Pollara: Populism without populists: New polling reveals Canada’s puzzling political contradiction

2025/12/11 Leave a comment

Interesting:

…Taken together, these patterns define Canada’s distinctive condition of populism without populists: a democratic tension between demand and acceptable political expression. Canadians articulate strong grievances about elite unresponsiveness and systemic unfairnes, and yet resist leaders who adopt the rhetorical and stylistic markers of populism seen elsewhere. The appetite is for accountability and renewal, not for theatrical confrontation or institutional disruption.

For political leaders, this configuration creates a subtle but consequential hazard. Self-identifying as populist offers little reward and significant reputational risk. Canadians overwhelmingly reject figures who embody the style of American right-wing populism. At the same time, the grievances that animate populist movements elsewhere, such as distrust of elites, dissatisfaction with institutions, and perceptions of distant and unresponsive governance, are unmistakably present.

Despite this aversion to populism as a label or style, recent political developments demonstrate that Canadian politicians are increasingly being held accountable by electorates animated by populist expectations around transparency, fairness, keeping promises, follow-through, and genuine influence. Leadership challenges, caucus revolts, and relentless scrutiny signal tensions between authority and responsiveness.

This is the inconvenient democratic reality confronting Canada’s political class. Politicians of all stripes are being held accountable by voters who expect to be heard, respected, and acted upon. Parties should be reminded that in the end, those who govern must answer to those who elected them.

Source: Populism without populists: New polling reveals Canada’s puzzling political contradiction

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Brian Dijkema: American solutions won’t solve the problems fuelling Canadian populism  

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Good discussion of some of the differences:

…Canadian populism ≠ American populism

Conservatives who are sympathetic to an economic vision that is focused on the working class might be forgiven for wanting to copy and paste the American vision into the Canadian context. But this would be a mistake because while many of the concerns of the Canadian working class are shared with their American counterparts (particularly their distrust of elite institutions, including universities, media, law, and cultural establishment), the economic realities that have affected the working class in Canada are markedly different in nature than they are in America.

Many of the items that Cass, Salam, and Douthat sought as policy remedies for the working class in America—family allowances or parental leave, for instance—are well established in Canada. And, frankly, if you look at significant portions of our economy, we are kind of living the dream of a realignment conservative in the U.S. You would expect populism to be a non-factor here.

But that assumes that all countries are like the United States, and they’re not. We’re not.i

Populism is a factor here for many of the same reasons in the U.S. on the cultural side.2 But on the economic side, while we have experienced job polarization, we also have many of the family and other supports that realignment conservatives in the U.S. offer as a means to provide a base for family vitality.

While Cass might be right about the imbalance in favour of the consumer in the U.S. (I’ll let him debate that within his own country), it is absolutely true that in Canada the imbalance goes the other way.

Whether it’s Volkswagen’s battery plants, or spaghetti factories in Brampton, Ont., there is nothing Canadian governments love doing more than taking care of producers in the name of creating jobs (or, more accurately, hypothetical jobs). I think it’s entirely plausible to suggest that, across a whole range of industries, the structure of our economy works against working families getting ahead. So many bills, for cell phones, the milk, butter, and cheese that we use to feed our children, chicken, flights home for Christmas, Christmas turkeys, banking costs, electricity, or housing are far higher than they need to be because the Canadian governments (both provincial and federal) have chosen the producer over the consumer.

Many Canadians, myself included, just look at their monthly bills, look at the ways in which associations and lobbyists for these groups secure protections from competition that would lower prices, and start reaching for their pitchforks. And that doesn’t include the array of other industries that aren’t directly connected with consumer goods—shipbuilding, aerospace, or infrastructure, for instance—that take our tax dollars to create jobs, but barely do that, and also fail to build us the ships and planes that we need to defend our own country. It’s tough to swallow getting dinged with tariffs because our money has gone to stuff the pockets of the Bombardiers, Irvings, and SNCs of the world while they in turn have failed to deliver the things we need to defend democratic institutions against global threats.

A realignment economic agenda in Canada will need to include measures that address these challenges, and insofar as it does so, it will not only look far different from its populist neighbours to the south, but far more like traditional free market economics than the heterodox strands that have been woven into the American populist agenda.

Politicians in Canada who hope to craft a multi-ethnic, working-class coalition will, of course, also need to address the deeply rooted sources of populism in culture, but when it comes to economics, at least in Canada, what’s old should become new again.

Source: Brian Dijkema: American solutions won’t solve the problems fuelling Canadian populism

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Cuenco: Canada’s immigration backlash is far from populist

2024/02/02 Leave a comment

Useful distinction although over emphasizes important of Laurentian elite as this general view is common to all regions:

As the United States and Texas state governments clash over the Mexican border, a very different kind of immigration crisis is taking place elsewhere in North America. Unlike in the divided US, Canada is supposed to be one of the world’s most solidly pro-immigration societies. More than just another self-satisfied Justin Trudeau facade, this attitude has been attested to by historically high levels of public support.

However, an unfolding shift in public sentiment may now change that. Amid a housing crunch and soaring costs of living, Canadians are turning against the prospect of welcoming more immigrants. And the Trudeau government has slowly started to bend under this pressure.

But unlike the rest of the West, Canadians are not advancing this argument via populist rabblerousers or angry mass protests. Instead, Canada’s turnaround is being led by cadres of respectable, credentialed and, for the most part, small-l liberal experts and commentators, who are making the case for immigration reduction in terms that are academic and utilitarian, rather than emotive and atavistic. And, while there has been a rise in populism in recent years, within the Conservative Party and elsewhere, these forces have been unable or unwilling to capitalise on anti-immigration sentiment.

