Is Trump’s Brand of Populism Changing Canada?
From January 22 to February 23, 2022, the world took notice as Canada’s capital was overrun by a so-called “Freedom Convoy,” a massive street demonstration that shut down Ottawa’s downtown core. Though it ultimately failed in its goal to disrupt the federal government, the stunning act of civil disobedience clashed with many outsiders’ views of Canada as a country with a content and docile population. Internally, many Canadians were likewise surprised by the protest’s size and effective organization. It had started as an angry statement by a small number of independent long-haul truckers, frustrated by the Liberal government’s COVID-19 vaccination requirements on them. Unexpectedly, it exploded when thousands of other Canadians with myriad grievances joined them to confront a government that had only three months before been re-elected, albeit with a minority in parliament and with only 32.6 percent of the popular vote.
The populist protests generated significant domestic and international support, garnering unprecedented attention on social media and raising millions of dollars, much of it from foreign donors. Though mostly harmless, save for the noise and some minor vandalism, the convoy represented a significant change in Canadian politics, worrying many moderates who feared that Canada was falling victim to populist pressures akin to those seen in the United States during the Trump presidency and in subsequent state races.
The month-long standoff on the streets of a G7 capital touched off copycat protests in other parts of the world. It was a culmination of many issues in Canada relating to COVID-19 policy, in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government had taken aggressive (and largely successful) action to combat the spread and collateral damage of COVID-19. This approach had spared Canada the same kind of carnage seen in the United States, where nearly 1.1 million had died. By contrast, Canada had seen approximately 46,000 Coronavirus-related deaths. But Canada’s success had come at the expense of some personal freedoms.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, a large majority of Canadians were generally supportive of the restrictive measures that required masking in public places and vaccination in order to return to work in most businesses. The mandatory vaccinations also extended to truckers, as they routinely cross the Canada-US border and move between cities. Truckers bristled, saying that by its very nature, trucking is an isolated vocation with little chance of becoming vectors of the disease. As many Americans and Canadians grew weary of COVID-19 interventions, those libertarian views became a staple on Canadian social media, particularly in the Prairie provinces.
Over the Christmas holidays in 2021 and with the omicron variant beginning to take hold, the Trudeau government announced new, more stringent vaccination requirements for the transportation sector. When a group of angry truckers announced they would head to Ottawa to stage a protest and took to GoFundMe to raise funds for gas and accommodations, the response was overwhelming. Quickly, social media algorithms allowed echo chambers to form, resulting in a huge protest that brought almost anyone with a grievance against the federal government to Ottawa under the banner and protection of the truckers.
As it grew well beyond the organizers’ expectations, there were widespread instances of misinformation and far-right conspiracies. American influence was clear, as one walking the street would see almost as many American, such as Tea Party and Confederate, flags as Canadian ones, showing a surprising amount of influence from American populism in Canadian politics. Social media played a large role in this, as right-wing echo chambers that were relatively small prior to the pandemic grew in size during the lockdowns as people spent more time online and social media algorithms brought frustrated individuals together and encouraged them to vent their anger.
When Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States, many Canadians worried that similar populism would spread beyond the U.S., but very little changed in Canada during the Trump years. When Trump left the White House, most Canadians welcomed a return to normalcy and predictability. Even during the pandemic, competence and calm was seen as paramount, allowing Trudeau to win re-election for a third time. That was until the convoy and its aftermath, which showed many Canadians that their country was not immune to the spread of populism and the social-media-fuelled divisions that come with it.
The size and tenor of the convoy protests caught many off guard, including even many conservatives, who had sought to toe the line between championing individual rights while also heeding the more than 80 percent of Canadians who, at the time, supported requirements for vaccination. But one enterprising conservative politician saw it as an opportunity to topple the Conservative Party’s leadership and make it his own: Pierre Poilievre.
Despite having a French name, Poilievre was born and raised in Western Canada, a deeply conservative area, and has long had a reputation as an angry, divisive politician. In opposition, he was known widely as one of former PM Stephen Harper’s most ruthless political attack dogs. In government, as a cabinet minister, he was considered competent and willing to champion unpopular legislation. With Ottawa in gridlock last January, Poilievre unabashedly marched with the protesters, exalted them to continue to shut down the capital, and seized every opportunity to criticize Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government on social media. Throughout the convoy and in the immediate aftermath, Poilievre developed a huge following on social media, that he then used to propel himself to the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). While the next federal election is still three years away, Poilievre is now positioned to challenge Justin Trudeau, or whomever replaces him at the Liberal helm.
