Trump populism comes to Canada as Conservatives seek leader - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14756237

Trump populism comes to Canada as Conservatives seek leader

Canada's answer to Donald Trump is a pediatric surgeon and former cabinet minister who, like the U.S. president-elect, is railing against immigration and political elites.

Kellie Leitch, 46, has vaulted to the front of the race to lead the opposition Conservative Party by pushing a hard-right "Canadian values" platform that taps into discontent over the sluggish economy and Canada's acceptance of 37,000 Syrian refugees.

Leitch is ahead of about a dozen candidates in the most recent opinion polls on the Conservative leadership election, scheduled to be held on May 27, 2017. The candidate chosen by party members will be their flag bearer for the October 2019 general election, against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

"Elites pretend this isn't an issue, but Canadians want to talk about it (immigration)," Leitch said in an interview last week from her farmhouse in rural Ontario.

She has professed admiration for Trump's embrace of the ordinary voter, and acknowledged similarities in their agendas.

"I am talking about screening immigrants, I am talking about building pipelines, I am talking about making sure Canadians have jobs, so yeah, some of the ideas and language are the same," said Leitch, an energetic and plain-spoken former labor and women's affairs minister.

Just as Trump did not initially have the backing of mainstream Republicans, Leitch has alienated many in her party establishment who fear that she will struggle to win Canada's urban, mainly immigrant, voter base in the general election.

One of the reasons why the Conservatives had managed to hold power for almost a decade was their successful push into immigrant communities under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had convinced the party that rising immigration made newcomers a must-win constituency. Canada takes in about 300,000 immigrants every year.

"She may believe that swimming away from the broad center of the Conservative electoral coalition, the one that wins elections, may make sense. History and demographics argue otherwise," said Hugh Segal, who has known Leitch for more than 25 years. Segal is a former senator and chief of staff to former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Still, a November poll by Mainstreet/Postmedia showed Leitch led a 12-candidate Conservative race with 19 percent support, and separate data showed she led fundraising as well. The pool of candidates running has since swelled to 14, and more may join, including businessman and reality TV star Kevin O'Leary, who has also drawn comparisons to Trump.

"There is absolutely room for a populist surprise in Canada," said pollster Frank Graves of EKOS Research. "The type of forces driving Brexit and Trump are very much at work in Canada, albeit somewhat more muted."

ECONOMIC MALAISE

In a year marked by ultra-conservative movements in Europe and the United States, Leitch's vault from relative obscurity to Conservative front-runner is in part boosted by media fascination with the parallels between her "Canadian values" and Trump's "Make America great again."

Like Trump, Leitch has been accused of being racist and targeting Muslims with her proposal to make every immigrant go through a face-to-face interview before letting them in. She denies those charges, and says her screening plan is aimed at ensuring each immigrant is a good fit for Canada.

"Even if my colleagues are concerned about the backlash of the media or other elites, that's okay with me because I'm quite comfortable ... I don't view it as racist in any way," said Leitch, a practicing Catholic from the traditionally conservative, oil-rich province of Alberta.

Trudeau was elected in October 2015 and promised to accept more Syrian refugees more quickly than the Conservatives, who had been in power for nearly 10 years. But his timeline proved too ambitious, and sparked public criticism that the government was too rushed to adequately screen refugees for security concerns.

Amid dissatisfaction with the economy and other issues, Trudeau's approval rating has fallen 10 percentage points to 55 percent in the last three months, according to a December Angus Reid poll, though he remained more popular than any recent prime minister.

While much can change in the next three years before the general election, Graves, the pollster, said a Conservative victory is possible in part because Canada's economic malaise has sparked the same kind of working class resentment that helped propel Trump to victory.

Canada's economy has been hurt by a two-year slump in oil prices, weak business investment and disappointing non-energy exports. The economy contracted in October and the manufacturing sector logged its biggest decline in nearly three years.

"The reason Trump got his momentum is he was the only candidate who was prepared to talk about immigration," said Martin Collacott, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, a Conservative think-tank, and a former ambassador. "If Kellie Leitch plays it right, and refines her message, she could probably get quite a bit of support."

Reuters


Is the pollster right that there is room for a populist surprise in Canada?
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#14756317
Frollein wrote:Who cares, as long as SJWs get kicked in the teeth?
Pensioners, for one, may have cause to care. What price retribution? Wouldn't it make more sense to just go ahead and directly kick the SJWs in the teeth, rather than have everybody else pay the price of your disdain?
#14756367
quetzalcoatl wrote:Is this going to be real populism or another exercise in bait-and-switch marketing? Because if it's the latter, you may as well just vote Conservative and get it over with.


If the Conservatives win in 2019 it will be over the carbon tax and the mismanagement of Hydro One in Ontario. Like Trump's election, it will be another situation where the defeat of the other guy is too well deserved.
#14756373
^
Electricity supply has been thoroughly messed up in Ontario, simply by the virtue of stupidity of Canadian liberal government. They made contracts with suppliers that drove electricity prices through the roof. Now they say they can not do anything about it because they made the contracts and can not go back on the deals, that would mean paying high fees to break the contracts.