This unique set of circumstances has led to a distinct form of restrictionism, a “polite backlash”, with stereotypically Canadian characteristics. Being driven by educated elites, it plays out in the rarefied spaces of establishment opinion, where opposition to Ottawa’s temporary migrant policies (which has seen more explosive growth than the permanent stream) has materialised.

For instance, the editorial pages of the newspaper of record, The Globe and Mail, have recently featured pleas for “aggressive action to reduce the number of temporary migrants”, along with warnings that businesses “should not be subsidised through the import of cheap labour”. Similar sentiments were heard in the CBC’s nightly news program, which hosted a debate on the question: “Housing crisis vs. immigration: Is it time to slow things down?” Twitter, meanwhile, abounds with commentary by housing experts calling for Ottawa to “substantially reduce the number of visas for both international students and [foreign workers]”. A respected former Bank of Canada governor likewise criticised the fixation on juicing up growth through immigration, which retarded productivity: “On a per-person basis, the economy has been shrinking.”

These objections to the status quo amount to what the Globe describes as “practical concerns about the current pace of immigration, not ideological opposition” to immigration itself, which most (if not all) of these thought leaders continue to support in principle. We are seeing that rare thing: a pragmatic, context-driven response among segments of Canada’s expert class that also matches recent shifts in public opinion.

Because data from the country’s major polling firms, collected over the last few months, all show overwhelming support for cutting immigration numbers as a response to cost-of-living challenges: “68% agree — Canada should put a cap on international students until the demand for affordable housing eases” (Ipsos-Reid); “An increasing proportion of Canadians [61%] want Canada to accept fewer immigrants in 2024” (Nanos Research); “Canadians… believe that immigrants are contributing to the housing crisis (75%) and putting pressure on the health care system (73%)” (Leger). This convergence of views across large swathes of Canadian society has proved unignorable.

Last week, Trudeau’s minister for immigration, Marc Miller, announced cuts to the country’s intake of international students, which has seen exorbitant growth in the last year, and now accounts for a staggering 1 million people, or 2.5% of Canada’s population. (To put the figure in perspective: this means that Canada is hosting almost as many international students as US institution, despite the US population being roughly nine times bigger.) This comes after Statistics Canada figures revealed that “as many as 1 in 5 study permit holders in Canada are not actually studying at the institutions to which they have been accepted”, demonstrating how education has become a back door to the job market.

The new policy will see international undergraduate visas capped at 360,000 in 2024, a one-third reduction from last year, and a rationing of these visas among the provinces, along with changes to the “Post-Graduate Work Program”, widely regarded as a pathway to permanent residency for students. Beyond policy details, this volte-face amounts to an admission of a longstanding truth: the existing system has served as a cash cow for tuition-hungry schools and rent-hungry landlords, as well as a source of cheap labour for employers. The new changes are expected to offer some temporary relief to runaway rents prices (though economists disagree by how much).

Though these changes don’t go far enough for some (including this author), at the very least, it is a signal that Trudeau’s Liberals are willing to act on a problem they ignored for so long: it represents a meaningful, if modest, policy victory for the polite backlash and its arguments for numbers reduction.

Conversations among thought leaders, however, have so far been largely limited to the temporary resident stream. It will be a measure of the experts’ and the government’s determination to correct course once they start considering cuts to the permanent resident stream, currently set at roughly 1.5 million newcomers by 2026. This is one case where public opinion is ahead of them, since the polling data indicates that most Canadians also want these targets to be scaled back as well. In any event, it is important to understand the deeply entrenched nature of the status quo that prompted this polite backlash, for even Miller’s moderate reforms have invited a backlash of its own from the powerful interests whose income has been threatened by the announced cuts.

The outcry is loudest from higher-education institutions, especially in Ontario, the largest province and epicentre of the crisis. These institutions stand to lose the most as they have relied excessively on international tuitions to compensate for their chronically underfunded budgets. This in turn is the fault of the Tory provincial government of Doug Ford, which carried out the budget cuts and had been aware of this over-reliance on foreign students but nonetheless persisted in letting it fester. It also maintained a lax approach to the growth of dubious for-profit “strip mall colleges”, which attracted large shares of international students. Ford’s government, therefore, shares responsibility with Trudeau’s for the severity of the problem, with parties of the Right and the Left found equally complicit.

Meanwhile, the Century Initiative, an influential business-linked group that advocates for immigration maximalism, issued an anodyne statement on the cuts, appearing to assent to them but nonetheless arguing for the 1.5 million permanent resident targets to be retained — even though these are precisely the numbers that must be cut if Ottawa is serious about easing affordability. What is likely to follow is a protracted debate between two segments of expert opinion on the future of immigration, one that will largely take place within the bounds of elite discourse, confirming the closed nature of political decision-making in Canada. As John Ibbitson put it in his account of the country’s “Laurentian elite”: “On all of the great issues of the day, this Laurentian elite debated among themselves… But much of the debate was held behind closed doors: in faculty clubs, the hallways of legislatures, in dining rooms in [tony neighbourhoods like] Toronto’s Annex, Ottawa’s Glebe, Montreal’s Outremont.”

