Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard: Canada's left is obsessed with America
Whenever the Democrats come up with a bad idea, it is Canadian progressives who rush to create their own cheap imitation.
One of the most persistent criticisms levelled at the Canadian right is that it is equated with American conservatism.
From the moment the Conservative Party of Canada was founded in 2004, the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) claimed in an advertisement that ‘you won’t recognise Canada’ if Stephen Harper came to power, as he would send troops to Iraq, allow the carrying of firearms, and dismantle the health-care system.
Twenty years later, Pierre Poilievre is being caricatured as a ‘mini-Trump’, even though there is a gulf between his own classical liberalism and the American president’s national-populism.
This rhetorical shortcut, however, strikes a chord in the Canadian psyche that has resonated since the regime change initiated by Pierre Trudeau in 1982, according to which being a Canadian patriot means, first and foremost, being ‘to the left of the United States’. The country no longer defines itself by its history, much less by its founding peoples, but rather by a rejection of certain ‘right-wing’ characteristics associated with the United States: a private health-care system, militarism, gun ownership, economic liberalism, or immigration control.
Such a political stance does not constitute a national identity, especially considering that many of these elements are not found in most European countries. Above all, the Canadian left’s cheap anti-Americanism would be far more credible if it did not itself constantly act as a local branch of the Democratic Party.