Trump ‘populism’ comes to Canada
Conservatives seek leader
OTTAWA, Dec 30, (RTRS): Canada’s answer to Donald Trump is a pediatric surgeon and former cabinet minister who, like the US president-elect, is railing against immigration and political elites.
Kellie Leitch, 46, has vaulted to the front of the race to lead the opposition Conservative Party by pushing a hard-right “Canadian values” platform that taps into discontent over the sluggish economy and Canada’s acceptance of 37,000 Syrian refugees. Leitch is ahead of about a dozen candidates in the most recent opinion polls on the Conservative leadership election, scheduled to be held on May 27, 2017. The candidate chosen by party members will be their flag bearer for the October 2019 general election, against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
“Elites pretend this isn’t an issue, but Canadians want to talk about it (immigration),” Leitch said in an interview last week from her farmhouse in rural Ontario.
She has professed admiration for Trump’s embrace of the ordinary voter, and acknowledged similarities in their agendas.
“I am talking about screening immigrants, I am talking about building pipelines, I am talking about making sure Canadians have jobs, so yeah, some of the ideas and language are the same,” said Leitch, an energetic and plain-spoken former labor and women’s affairs minister.
Trump
Backing
Just as Trump did not initially have the backing of mainstream Republicans, Leitch has alienated many in her party establishment who fear that she will struggle to win Canada’s urban, mainly immigrant, voter base in the general election.
One of the reasons why the Conservatives had managed to hold power for almost a decade was their successful push into immigrant communities under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had convinced the party that rising immigration made newcomers a mustwin constituency. Canada takes in about 300,000 immigrants every year.
“She may believe that swimming away from the broad center of the Conservative electoral coalition, the one that wins elections, may make sense. History and demographics argue otherwise,” said Hugh Segal, who has known Leitch for more than 25 years. Segal is a former senator and chief of staff to former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Still, a November poll by Mainstreet/Postmedia showed Leitch led a 12-candidate Conservative race with 19 percent support, and separate data showed she led fundraising as well. The pool of candidates running has since swelled to 14, and more may join, including businessman and reality TV star Kevin O’Leary, who has also drawn comparisons to Trump.
“There is absolutely room for a populist surprise in Canada,” said pollster Frank Graves of EKOS Research. “The type of forces driving Brexit and Trump are very much at work in Canada, albeit somewhat more muted.”
In a year marked by ultra-conservative movements in Europe and the United States, Leitch’s vault from relative obscurity to Conservative front-runner is in part boosted by media fascination with the parallels between her “Canadian values” and Trump’s “Make America great again.”