But the progress of this debate still begs the question: what happened to Canada’s populists, who ought to be challenging the elite conversation from outside the system? For some reason, they have counted themselves out of the immigration issue. Federal Tory leader Pierre Poilievre is a case in point: widely described as populist in style and outlook, he is Trudeau’s arch-foe. But he has avoided criticising the government’s immigration targets in any substantive way (a few recent vague comments about matching immigration numbers to housing construction notwithstanding). Even more strangely, he has sought to gain favour with the international students, meeting with themand trying to turn them against Trudeau, claiming they’d get a better deal under him. This is an incredibly naïve and dangerous proposition that will simply give the students false hope for a path to residency, when in fact such expectations should be lowered, not raised. This poor judgement on Poilievre’s part suggests he won’t be any more serious on immigration than Trudeau’s government.

Further to the Right, the People’s Party has, in the past, been incredibly vocal about the need to restrict immigration. But after failing to re-enter parliament multiple times, its leader Maxime Bernier has faded into obscurity. On the Left, the New Democratic Party, nominally the party of organised labour, has abdicated the issue as well, even though as recently as 2014 it led the charge to limit low-skill immigration in the name of defending working-class jobs and wages. Only in Quebec are restrictionist parties still prevalent, but this has more to do with its idiosyncratic language politics than with material economic factors.

A populist revolt over immigration is therefore unlikely in Canada. But the country might have won something better: the expert-driven push to control immigration, with its emphasis on policy over passion, may prove to be a more effective and rational approach to the challenge than the theatrical (but toothless) populisms of Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Wilders and the rest. Canadians should hope that it succeeds in restoring balance to the system eventually, because should the polite backlash fail to do the job, the next backlash will be anything but.

Source: Canada’s immigration backlash is far from populist

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The Right Has Become Post-Religious

2023/07/21 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion:

From 2016 onward, the relationship between conservative Christianity and MAGA-style populism has generated a wide range of reactions, few of them dispassionate. Center-right evangelicals lament the populist strand of the religious right and distinguish it from the moral strand. Critics on the left argue that the populist and moral strands were always one and the same. They declare MAGA politics to be the culmination of a radicalized religious right, and issue blanket condemnations. Postliberal Christian thinkers see a religious populist backlash as the natural consequence of the excesses of American liberalism. They exult in the prospective crumbling of the liberal system, hope for a robust Christian social order to replace it, and issue calls to arms.

These perspectives contain varying degrees of insight, but none is quite satisfactory as an explanation of how we got here. In his new book The Godless Crusade: Religion, Populism, and Right-Wing Identity Politics in the West (Cambridge University Press 2023), Tobias Cremer offers a different interpretation of the conspicuous religious element in modern populist politics. He argues that across Western democracies, populist parties are increasingly employing religious symbolism and rhetoric in an identitarian rather than a religious way. What appears to be an embrace of Christianity is more a celebration of cultural markers (say, Christian history and architecture) used to define themselves against outsiders than an expression of Christian beliefs or moral commitments—Christendom without Christianity. Mobilizing statistics, political analysis, and the content of interviews with 114 political and religious leaders in Germany, France, and the United States, Cremer makes a strong case that religious-themed populism is not the result of religious revival or even backlash, but rather of secularization. This work marks a key contribution to conversations about religious populism and Christian nationalism.

Secular Uses of the Sacred

Cremer’s argument is fourfold. First, the old economic and moral cleavages that used to shape party politics in Western democracies are being supplanted by a new division between cosmopolitans and communitarians. Cosmopolitans embrace globalization, individualism, and multiculturalism, whereas communitarians place greater value on local attachments, inherited identities, and majority rights. The latter group, finding themselves culturally maligned by internal elites and demographically threatened by external immigrants, seek redress in the form of a combative, “us vs. them” populist style of politics. Second, right-wing populists wield Christian symbolism as a way of marking cultural identity rather than religious belief. For populist leaders seeking to forge a shared national identity in a diverse population, Christianity serves as a symbolically powerful “lowest common denominator” as well as a boundary marker against Muslim immigrants. Third, and crucially, populist use of religious symbolism resonates most strongly with nonreligious voters, while practicing Christians are comparatively immune. Fourth, this “religious immunity” to right-wing populism is dependent on the availability of appealing political alternatives for religious voters, as well as the extent to which religious leaders discourage support for populist parties among their followers.

Cremer illustrates these points with an in-depth examination of the cases of Germany, France, and the United States, each of which receives its own section of the book. All three of these countries saw a rise in the demand for populist politics during the 2010s— Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) in France, and Trump’s Republican Party in the United States. In each of these cases, populist use of religious symbols has been highly visible. AfD supporters march in Dresden singing hymns and wielding large crosses. French demonstrators by the thousands, organized by RN, deposit flowers at the feet of a statue of the country’s national saint, Joan of Arc, in veneration. In the United States, crowds wielding bibles and waving Christian flags storm the Capitol building in defiance of the outcome of the 2020 election. Observers of these spectacles draw the seemingly reasonable conclusion that they represent a radicalized religious right in the democratic West.

