A lot of what makes Trump Trumpian is his ability to put demonstrated sycophants into positions of responsibility. Although this is true of many presidents, for Trump the primary loyalty is a personal one and not an idealized notion of public service.
So maybe the question is how able the Cabinet would be to appoint specific judicial figures, for example, without too much squawking. I can’t see it.
I’m sorry but I don’t think you understood the point. It’s not that we’d get a Donald Trump, because, again, we do not elect our head of state. That is not the danger.
The danger is that we could get an ideologically extreme government that begins to break down democratic norms. That absolutely could happen. In such a situation it’s not that the party’'s leader would be an incompetent doofus. The leader would very likely be extremely competent.
You’re still, weirdly, convinced that Stephen Harper was some kind of right wing fascist despite the fact the guy was in power for nine years and was, if anything, unwilling to apply any sort of ideology at all. Looking at the party you don’t support for signs of evil is going to leave you really surprised when things do fall apart, and make no mistake, they can.
It will not be a Donald Trump, it’ll be something else. And don’t think for an instant us having a different political system is a guarantee of safety. No political system is worth the paper its constitution is written on if people lose interest in keeping it.
People like to try to identify “Trumps” in pretty much all Western countries, but first let’s define what Trump is. I guess the main characteristics are populism, and an outsider image that’s claiming to be a breath of fresh air, shaking up the political class. I’m not sure it even needs to be a right-wing leader. So for example, I don’t think Marine Le Pen is “France’s Trump”, being the daughter of a political leader active since the 60s, and who actually fell out with her father when she moved her party towards a less “anti-system” stance. How about the names the article claim have been called Trumpian? Doug Ford (son of a former Ontario MPP) or François Legault (who is in fact a former businessman who went into politics, in 1998)? That’s not who I’m thinking about when I’m thinking outsiders. Even Maxime Bernier owes his political career to being Gilles Bernier’s son, which isn’t very different from Justin Trudeau in that regard. And let’s not even discuss the article’s claim (okay, caption’s claim, but whatever) that Jacques Parizeau, an economist who spent most of his career building up the modern Quebec economy away from the spotlight, was a “populist”.
So could there be a Trump-like leader happening in Canada? English Canadian political culture is more conservative (small c) than the US’s. We’re talking about a country whose motto is Peace, order and good government and which means it. So populism might be a harder sell in Canada, though definitely not non-existent. I’ve read articles suggesting that the Conservatives should embrace Western populism in selecting their new leader, instead of, for example, choosing a leader who can speak French. They did not follow this advice this time around, but it could happen eventually.
Still, I think we need to keep in mind how unusual Donald Trump’s ascension to the US presidency was. Even in the age of populism, a lot of things needed to fall perfectly in place to put him there. So even if it could happen in Canada, and I think it’s possible despite the difference in political culture, it’s by no means a likely outcome.
Overall you make many good points but I’m going to take issue with this defining tidbit at the top.
That may well be what Trump is. But that’s not what Trump does. And it’s what he does that’s dangerous.
Under cover of populism here’s what he does:
Assisted by a shadow group of highly competent enablers, they’re systematically destroying the rule of law in the Executive branch. And installing people whose only interest is personal loyalty to Trump so they can continue gathering power and ill-gotten money to themselves. Once a thoroughgoing corrupt infrastructure is in place it becomes very very difficult to dislodge. As e.g. Italy, Greece, or any post-dictatorial African or Latin American country can attest.
There is nothing about the specifics of populism that require that as a route to despotism. It makes a convenient distractor (everybody watch my right hand! while my left executes the sleight of hand trick), but there are plenty of others. Foreign adventurism being a common choice. Manufactured domestic bogeymen are another.
Excellent post…
While parliamentary systems are more stable than presidential republics, it is not by any overwhelming margin. Viktor Orbán is a prime minister.
Nitpick: he was impeached; he just wasn’t convicted.
Rather than start a new thread, I’ll note here that Erin O’Toole finally won the Conservative leadership race after some delays. He’s a corporate lawyer and former Air Force navigator and has won his Durham district MP race three times. He is no Trump. The only Trumpian impulse I’ve seen is to talk about defunding the CBC, probably to appeal to the right wing - why is this idea so popular among Conservatives?
The Conservatives are well funded and selling memberships. Despite Trudeau shooting himself in the foot more than once it is still his race to lose. O’Toole needs to expand the Conservative tent and appeal and I’m unsure how successful he might be.
