The last time Canada was beset by the terror of populism, it was the 1990's and the Chretien Liberals were being pressed on the Western flank by the Reform Party.

The Liberals remain, but the Reform Party is no more, absorbed into the CPC fold.  As much as they tried, the Reformers found that they couldn't get along without the institution that was the PC Party of Canada.  And so it was proven that Red Tories and Blue Tories might not be able to live with each other, but they definitely couldn't live without each other.

Reformers, like all those who engage in post-hoc rationalization of their failures, will tell you that their existence was necessary and worthwhile.  Some Liberals will even believe it.  But for his part, Chretien understood that all populism did was make him stronger.  He even said as much when he told his MPs that they needed Reform Party leader Preston Manning.

The common interpretation of Chretien's remark is that Manning was keeping the Conservative brand divided.  But as we know, it makes no difference whether there are one or two conservative parties, for whenever Conservatives stray out of the Liberal bounds by which they are constrained, the benefit redounds to the Liberals.  "Vote for us and give us money to save Canada from the monstrous, hateful Opposition!" they cry, and Canadians oblige.

Now, Chretien was always more forthright than his Liberal colleagues, and far more so than they would have liked him to have been, which is why they eventually booted him out for the far more circumspect and dithery Paul Martin.  You could not imagine Justin Trudeau being so open about fundraising off the back of Conservative intemperance, even though that's exactly what his party does.

But when his party starts setting themselves up as the Opposition to Doug Ford, ignoring the fact that we already have an Official Opposition in Ontario, that's when the mask falls off completely.  I get that all the cool kids think Andrew Scheer is a doofus, but ignoring him entirely and focusing on a party that the federal Liberals won't be campaigning against in 2019 is pretty dumb…..unless the geniuses in Ottawa feel as though there's some hay to be made by going after the Ontario PC's and they want a piece of the action.

Besides the fact that populists are effectively a revenue stream for the Liberals, there's another, related reason why they need Ford and Trump: because it removes the requirement for the Liberals to actually DO anything to make people's lives better.

I wrote last column about how the Opposition can't be bothered to prove how the Liberals have reduced the standard of living in this country, and I also pointed out how the Liberals tend to leave a lot of longstanding institutional problems undone.  When the Liberals do something big, like, say, a carbon tax that won't by any stretch of the imagination meet our country's stated emission goals, it's mostly a symbolic gesture that's meant to raise even more funds in the short term and make the opposition look silly in the longer term.  The rest of the time, they can focus on owning the Cons with obviously political motions and bills that make them look good and progressive.

This substance-free politicking has the fun side effect of accelerating another discourse-destroying trend: the conversion of political leaders and the parties they lead into social-media-dominating cults of personality.  And before the Liberals start predictably blaming Trump and Ford for this, let me remind them of a few names: FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and up here in Canada, both Trudeaus and Chretien himself.

Vapid, faux-progressive politics attract vapid fauxgressive politicians, and this cycle reinforces itself until we arrive at the moment where everyone is so sick of being milked for cash by zero-cred politicos that they actively start trying to break the system.  But so long as this can be blamed on conservatives "raising the level of panic", don't expect progressives to take any responsibility.

Written by Josh Lieblein