But this conclusion, Cremer argues, is mistaken. In each of these countries, populist use of religious symbolism has coincided with the marginalization of Christian belief and practice within populist parties. In Germany, AfD expresses skepticism toward the nation’s system of state-supported churches and resists the high social and political status of religious leaders, preferring a reduced role for religion in the public square. France’s RN similarly embraces an extreme form of public secularism, or laïcité. Neither AfD nor RN shows any interest in a conservative social agenda on such issues as same-sex marriage or abortion. Indeed, many statements by populist party leaders explicitly identify the kind of Christianity they advocate as cultural or identitarian rather than religious, and reject the prospect of their parties being influenced by Christian doctrine. While the United States differs in some key respects, the Trump administration shared with its European counterparts an elevation of nonreligious or populist figures over religious ones. Most religious leaders had little access to the Trump White House, and while he maintained an evangelical Faith Advisory Board, Cremer’s interviewees suggest this represented a strategic effort to curb religious criticism rather than any serious desire to institute a Christian policy agenda. In Trump’s administration, the Steve Bannon wing loomed larger than the Mike Pence wing (and current tensions between the Trump campaign and the pro-life movement suggest that not much has changed). Similarly, in AfD and RN Christian members are marginalized while secular, atheist, or neo-pagan strands of the parties wield greater influence.

Religious Immunity

Interviews with religious leaders show that the relationship between religion and right-wing populism is chilly on both sides. In Germany, Catholic and Protestant leaders have been consistent and outspoken critics of AfD, instituting strong social taboos against populist support among their members. Until recently, the French Catholic Church similarly denounced RN without equivocation, even denying sacraments to some of the party’s politicians. Cremer credits strong social taboos against participation in populist politics instituted by religious leaders for the fact that churchgoing Catholics and Protestants in these countries have historically exhibited low support for these parties, indicating a “religious immunity” effect.

Early in the 2016 primaries, this effect was in evidence in the United States as well. Several prominent religious leaders declared Trump an unfit candidate for office, and in the primary vote, churchgoing Republicans were substantially less likely to support Trump than their religiously disengaged co-partisans. Yet by the time of the general election, religious voters were some of his most loyal supporters. Cremer identifies several factors that explain this reversal. First, party loyalty—religious support for the GOP was too entrenched to be disrupted by the nomination of a decidedly irreligious candidate. Second, a lack of alternatives—in a two-party system, the only other serious contender was a Democratic Party with a secularist stance and socially liberal policy platform wholly unacceptable to many religious voters. Third, the Trump campaign made inroads with evangelical leaders and made policy commitments that were appealing to the religious right. Fourth, given the diffuse and non-hierarchical nature of America’s churches, there was a lack of religious leaders with sufficient ability and influence to oppose the right-wing populist movement as clergy in France and Germany had done. These factors in combination undermined the “religious immunity” effect in the United States.

Ultimately, Cremer is positing a Europeanization of American politics in which social cleavages have less to do with economics or morality than the value of national and cultural identity. This shift is captured in a quote from sociologist Eric Kaufmann: “During the Bush years European observers saw American politics as profoundly alien. By 2016 it was to become thoroughly familiar.” American analysts have struggled to provide an accurate diagnosis because they are thinking in categories of class struggles and culture wars that are becoming outdated. For insight into our political moment, we should look across the pond.

Post-religious Right

With respect to the question of “how we got here” in the American case, Cremer’s key insight is that Trump—and more broadly, the style of politics he represents—did not rise to power on the shoulders of the religious right, but rather the post-religious right. Indeed, his presidency was made possible by the very process of secularization that the religious right has long sought to combat. Trump’s coalition may instead be viewed as an alliance between the religious and post-religious right, with the former playing the role of junior partner. Counterintuitively, the conspicuous Christian symbolism present in such populist settings as MAGA rallies and the January 6 storming of the Capitol does not reflect a resurgent and radicalized religious right, but rather one that has been eclipsed by more secular right-wing forces. This understanding offers an important corrective to reductionistic accounts of a Christian nationalist monolith that have dominated scholarship in this area.

While Cremer’s theory goes a long way toward helping us make sense of the past decade’s bewildering political developments, however, it pays little heed to evidence of at least partial overlap between the religious and populist right. Religion data scientist Ryan Burge has shown that in the 2016 Republican primaries, 44 percent of weekly-or-more churchgoers voted for Trump over evangelical candidates like Ted Cruz. This is, if not an outright endorsement, hardly a stinging rebuke. Figures with unimpeachable religious right credentials such as Eric Metaxas have come out as full-throated Trump supporters, while center-right evangelicals like David French and Tim Alberta lament the MAGA-fication of their religious communities. Clearly for many Americans, the tension between their religious commitments and populist politics is surmountable.

On the other side of the ledger, the religious right gained undeniable policy victories from their alliance with the populist right. The religious conservative Holy Grail of the overturning of Roe v. Wade would not have happened if religious voters had withheld support for Trump in the 2016 general election. These facts suggest a possibility absent in France or Germany, where weekly worship attendance is in single digits, but perhaps present in the United States: that of a populist religious right. The populist political style is not incompatible with either religious commitment or social conservatism, and social boundaries can be drawn around religion and morality as easily as birthplace or ethnicity. GOP lawmakers in red states like Texas and Montana offer a taste of what a populist politics that emphasizes religion over ethnicity might look like. Cremer rightly draws our focus to the distinctions and tensions between the religious and populist right, but we should also not lose sight of the prospect of their synthesis.

This caveat aside, The Godless Crusade offers an elegant, compelling, and well-researched account of the overlooked role of secularized religious-themed populism on both sides of the Atlantic—one refreshingly free of pontificating. It deserves to be widely read. Cremer both builds on and challenges existing accounts. His book can create more fruitful conversations about conflicts over the role of religion in the public sphere.