Ouch!
I don’t mind O’Toole as leader for the CPoC. If it had been Sloan or Lewis that would have been an immediate “Well, I guess I’m voting Liberal to stop them from becoming PM.” It is concerning to me that Lewis got so much support.
Anyway, with O’Toole the question now for me is:
Those are two excellent points. I could support a more progressive party, preferably one that promotes (still?) Conservative ideals of individual freedom, smaller government and budgetary prudence. Social conservatives are, of course, entitled to their views but it would be better if they were in step with greater society.
I don’t know much about this leader. Few Canadians do. Some of his views on foreign policy seem more realistic.
One thing I dislike about him is his plan to defund the CBC. When I first came to Canada, 52 years ago, the CBC was a wonder and a delight. It has been watered down considerably over the decades but is still all in all a positive thing. And they do not mix in politically, so I don’t see why the Conservatives dislike them. Things got much worse under Harper and I guess O’Toole could just pull the plug. What a shame.
But there are more serious issues. Harper’s science minister was a creationist chiropracter. That showed utter contempt for science and I am not convinced this conservative tool is any better.
It will definitely be an uphill battle for O’Toole to gain my vote. I have a lot of concerns about the CPC, and I’ll need to feel like they’re addressed before I could vote for them again. But I try to keep an open mind to the greatest degree I’m able (I’m only human … for now … so I still have my biases).
I worry about this though. Because some politicians (who tend to be Conservatives) want to both gut the CBC and turn our educational system into a private (read religious) one.
Why do they push for this? I think because an educated population is exactly what they DO NOT want.
As I said above - O’Toole and the Conservatives don’t like the CBC because they produce factual reporting that educates the population. And this does not help their causes, which are emotionally based, not factually.
Harper was notably anti-science and anti-facts. If the census did not give him the answers he wanted, his solution was to try to wreck the census.
The Conservatives are not going to win new fans by covering the same old ground. Canadians are an educated people. They need to embrace science and climate change in a way sensitive to the needs of Westerners and economic realities. They need to accept the average Canadian is pro-choice and generally support alternative relationships and tobacco-like products. They should this frame their goals around individual responsibility, duties and freedoms as part of a collective. They should balance budgets when practical while being compassionate about social problems. They have the businessmen, farmers and the oil patch but always seem to lose the cities after silly gaffes or not reassuring people that they won’t fall back on old, dated or “unapologetic” approaches.
I completely agree. The CBC has historically been a major factor contributing to a more informed and more educated Canadian public, and this is not an environment in which the Conservative Party does well. The totally commercial-free CBC Radio, which blankets all of Canada, is still a national treasure. CBC Television and the websites, including both CBC News and the radio archives, are also excellent.
It really irks me when some of my conservative friends and internet correspondents accuse the CBC of “liberal bias”. They always balk when asked for real evidence for that claim. The CBC was certainly hard on Harper and some of his cronies – for good reason – but they’ve also been hard on Liberal governments of the day, including now. They have certainly not been shy about publicizing Trudeau’s various transgressions. If I was a real Trudeau fanboi I’d accuse them of anti-Trudeau bias. But in fact what they’re doing is good old-fashioned responsible journalism, the kind that is essential for a functional and free democracy.
The Conservative Party has been pretty clear with their views on privatization. Personally I don’t particularly miss a government-owned Air Canada or Petro-Canada. Maybe re-tooling the CBC to use more of a U.S. public broadcasting model would be good for it; I don’t know.
Very depressing article in Buzzfeed on the “Fragile State Index”, an attempt by poli-sci types to predict what societies are most in jeopardy for democratic failures. They put the blame primarily on significant economic inequality within a country. Other factors, such as heightened partisanship, aren’t the cause of political dysfunction, in their view, but rather are a symptom of that underlying economic inequality, as the fight between the haves and have-nots begins to show in the political arena.
The article is mainly about the US, but there’s an interesting chart about three-quarters through the article, which suggests that by their index, of the G7 nations, the US in the past fifteen years has gone from the second most cohesive to the least cohesive. The UK has followed a similar trajectory,
Canada during that period has gone from most cohesive to second-most cohesive; Japan is now the most cohesive.
Is there a way in the new board to link to a particular chart in an article like that?
Is this the one you mean to link to?
Or this one?
The second one, the G7 graph. How did you do that?