Even as the highly infectious Omicron variant has rampaged across the country, elected leaders (including Trudeau himself) have continued to place blame for the pandemic squarely on the unvaccinated. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the country remains in a quasi–state of emergency, but the language of togetherness and social solidarity of its early months are long gone - along with many of the benefit programs that supported people throughout the initial lockdowns. The current moment in Canada is no exception. They flourish in conditions of economic hardship and social alienation and are often aggravated by the cynical behavior of traditional political elites eager to distract from their own failures. Far-right politics do not exist in a vacuum or arrive suddenly like a random weather event. The uncomfortable reality is that even fake, astroturfed populism can mobilize real popular support. While the country’s most well-known banker invokes “ sedition,” meanwhile, the protests have won plaudits from right-wing media across the globe, inspired copycat actions, and even been endorsed by the world’s richest man. Well over 100,000 people donated millions to a GoFundMe campaign before it was shut down. Already besieged after his failure in last fall’s election, the Conservative Party’s weathervane leader Erin O’Toole has been shown the door - with right – wing MP Pierre Poilievre currently the front-runner to replace him. It’s also clear they’ve successfully mobilized people less immersed in the traditional right-wing milieu (a fact that became quite evident to me when I surveyed the large demonstration in my own city of Toronto last weekend).īy most measures, they have also been alarmingly successful, notwithstanding low turnout from actual truckers and overwhelming opposition from Ottawa residents. Whatever ostensible connection these protests have to labor issues or the trucking industry, it’s clear they’ve in practice become a more ecumenical expression of right – wing politics in the COVID era and have drawn in a range of converts, including openly racist and extremist elements. There can, of course, be no doubt about the reactionary bent of the crowd that has spent the past week occupying much of downtown Ottawa or the far – right backgrounds of its leaders. Rather, it’s because I see a replication of an odious and all too familiar culture war dynamic pitting finger-wagging urban liberals against an ever-radicalizing right wing that pretends to stand up to elites and speak up for workers. This is not owed to some naive concern that the protests signal the beginnings of proto-Trumpian politics north of the border: Canada has been a hotbed of far-right activity for years, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. The far-right PPC, meanwhile, ultimately raked in hundreds of thousands of new votes.Īs a Canadian who has spent the past several years writing about US politics, the chain of events spanning last year’s election to this month’s self-described “Freedom Convoy” protests has left me feeling an ominous sense of déjà vu. What you will find, however, is a deluge of content related to them from right-wing media outlets in Canada and abroad.)Īs a short-term electoral strategy, it worked: the Tory surge failed to materialize and the prime minister, albeit with fewer overall votes than his Conservative opponent, narrowly kept his job. Try searching the websites of major newspapers for coverage of the interview and you will mostly come up short. Flailing since the beginning of the campaign, the Liberals suddenly had a narrative.ĭenouncing “anti-vaxxer mobs” and linking them to his Conservative opponent, Trudeau also used one French-language interview to make an even stronger statement about anti-vaxxers: a group, he said, that “ believe in science/progress” and was “often very misogynistic and racist.” (Trudeau’s comments, as far as I can tell, never properly penetrated the Anglo-Canadian mainstream. Soon enough, some in the crowds were tied to the far right and nativist People’s Party of Canada (Parti populaire du Canada, PPC) led by former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. Irate crowds, showing up to protest the government’s COVID-19 policies, began to appear at the prime minister’s campaign stops. Having called an early campaign for no particular reason besides it looking politically opportune, a swift spike in the polls for the Conservatives briefly made defeat a genuine possibility.īut then, something happened. A few weeks into last fall’s Canadian federal election, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals seemed to be in trouble.
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