Source: The Right Has Become Post-Religious

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The Global Immigration Backlash

2023/07/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Canada still the exception in terms of public support:

The global migration wave of the 21st century has little precedent. In much of North America, Europe and Oceania, the share of population that is foreign-born is at or near its highest level on record.

In the U.S., that share is approaching the previous high of 15 percent, reached in 1890. In some other countries, the immigration increases have been even steeper in the past two decades:

Foreign-born population share by country from 1960 to 2020

Charts showing the increase in the share of each country’s ­­— Australia, the U.S., Spain, United Kingdom, Netherlands and France — population that is foreign-born.

This scale of immigration tends to be unpopular with residents of the arrival countries. Illegal immigration is especially unpopular because it feeds a sense that a country’s laws don’t matter. But large amounts of legal immigration also bother many voters. Lower-income and blue-collar workers often worry that their wages will decline because employers suddenly have a larger, cheaper labor pool from which to hire.

As Tom Fairless, a Wall Street Journal reporter, wrote a few days ago:

Record immigration to affluent countries is sparking bigger backlashes across the world, boosting populist parties and putting pressure on governments to tighten policies to stem the migration wave. …

The backlashes repeat a long cycle in immigration policy, experts say. Businesses constantly lobby for more liberal immigration laws because that reduces their labor costs and boosts profits. They draw support from pro-business politicians on the right and pro-integration leaders on the left, leading to immigration policies that are more liberal than the average voter wants.

The political left in both Europe and the U.S. has struggled to come up with a response to these developments. Instead, many progressives have dismissed immigration concerns as merely a reflection of bigotry that needs to be defeated. And opposition to immigration is frequently infused with racism: Right-wing leaders like Marine Le Pen in France traffic in hateful stereotypes about immigrants. Some, like Donald Trump, tell outright lies.

But favoring lower levels of immigration is not inherently bigoted or always right-wing. The most prosperous large countries in Africa, Asia and South America tend to have much smaller foreign-born shares of their population. Japan and South Korea make it particularly difficult for foreigners to enter.

Foreign-born population share in 2020

Chart showing the foreign-born population share in 2020 for select countries in Africa, South America and Asia, compared with the U.S., Europe and global shares.

In earlier eras, the political left in the U.S. included many figures who worried about the effects of large-scale immigration. Both labor leaders and civil-rights leaders, for example, argued for moderate levels of immigration to protect the interests of vulnerable workers.

“There is a reason why Wall Street and all of corporate America likes immigration reform, and it is not, in my view, that they’re staying up nights worrying about undocumented workers in this country,” Bernie Sanders said in 2015. “What I think they are interested in is seeing a process by which we can bring low-wage labor of all levels into this country to depress wages for Americans, and I strongly disagree with that.”

Today, though, many progressives are uncomfortable with any immigration-skeptical argument. They have become passionate advocates of more migration and global integration, arguing — correctly — that immigrants usually benefit by moving from a lower-wage country to a higher-wage country. But immigration is not a free lunch any more than free trade is. It also has costs, including its burden on social services, as some local leaders, like Mayor Eric Adams of New York and officials in South Texas, have recently emphasized.

With today’s left-leaning and centrist parties largely accepting of high levels of immigration, right-wing parties have become attractive to many voters who favor less immigration. The issue has fueled the rise of far-right nationalist parties in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland and elsewhere, as Jason Horowitz of The Times explained in a recent article. Jason focuses on Spain, another country where the anti-immigration party is growing.

The latest case study is the Netherlands. The governing coalition there collapsed on Friday after centrist parties refused to accept part of the conservative prime minister’s plan to reduce migration. Rather than alter his plan, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, dissolved the government, setting up an election this fall.

Rutte, notably, is not a member of the far right. He is a mainstream Dutch conservative who has tried to marginalize the country’s extremist anti-immigrant party. Yet he came to believe that reducing immigration was “a matter of political survival” for his party, my colleagues Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Claire Moses reported.

Although the details are different, President Biden has also recently taken steps to reduce unauthorized immigration. So far, his new policy — which includes both more border enforcement and an expansion of legal pathways to apply for entry — appears to have reduced the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Still, the issue clearly divides Biden’s party. Many liberal Democrats have criticized his policy as heartless and said the U.S. should admit more migrants, not fewer.

Democrats frequently like to point out the many ways in which Republicans are out of step with public opinion, including on abortion bans, the minimum wage, taxes on the wealthy and background checks for gun owners. Immigration cuts the other way, polls show. It is a subject on which much of the Democratic Party, like the political left in Europe, is in a different place than many voters.

Source: The Global Immigration Backlash

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Adams and Parkin: Surveys show Canadian are less polarized and angry than Americans

2022/12/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

We are living in an era of populism and polarization. Our politics is divided and angry. And if anything is changing, it is changing for the worse. Or so we are often told.

As usual, the U.S. sets the tone. Our recent surveys — run on both sides of the border — bring this into focus. Compared to 1986, in the midst of Reagan era, Americans today are much less likely to be satisfied both with opportunities to get ahead in their country, and with their system of government. Republicans, in particular, are losing faith in the American dream and in their democracy.

Perhaps surprisingly, over the same period of time, there has been no noticeable change of opinion in Canada. Not everyone here is satisfied with opportunities to advance, or with our system of government. But, on average, Canadians are no more dissatisfied than they were in the mid-1980s. Certainly Conservative party supporters are more dissatisfied now that the Liberals are in power. But this is offset by growing satisfaction among Liberals.

