Why Trump politics have failed here
Canada has felt the Trump effect, too, but it’s unlikely we’d ever be ruled by it
Why is this Trump thing so alien, yet so eerily familiar?
Because we’ve been there before in Canada. We’ve seen the anger, racism, homophobia, misogyny, nativism and extreme nationalism.
But we have never been ruled by those qualities, and hopefully never will be.
One reason is Canada’s flexible democracy. It spins off new parties like Stampede flapjacks.
The U.S., by contrast, is locked into the dominance of two powerful parties. Angry people have nowhere else to go. The emotions within a party’s base can escalate from reasonable discontent to genuine extremism.
Our protest parties are political safety valves.
They blow off steam. Sometimes they attract enough support to threaten major parties and force them to adapt.
I’ve watched and covered the rise of Western Canada Concept, the Confederation of Regions, the Reform party, Wildrose, the Parti Quebecois, the Bloc Quebecois, the Saskatchewan Party ... so many that I may have forgotten one or two.
Anger at traditional parties motivated every one of them. They foam about taxes, bilingualism, regional unfairness, separatism, the anthem, the flag, Quebec, everything outside Quebec.
Even the loopiest can have serious influence — Confederation of Regions, fiercely opposed to bilingualism, once elected eight MLAs in New Brunswick.
An Alberta separatist named Gordon Kesler, running for Western Canada Concept, won an Alberta legislature seat in 1982. He was the only elected separatist outside Quebec.
Premier Peter Lougheed’s PC government paid serious attention. Lougheed said he understood separatist anger, without being quite clear about whether he opposed it.
In the U.S, Trump avidly gave voice to anger and intolerance, broadening and amplifying them, even justifying violence and retaliation.
That may never have happened if people upset with the traditional Republicans had been able to express themselves through a new party.
(The Tea Party movement isn’t an official party, but a lobby group aimed at nominating and electing like-minded Republicans.)
Two-party dominance in the U.S. rarely shows signs of cracking.
Teddy Roosevelt won 27 per cent of the vote in 1912 as presidential candidate for the Progressive Party. Ross Perot, running as an Independent, got 19 per cent in 1992.
Apart from that, the two traditional parties have been sacrosanct. The Democrats finally became too sclerotic to win, and the Republicans were so out of touch that a demagogue had to hijack them to win.
Compare that with two striking cases at home: Reform, and the Parti Quebecois.
Early Reform rallies back in the late 1980s looked a lot like those Trump events — loaded with angry people, mostly older, largely white — who felt no connection with any traditional party or with the federal government.
They often said hard things. Stan Waters, a prominent early figure and afterward a senator, said Ottawa should stop funding “black lesbians from Dartmouth.”
But Reform Leader Preston Manning knew how to promote the party’s useful policy goals while rejecting the intolerance of some members.
In the 1993 election, Reform blew out the federal Progressive Conservatives who had resolutely, and disastrously, refused to come to terms with a movement they saw as regional and illegitimate.
By 2003, a merger under pressure finally abolished the PC party entirely.
The 2006 election brought the Conservative heirs of Reform into government.
In Quebec, the PQ won power in 1976. The party then promoted and lost two referendums on separation, in 1980 and 1995.
The federal Bloc Quebecois also arose to become the national official opposition from 1993-97.
The powerful separatist movement ultimately failed. Most people came to accept the result because the battles were fought on democratic terms.
A movement that could have blown Canada apart began to fade.
That would never have happened, I’ve long believed, if Ottawa and the Supreme Court had refused to let Quebec separatism be a legitimate subject for discussion and decision.
Canada has a genius for political compromise and creativity that seems beyond the reach of modern America.
That’s why we’ve never had a civil war, and are unlikely to have a Donald Trump.