The global image of Canada is largely dominated by the young, photogenic Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a member of the Trudeau political dynasty and prominent head of Canada’s social democratic Liberal Party. While Trudeau’s policies have become a matter of jokes for American conservatives and inspiration for American liberals, in his own nation resistance to him has led to the rise of minor parties, some new and some old.
In Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Québec, a right-wing populist party, soared to a resounding victory in recent elections, seizing control of Quebec’s regional assembly for the first time. This broke over 50 years of the Liberal Party and Parti Québécois trading off control of the province. Coalition Avenir Québec, led by the Canadian airline mogul François Legault, stands for controls on immigration, autonomy for Quebec, and moderate fiscal policies. It cannot be understated how much CAQ has shaken Québécois politics.
A similar populist uprising came with Doug Ford’s meteoric rise in Ontario. Ford, the brother of the now deceased former mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, dealt a major defeat to Trudeau’s Liberals in 2018, securing 76 seats in Ontario’s Parliament, compared to the Liberal Party’s 7 seats.
These advances by the right wing in Ontario and Québec are especially worrying to Trudeau given the importance of those provinces to his party on the national level. As Canada heads into elections this year, he will have his work cut out for him.
Or will he? In the mad dash to seek to replace Trudeau, the Canadian Conservative Party held a leadership election. The two major candidates, Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, came within about a point of each other nationally. Scheer won, but Bernier had amassed significant support during the process. After the election, Bernier announced his formation of a new populist party, the People’s Party (Parti Populaire). Initially written off as a stunt, the PP has already organized in each of Canada’s electoral districts (ridings). As Canada utilizes First Past the Post, Bernier’s success may cut into the Conservative Party’s margin enough to secure another term for Trudeau.
Across the world, the political battlefield is increasingly becoming globalists against nationalists. Globalists stand for market integration between nations, international organizations, and a number of other moderate policies. Globalism, in a broad sense, spans the centre-left, centre, and centre-right of most political spectrums in the civilized world. Nationalists, by comparison, are advocating for the indispensability of national sovereignty. As nationalists hail from the harder edges of the left and right wings, their reasons for wanting that sovereignty are extremely varied. Canada is currently seeing this new political dichotomy in play, with Trudeau and his Conservative rivals being flanked by populist nationalists. With the populists seemingly ascendant, it will be Trudeau’s task to best them and reaffirm international values à la Macron.