A big shift has occurred in Canada, however, when it comes to social programs. In the mid-1980s, Canadians were almost twice as likely as Americans to be satisfied with social services for the poor and the elderly in their country. Today, there is no difference — while satisfaction in the U.S. has remained low, satisfaction in Canada has fallen sharply. And it has fallen among partisans on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.

This hardly fits the narrative of the rise of populism. Yes, there is evidence of growing dissatisfaction in Canada, but the focus of this dissatisfaction is our failure to better protect the most vulnerable in our society. 

If this seems too rosy, consider opinions on two other questions. In 1986, about 3-in-4 people in both Canada and the United States agreed that government should reduce the income gap between the rich and the poor, and that government should do much more to make sure racial minorities are treated fairly. Since then, agreement on both questions has declined in the U.S. In Canada, there has been no change.

True, there are signs of polarization in both countries, as the gap in agreement between the those on the left and right has widened. But the gap today between Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. is about twice as wide as that in Canada between Conservatives and Liberals. On these questions, the opinions of Canadian Conservatives resemble those of American independents much more that those of their Republican “cousins.”

Then there is the notable absence of division in Canada between the views of racialized and non-racialized citizens. Predictably, in the U.S., African-Americans are much more likely than whites to call on government to act to promote both economic and racial equality; the gap emerges because white Americans are much less likely to favour these actions. 

Not so here, where equally large majorities of white and racialized Canadians call for government to act to reduce inequalities. 

Canadians must avoid looking upon these findings with smugness. Public opinion aside, we struggle to confront racism in our society. If Canadians have grown less satisfied with social services, it is a sign not only of social solidary, but also of the failure of our governments to deliver.

Pointing out that we are less polarized or angry than our American neighbours may be reassuring, but it does little to solve the problems we face. However, we at least can tackle these problems with an awareness that our history, society, culture and institutions are our own, with plenty of weaknesses, but also with undeniable strengths.

Source: Surveys show Canadian are less polarized and angry than Americans

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Milloy: Where is the progressive counter-narrative to Pierre Poilievre?

2022/06/04 Leave a comment

Important question:

As a member of the lefty chattering class, I am not sure what concerns me more — the rise of Pierre Poilievre or the inability of his progressive critics to develop a positive counter-narrative to his message.

The main criticism of Poilievre from those on the left seems to be that he is an angry “nut” with bad policies.  Although he may be popular in some circles, they would argue that it tends to be with the not-too-bright and ill-informed. Clever people from downtown Toronto, Ottawa or other urban centres have no time for him.

Labelling someone early in the game can work — just ask Michael Ignatieff — and maybe Poilievre is simply a crank who is just stirring up a small fringe minority.

Perhaps there is nothing to worry about.

I am not convinced.

From where I sit, it looks like Pierre Poilievre has touched a nerve. Canadians are angry, exhausted, divided, and looking for answers. Poilievre is providing them. He has developed a narrative about how he would address Canada’s problems that has caused many to sit up and take notice.

So, how is the other side responding?

Let’s start with one of Poilievre’s most high-profile promises. If he were prime minister, he would fire the governor of the Bank of Canada for his apparent role in fuelling inflation.

“Ridiculous,” say his critics. Not only does Poilievre not understand basic economics but look at what happened when John Diefenbaker tried to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada in 1961.

I have news for my progressive friends: When gas is two bucks a litre and grown children can’t afford to move out of their parents’ basement, ordinary Canadians aren’t interested in history lessons from the 1960s.

Then there is the issue of restoring freedom — the central theme of Poilievre’s campaign. Once again, the progressive crowd dismisses Poilievre as touting crazy conspiracy theories about big government.

But hold on a minute. I don’t care where you stand on vaccines, lockdowns, and masks. The last few years has seen an unprecedented intrusion in the lives of Canadians. Governments have regulated and curtailed our activities like never before, all in the name of public health.

Where are the limits? What is the progressive narrative about the need to balance personal freedom with the common good? Where is there even an acknowledgement from those on the left that the level of government control over our lives during the pandemic has been scary for some Canadians and they understand and respect that fact?

What about natural resource development and climate change?

Like all Conservative leadership candidates, Poilievre is anxious to cancel the carbon tax and dramatically increase oil and gas production in Canada.

What is the left’s counter-narrative?

Why has it been seemingly impossible for progressives to develop an easy-to-understand story that explains how we need to balance short-term support for oil and gas through actions like the purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and approval of Bay du Nord offshore oil project with a long-term commitment to fighting climate change?

How about defunding the CBC — a proposal that always produces cheers at any Conservative gathering?

Sure, enjoying Canada’s national network over a latte or a glass of chardonnay is a favourite pastime for of every small “l” liberal.  But is it just me, or has the CBC increasingly turned into a northern version of MSNBC? Shouldn’t we be concerned that a big chunk of the population doesn’t see their views represented on our taxpayer-funded network?

Could progressives not even acknowledge the concern and outline a way forward to improve our national broadcaster?

And yes, Poilievre appears to have an unhealthy obsession with cryptocurrency and its growing presence in the global economy.

But how do progressives propose to deal with this emerging phenomenon?

What about the whole style of political discourse these days?

Poilievre claims that Canada is governed by “a small group of ruling elites who claim to possess moral superiority and the burden of instructing the rest of us how to live our lives.”

Ouch!

Be honest all you lefties. Can you see how some people (maybe many people) might view progressives that way? What are you going to do about presenting a style of leadership that is open, prepared to listen and willing to engage?

