Economist said that Poilievre sought to convert Canadian's "unease into anger" and has focused on "riling them up", not reassuring them.[58] A Conservative Party organiser expressed concerns that "Poilievre is too Trumpian for most voters".[58]

See also

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Adams 2017.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Donolo 2020.
  3. ↑ Perry & Scrivens 2019.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Rock 2020.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 Geddes 2022.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Miekus 2021.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Triadafilopoulos 2021.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Toronto Life 2016.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Economist 2016.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Giovanetti 2016.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Kay 2021.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Perry, Mirrlees & Scrivens 2017, p. 54.
  13. ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 13.11 13.12 Paikin 2021a.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Keenan 2022.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Canadian Press 2022.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Malloy 2022.
  17. ↑ Anbinder 2019.
  18. ↑ Kendzior 2017.
  19. ↑ Toronto Star & Canadian Press 2016.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Pannett 2021.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Perry & Scrivens 2019, p. 156.
  22. ↑ Delacourt 2020.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Aguirre 2020.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 Bir 2020.
  25. ↑ Kelly & Findly 2017.
  26. ↑ Freeman, Bever & Hawkins 2017.
  27. ↑ Bilefsky 2018.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 Robins-Early 2019.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 Stanley-Becker 2019.
  30. ↑ CBC News 2020.
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 Fawcett 2021.
  32. ↑ Platt 2018.
  33. ↑ Samphir 2019.
  34. ↑ Fallows 2017.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 35.3 35.4 35.5 Graves & Smith 2020.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Brooks 2015.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 37.4 Fournier 2020.
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 McGowan 2020.
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 39.2 39.3 Paikin 2021.
  40. ↑ Fawcett 2022.
  41. ↑ Woods 2020.
  42. ↑ O'Toole 2020.
  43. ↑ Pulido et al. 2019.
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Galloway 2021.
  45. ↑ Boessenkool 2021.
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 Stedman 2017.
  47. ↑ Adams 2022.
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 Martin 2022.
  49. ↑ Fisher 2019.
  50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 50.2 50.3 Levitz 2020.
  51. ↑ 51.0 51.1 51.2 Gilson 2020.
  52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 52.2 Benzie 2021.
  53. ↑ CBC 2021.
  54. ↑ Crabb 2021.
  55. ↑ Joannou 2020.
  56. ↑ BBC News 2017.
  57. ↑ 57.0 57.1 57.2 57.3 Ibbitson 2022.
  58. ↑ 58.0 58.1 Economist 2022.

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""Canada's Trump" is politer than the real thing". Economist. 9 June 2022. ISSN 0013-0613. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/06/09/canadas-trump-is-politer-than-the-real-thing.  F

Fisher, Marc (May 16, 2019). "After a two-decade friendship and waves of lavish praise, Trump pardons newspaper magnate Conrad Black". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-a-two-decade-friendship-and-waves-of-lavish-praise-trump-pardons-newspaper-magnate-conrad-black/2019/05/16/d89317b0-77eb-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html. 

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