It's like Canada is the concerned child watching her aging mother and weirdo big brother descend into chaos, unsure who to worry over first
— @PaigeKnorr (8,052 likes)

Against the backdrop of Donald Trump's presidential run and the rise, then passage of Britain's "Brexit" referendum, sentiments of the above sort have been bouncing around the social media of progressive Canada.  The preferred narrative goes something like this: large portions of United States and the United Kingdom are captive to a poisonous flavor of populism; one that panders shamelessly to the ignorance of the masses and their fact-starved fantasies about immigrants taking jobs, free trade killing the working class, etc.  Canadian politics look like a positively saintly model of reason and common sense by comparison.

Well, I'm sorry to burst the bubble, but Canadian politics most certainly does not.  If our Anglo relatives are headed down the path of dopey demagoguery then Canada surely got a head start when it elected Justin Trudeau.

The tossing of Stephen Harper was no victory for common sense.  He had not brought Canada to crisis or chaos.  On the contrary, according to endless metrics, from economic growth to unemployment to job creation, he was a remarkable success, placing Canada consistently atop rankings of western nations.  Efforts to scrape up proof of things progressives assumed his rule should have wrought — worsening inequality, environmental ruin, ballooning debt etc. — turned up threadbare, but the accusations were still flung.

Stephen Harper was not trying to kill democracy.  The Robocall scandal was a proven web of nonsense, spread in large part by liberal activists "remembering" sinister phone calls they never received.  The supposedly darkest aspect of Harper's Fair Elections Act — a requirement to show photo ID — was an idea parliament had approved unanimously several years prior.  Can anyone even remember why we were supposed to hate Bill C-51?

Nor was Stephen Harper a racist.  His government hiked immigration to a 50-year high, virtually all of which came from nonwhite countries.  Claims he engaged in "dog whistle" appeals to white supremacy were maliciously tortured, as when a mumbled comment about "new and existing and old-stock Canadians" was interepreted as full-throated fascism.

Nor was he corrupt.  Whatever we may think of Mike Duffy personally, Harper was effectively cleared of responsibility for the senator's behavior by the RCMP back in 2013, and Duffy himself was absolved by a court of law last April.  And this was supposedly as bad as it got.

Stephen Harper was a flawed politician, as all prime ministers are. Yet the most serious charges leveled against him were consistently mythological, inspired by precisely the same sort of brazen disregard for objective reality in favor of ignorant, biased "feelings" that leftists the world over blame for the rise of Trump and the British Brexit.

Such ignorance was only compounded by that which went into choosing Harper's replacement. Justin Trudeau was spectacularly unqualified to be prime minister, a man who by all accounts did not even think about politics until he was in his late 30s. He was made boss of the Liberal Party in a desperate coronation based on his bloodline, and once installed, he proceeded to introduce himself to the nation speaking stilted patriotic cliches no more insightful than a Canadian Tire ad. He marketed himself, and the media obediently followed, primarily as a man of celebrity, charm, and sex appeal.

Since becoming prime minister he has governed in a manner that is, by any objective standard, dumb. He created an enormous budget deficit for no good reason. He ended Canada's war on ISIS for no good reason. He demanded Canada welcome enormous numbers of Syrian refugees on arbitrary and impossible timetables for no good reason. He abolished financial oversight of aboriginal bands for no good reason. He is presently gumming up Canada's pipeline approval process in order to bring burden upon an energy sector the Calgary Herald rightly dubbed "among the most responsible and environmentally defensible in the world" for no good reason.

His supporters are unbothered by all this because they are under the spell of the man's happy talk. Smarter Liberals have squirmed a bit more, but are still prepared to look the other way because they allowed themselves to believe the Harper/Satan big lie.

If the election of a goofy, selfie-taking glamor model over a calm and accomplished administrator represents the height of democratic maturity then the western world is in even worse shape than we thought.

 

Written by J.J McCullough