I end this column where I began. Maybe Pierre Poilievre will ultimately go nowhere.

But be careful. Although I am generally uncomfortable with comparisons between Canadian politicians and Donald Trump, there is one point worth making: Love him or hate him, Trump entered the 2016 election campaign with a whole range of easy-to-understand solutions to the apparent ills facing the United States. The counter-narrative from the other side left much to be desired.

Let’s not make the same mistake here in Canada.

Source: Where is the progressive counter-narrative to Pierre Poilievre?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

Graves and Valpy: Who supports the ‘freedom’ protesters and why

2022/02/18 2 Comments

Useful and informative public opinion insights:

In the turbulent 1960s, American journalist Hunter S. Thompson spent nearly a year following around the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang. His most striking conclusion was not their violent hedonism but their “ethic of total retaliation” against a technologically advanced and economically changing America in which they felt they’d been left behind.

As he wrote in an article for The Nation, that kind of politics is “nearly impossible to deal with” using reason or empathy or awareness-raising or any of the other favourite tools of the left.

And in 2016, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, also writing in The Nation, borrowed Thompson’s language to describe her fellow citizens who elected Donald Trump, introducing a new, deeply polarized right-wing politics into her country’s civic life.

Which brings us to the occupation of Ottawa and the blockading of border-crossings and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the federal Emergencies Act — in Canada, for heaven’s sake.

“Thompson was the only American writer to warn coastal, left-liberal elites about their disconnection from poor and working-class white voters,” wrote McWilliams Barndt.

“Thompson’s Angels were mostly working-class white men who felt, not incorrectly, that they had been relegated to the sewer of American society. The manual-labor skills that they had learned and cultivated were in declining demand.

“Though most had made it through high school, they did not have the more advanced levels of training that might lead to economic or professional security,” wrote McWilliams Barndt.

“Their lack of education,” Thompson wrote of the Angels, “rendered them completely useless in a highly technical economy.”

Looking at the American future, they saw no place for themselves in it — the “white trash” or “deplorables” of Trump Trump Trump, who felt like strangers in their own land.

This is Canada, after all, and talk of social class differences traverses sensitive turf. But the survey work of EKOS Research suggests that what is taking place in Ottawa and other locales is not the behaviour of fringe Canadians but rather evidence of significant general discontent and unhappiness.

Sympathy with the protests, and their objectives, is felt by a third of Canadians — and by no means a random third but a third defined by clear demographic and attitudinal factors.

The most important driver is generational. Half of under-50 Canadians are sympathetic to the protests and their cause. Other key drivers include education, with college graduates more sympathetic and university graduates more opposed. Social class is also a key factor with working class drawn to the protesters and middle and upper classes opposed.

Moreover, it may be that economic anxieties are driving these protests as much as the named issues of vaccines and mask mandates. Those most adamantly opposed to masks and mandates have (by far) the bleakest economic outlook, resulting in a generational resentment toward an economy that has seen younger Canada faring much worse than their parents or grandparents at a similar stage of life cycle. Wage stagnation exacerbated by inflation and affordability is a key force expressing itself in housing and many other pocketbook issues.

Nation-wide, stress has been well above normal levels for more than two years. Stress is much higher in poor people and declines with upward movement in self-defined social class. Under-50 Canada is experiencing much more stress than over-50 Canada. There is also a striking interaction between age and gender with under 35-women registering 25 per cent higher levels of stress than comparably aged males.

Most alarming, 65 per cent of Canadians believe — and have believed for more than a decade — that if the present trend in the concentration of wealth at the very top continues, Canadians may well see “violent class conflict.”

For under-35 Canada this number rises to 78 per cent agreement and 81 per cent for those who identify as working class. These groups are also being fuelled by disinformation, which is clearly a critical factor and closely resembles the disinformation patterns in the U.S.

What would Hunter S. Thompson have discovered, walking along Wellington Street?

Source: Who supports the ‘freedom’ protesters and why

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Losing steam, Polish government plays immigration card

2021/08/30 Leave a comment

Sad but not unexpected:

As it loses steam in the polls, Poland’s right-wing populist government is playing the anti-immigration card that helped it win in 2015, hoping to take back the political initiative, analysts said.

Thousands of migrants — most of them from the Middle East — have crossed from Belarus into eastern EU states, including Poland, in recent months.

The EU suspects the influx is engineered by the Belarusian regime in retaliation against increasingly stringent EU sanctions, with Poland the Baltic states calling it a “hybrid attack”.

Political attention in Poland in recent weeks has focused on a group of around 30 migrants camped out on the border between Poland and Belarus.

Poland is refusing to let in the migrants, said to be Afghans by a charity trying to help them, or give them aid without the consent of Belarus.

“It cannot be ruled out that there will be early elections next year… and it is by no means certain that the Law and Justice (PiS) party will win a majority or manage to piece together a coalition,” said Agata Szczesniak, a political analyst for the news portal OKO.press.

The government lost its formal parliamentary majority earlier this month after the departure of a junior coalition partner.

A recent poll by Kantar also found that PiS had fallen by three points in the polls and is now neck-and-neck with the main opposition grouping, Civic Platform, at 26 percent.

“To go back up in the polls, PiS is trying to replay what happened in 2015 but even more so. It is focusing public emotion around the image and rhetoric of a war” against migrants, Szczesniak said.

During Europe’s migration crisis of 2015, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski scored electoral points in parliamentary elections that year with his anti-immigration rhetoric, including warnings about the diseases and “all sorts of parasites” that the migrants might bring with them.