Many Canadians are ambivalent about Poilievre, ready for someone new but fearing that he is drawing too freely from the populist movements that have risen to prominence around the world. Having endured two attempts by Quebec to separate from the rest of Canada, Canadians have generally shied away from politics that are radical and divisive. Indeed, at all levels of government, Canadian voters have generally favored more moderate platforms. In borrowing much of his rhetorical flair from Donald Trump and his acolytes, Poilievre appears to be bucking conventional wisdom, even though his policies, particularly in areas like immigration, appear relatively conventional compared to those of other populists. Poilievre’s politics have a traditionally conservative platform, flecked with libertarian accents and delivered with populist rhetoric. This rhetoric is what is worrying most Canadians - even though his actions represent a more moderate approach. One of the reasons behind this may be the structure of the Conservative Party.
Though it has been revamped and rebranded multiple times, Canada’s Conservative Party is one of only two political parties since 1911 to have formed a government after a federal election, the other being the Liberals. Like in the United States, federal elections are generally reduced to pitched battles over an increasingly small number of constituencies. A majority of voters live in districts that very rarely change their patterns. As such, what it takes to win a federal election in Canada is the party’s ability to win the swing votes in 60 ridings, roughly 20 percent of the electoral districts. In recent years, the Liberal Party has found more success in this - and since Trudeau won his first election in 2015, the CPC has elected three different leaders and anointed two interim ones, none of whom were able to gain the political footing to win an election. The Conservative Party often has trouble holding on to leaders due to inherent rifts within the party between the religious right, fiscal conservatives, and regional interests that differ between the Maritimes, Quebec and the West. Leaders have the sisyphean task of uniting progressives and the further-right conservatives under the same banner. Oftentimes, these rifts within the party are what cause the Liberal victory in federal elections, where they are capable of fielding a more united vision. The same cannot be said for their conservative counterparts.
In the aftermath of the convoy, Poilievre’s rise was rapid. His social media campaigns that were fiercely critical of Trudeau attracted many disenfranchised conservatives and young Canadians to his side. Poilievre began to get the attention of moderates who may have agreed, if only a little bit, with his opinions on the vaccine mandates and Canada’s lockdown measures.
Since winning the leadership of the CPC in September, party membership has soared, but Poilievre has not had much opportunity to show what sort of leader he will be. His first couple of weeks in office were overshadowed by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and a subsequent hurricane that ravaged the East Coast. More recently, he has been solidly on the defensive over revelations that many of his YouTube promotional videos were tagged with hidden keywords aimed at the algorithms that pander to the alt-right. That being said, his decisions when it comes to his personal staff show that he is intent on uniting the party. He has appointed many notable moderates to key roles, including Ian Todd, his new chief of staff. In the 1990s, Todd was a key member of Preston Manning’s Reform Party, a breakaway Western conservative party, but was known as a pragmatic proponent of non-divisive politics. Poilievre is making it clear that he assumed the role to win elections, not just to destabilize Canadian politics.
To many Canadians, Poilievre’s rhetoric will certainly be worrisome,but his actions so far have been mostly benign. From the outside, it appears he is heeding advice that he now needs to appease moderates within his own party if he is going to successfully challenge Trudeau in the next election. As of now, the polls are fairly evenly split, with some giving him the edge and others forecasting a fourth-straight Liberal victory. But with an election a few years away, the polls are not yet indicative of any groundswells of support.
If the CPC hopes to win in 2025, it would need to present a united front between moderates and populists. Poilievre’s actions acknowledge this, and though the convoy is still fresh in the memory of many Canadians and populism does seem on the rise, it does not yet look like Canada will have the same experience with populism as the United States or Europe. The rhetoric may be reminiscent of Trump or France’s Marine Le Pen, worryingly so at times, but his first month in leadership suggests he has already realized that his party cannot rely on divisiveness and populism alone.