So that basically leaved two options. One is giving them benefit of the doubt and considering them criminally stupid. Or another explanation is that they are corrupt and fucking people over in cahoots with their business buddies. For which they should be thrown in jail.

I say tear up those contracts and throw the business people in jail for having screwed so many people over. It makes sick whenever I think about, as practically there is no reason for having such high costs for electricity, Ontario has over supply in production. This is all man made stupidity.


Also yes, there are strong populist sentiments in Canada. Established parties be they left or right like in many countries do not represent peoples views. Kellie Leitch seems like a person who might actually represent the people.

It is a myth created by Canadian government that Canada is this some sort of liberal multicultural paradise. That is far, far from the truth. Some Canadians as you see here with Godstud like to give lip service to this myth, because it makes them feel special and superior. But honestly, it is all majour bs.
Last edited by Albert on 30 Dec 2016 07:29, edited 2 times in total.
#14756393
quetzalcoatl wrote:Pensioners, for one, may have cause to care. What price retribution? Wouldn't it make more sense to just go ahead and directly kick the SJWs in the teeth, rather than have everybody else pay the price of your disdain?


No matter how long I work, my pension will be not much higher than welfare; private pension plans (Riester Rente) have tanked. Prices for houses and apartments are up through the roof, even Die Welt admits that young families don't have a chance to buy a house and increasingly are not able to afford to rent, especially in the cities.

So what do I have to lose? Burn it down, and watch the SJWs wail in despair as their luxury projects go up in flames. :)
#14756410
Albert wrote:It is a myth created by Canadian government that Canada is this some sort of liberal multicultural paradise. That is far, far from the truth. Some Canadians as you see here with Godstud like to give lip service to this myth, because it makes them feel special and superior.

Oh I thought Godstud went to the far east in order to learn from the likes of Thailand, Burma and China, the proper way to treat Muslims.
#14756411
Frollein wrote:Prices for houses and apartments are up through the roof,

:?: Strange we've had something similar going on here. You know Frollein I've often wondered if there might not be some obscure connection between flooding a country with immigrants and rising rents and house prices. I mean I sometimes wonder if land and property supply might be a tad inelastic. I'm sure it'll be alright though. I'm sure Mutti knows what she's doing.
#14756429
To buy property in Toronto these days, you either have to be well off, work like a dog with no life, or live in it with your whole extended family, like a south Asian.

Basically adapt and live in third-world conditions or get rich. There is no middle. Normal civilized life is gone.

Multiculturalism is so fantastic. Because it is 2016.
#14756442
Decky wrote:That's capitalism for you.
That is not capitalism Decky, it is stupidity. Stupidity of people in government, the consequence of which is messed up society.

I honestly dont understand how exactly so many stupid people got into power like this, but it had happened over time. I suspect it has to do something with PC culture and progressive liberalism. Perhaps in their strive for ideological purity only idiots who can fall into line managed to rise to power. As intelligent individuals will not be able to tolerate such fundamentalist environment and they themselves will not be toletated and pushed out.

Basically an environment has been created where natural order works backwards. You get idiots rising to the top and good people fit for the job of governing oppressed to the bottom. Natural selection working backwards in a way. :hmm:

Edit: This is why the SJWs throughout the western world are so angry about the changes that are happening. Because personally they stand to lose. As their stupidity will not be exused anymore in non-idiological world. They can not win anymore by screaming blasphemous or oppression. They actually have to speak sense and produce results. This is a majour blow to their survival.

Look at Trump, they labelled him with all non PC labels as possible. Racist, misogynistic or divisive. Nothing worked, reason and reality won over this time. This is terrifying for them. As it is a sign of natural order doing its process, and they appear to end up at the end of the stick at the end of it all.

They most fear that, for fit and good actually to rise up.
Last edited by Albert on 30 Dec 2016 14:18, edited 2 times in total.
#14756451
I'm struggling to get my head around what people mean by populism and why it is bad. It seems that this is a throw away "moniker" to denigrate their opponents who have got the popular vote. I guess when those casting aspersions were elected with a majority, they never considered themselves to be populist. As such, whenever I see something/someone described as being populist, I tend to think that it is probably the best option available to the people, rather than sticking with a degenerating status quo.
#14756452
I'm struggling to get my head around what people mean by populism and why it is bad. It seems that this is a throw away "moniker" to denigrate their opponents who have got the popular vote. I guess when those casting aspersions were elected with a majority, they never considered themselves to be populist. As such, whenever I see something/someone described as being populist, I tend to think that it is probably the best option available to the people, rather than sticking with a degenerating status quo.


'Populist' is used indiscriminately by everyone to mean 'the stupid people'. We are all elitist at heart.
#14756458
No not all people are pompously elitist.

Populism is basically a smear word, it makes no sense outside of that context. In reality it is parties that represent people concerns that the established politicians refuse to represent. I mostly believe they refuse this because of their ideological outlook. They see populist parties as a challenge to their liberal order and a lot of them are convinced that the modern democratic system can not exist without such order. So hence why they are so up and arms against all this.

The whole post-war order is being challenged, that they knew and grew up in. It terrifies the heck of them as they know nothing else.

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