– ‘Holy Polish territory’ –

The government has remained intransigent over the migrants on the border even after multiple appeals from the UN refugee agency, the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said he is protecting “holy Polish territory”.

Dressed in military-style wear, he has visited the border to announce the building of a fence.

Culture Minister Piotr Glinski has promised to “defend Poland against migrants” and Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak has sent 2,000 soldiers to the border.

“What is happening at the border is political gold” for the government, said former EU chief Donald Tusk, now head of Civic Platform.

Adam Szostkiewicz, a political commentator for the weekly Polityka, said the government was “building its election campaign around this”.

But analysts pointed out that public feeling around the issue has changed in recent years.

Many Poles sympathise with Afghans and are growing used to higher levels of immigration in the country, particularly of Ukrainians and Belarusians.

“At the time, around 70 percent of Poles said they were opposed to letting in refugees. Today, it is 55 percent,” said Szczesniak.

– Confusion –

The government may also be sending a mixed message.

In recent days, it has also evacuated almost 1,000 Afghans who worked for Poland’s military contingent.

“On the one hand, the PiS is helping Afghans and on the other it is rejecting them. This creates confusion,” said Szczesniak.

Szostkiewicz said the fact that the crisis could be orchestrated by Minsk “does not justify the lack of basic empathy… and Poles can see that”.

The situation of the group blocked at the border has also prompted pleas from Poland’s Catholic Church, which is traditionally close to the current government.

Poland’s leading Catholic clergyman, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, has appealed for political leaders “to be guided above all by the spirit of hospitality, respect for new arrivals and goodwill”.

Source: Losing steam, Polish government plays immigration card

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Boswell: Ten suggestions to help avoid a Trump-like nightmare in Canada

2020/11/10 1 Comment

A range of possible measures, some which focus on political culture, others require institutional change, and some more realistic than others. But a good list to discuss and debate (respectfully of course!):

While the CNN hosts expressed shock and disgust, other networks turned their cameras away and Late Show host Stephen Colbert choked back tears, I felt a deep satisfaction when U.S. President Donald Trump spoke directly to the American people (and the world) on Thursday night and launched a scorched-earth attack on his own country’s democratic process — declaring it corrupt and fraudulent because it was failing to recognize his unmatched greatness and divine claim to renewed power.

Had Trump shown an ounce of decency or graciousness in that moment, there might have been an inclination among his Republican allies, certain political observers and even some historians to frame their final judgment of the worst president in U.S. history more forgivingly.

Instead, no one should be able summarize the term in office of the 45th U.S. president as anything but a nightmare, its end — or at least the beginning of its end — suitably incoherent, desperate and terrifying.

But the Trump horror show of the past four years isn’t something Canadians should too swiftly forget. There are many lessons to be learned from what our neighbours to the south have been enduring since 2016 — though this country and the entire world has suffered along with them.

The following is a shortlist of 10 things we Canadians need to be thinking about in charting our own political future in a way that should prevent Trumpism from ever triumphing here.

• We need greater vigilance in calling out and condemning dog-whistling bigotry — not to mention undisguised bigotry — and other strategically divisive speech and actions among fringe political forces and mainstream actors alike;

• We need to demand basic decency in our political discourse and punish corrosive, hyper-partisan rhetoric in which legitimate opponents and other important players in public affairs (such as journalists) are characterized as enemies;

• We must establish a fully trusted electoral system in which the efficiency, transparency, fairness and integrity of the voting process is guaranteed with adequate funding and the best technology and organizational protocols;

• We should move toward an electoral system in which citizens’ voting preferences are more fairly reflected in the composition of our legislative bodies, and where majority power cannot be obtained without majority support at the polls;

• We must extend and expedite efforts to identify, condemn and curb transparently false, incendiary, conspiratorial communication in all digital and other forms;

• We should foster a political culture in which arguments are routinely scrutinized to ensure evidence-based, science-backed, logical thinking prevails over groundless assertions, no matter how colourfully or passionately expressed;

• We must promote greater ethnocultural diversity and gender equity at all levels of our representative democracy to ensure decision-making bodies, the public service and public discourse better reflect the true complexion of our ever-evolving population;

• We have to redouble efforts to improve all Canadians’ understanding of what responsible citizenship requires in a participatory democracy, recognizing the importance of both free speech and tolerance, media literacy, and basic knowledge of civics, history, geography, math and science;

• We need to recognize that achieving and maintaining a stable, constructive democratic culture in this country requires a high degree of social cohesion, political unity and mutual support across the federation’s provincial and territorial jurisdictions;

• We also need to understand that safeguarding democratic cultures in any country requires a sustained, collective commitment to promoting similar values internationally through strong, multilateral, global institutions.

It goes without saying that this really is just a shortlist. Canadians need to do much more to prevent the rise of a demagogue here.

We need to treat the Earth sustainably, we need to respect each other’s human rights and the rule of law, and we need to strive to promote social and economic justice — as well as social and economic freedom — while creating and recreating a healthy political culture.

But in those maddening, pathetic, horrifying moments at the White House presidential podium on Thursday night, Canadians were given a parting gift by Trump the Terrible: an enduring reminder that we can’t ever let politics in this country descend to such dark and dangerous depths.

Randy Boswell is a journalist and Carleton University professor.

Source: https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/boswell-ten-suggestions-to-help-avoid-a-trump-like-nightmare-in-canada

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